Linda Miles, who retired as Greensboro’s city attorney in November and returned as a consultant to lead the legal department earlier this month, has been the object of a sustained barrage of criticism from The Rhinoceros Times and a handful of strong-willed bloggers.
Initially, her public relations problems stemmed from her role, alongside City Manager Mitchell Johnson, in handling the departure of former police Chief David Wray, but since then her detractors have promulgated a blossoming number of alleged offenses.
A blog post by Ben Holder, identified as “The Troublemaker,” announcing Miles’ retirement is typical of the heat: “Miles, who arguably has the worst reputation in Guilford County’s legal community, started with the city as a part-time employee in the late 70’s before being promoted to city attorney in 1998.”
The lead story by Editor John Hammer in today’s Rhinoceros Times is similarly disparaging. Bearing the hopeful title “End In Sight for Mitch & Miles Administration,” it states, “Just the fact that her title includes former and acting is indicative of how absurd this situation has become. Miles retired at the end of November 2007, but signed a contract on Nov. 16, 2007, to run the City Legal Department for an additional six months as a consultant starting Jan. 9. This maneuver may be as bizarre as locking the police chief out of his office. Miles was allowed to retire and then hired back, not as a part-time consultant, not to tie up some loose ends, not to help with the search for a new attorney, but to run the legal department just as she had been doing, but starting in January she would be collecting her retirement and getting paid $91.50 an hour by the city to do her old job. She would be paid more for doing her job as a paid-by-the-hour consultant than she was paid as a city department head and she even got to keep her old parking place.”
Miles fires back in statement released this evening indicating that her motives for returning as a consultant are altruistic rather than self-serving.
“At the urging of the city manager and with the understanding of the previous city council, I agreed to return from my retirement to guide the transition as acting city attorney until a new city attorney was recruited and hired. If the city needed my help, then I was glad to put aside my personal desires and continue to serve.”
Miles has been accused of both withholding public records and of releasing public records that might compromise a criminal investigation.
In her statement this evening, she cites a recent e-mail from NC Deputy Attorney General Jim Coman acknowledging the city for complying with his request to not release the so-called “black book” to the public.
Coman said, “To my knowledge [the city has] complied with my request and apparently [has] been criticized in some circles for complying with my request not to release anything that would be harmful to the rights of the accused or could hurt the investigation. This case is proof of how difficult it is to protect the rights of the accused and to keep the city leaders and the public informed.”
Miles says that Coman “speaks eloquently to the importance of preserving the right of a fair trial for all those accused.”
Then comes her public-relations offensive: “In defending this basic American right, I have been subject to scorn, ridicule, half-truths, and out-and-out falsehoods. Through it all, I have held fast to the conviction that the ends of justice were far more important than responding to personal attacks, however personally hurtful or professionally defaming they might be.”
Miles concludes by insisting that she serves at the pleasure of the city.
“My return from retirement was solely to assist in the management of important legal matters until a new city attorney is hired,” she says. “I am glad to spend as much or as little time in this capacity as the city manager and the city council desire.”
Showing posts with label Linda Miles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Linda Miles. Show all posts
Response to heat generated by 'Reckless disregard'
I'm gratified by the flurry of discussion in response to my article about Jerry Bledsoe's reporting of the Wray/GPD story. Considering the raw emotion raised by this subject, I have been surprised to find that most of the criticisms of my story have been reasoned and cool. I certainly did not expect to win any popularity contests by choosing this subject.
I thank Ben Holder for initiating the conversation. His
statement that “I think it is fair to say that God is writing ‘Cops in Black and White’; Bledsoe is just holding the pen” strikes me as emblematic of the unquestioning faith with which many readers have treated Jerry Bledsoe's articles in particular and The Rhinoceros Times' coverage in general.
Holder, along with Brenda Bowers objects to my use of the term “retraction” to describe the post-script provided by lawyer Walt Jones and published by The Rhinoceros Times concerning Officer Stacy Morton’s disciplinary case. This is a matter of semantics. I leave it to readers to draw their own conclusions about the truth of Morton’s case by examining Bledsoe’s initial account juxtaposed with the information that was subsequently provided to him.
As to Bledsoe’s preoccupation with Nelson Johnson and the Nov. 3, 1979 shootings, I’ll let my reporting speak for itself, except to say that I believe it was healthy to explore allegations by both blacks and whites that racial tension and distrust has been passed down through the ranks of the Greensboro Police Department over the years. I invite people to read my articles, and judge them on their merits. In a relatively concise, two-part story, I’m not going to take on myself as an additional subject.
Holder correctly points out that I have reported about black leaders’ concerns about secret taping by an employee of the police department. Holder is in a position to know that I also reported the true motive for the tapings in a subsequent article when the information became available to me.
I have written a lot about truth and reconciliation, and about the police controversy. I might have recycled any number of stories, but I’m not sure how black leaders' perceptions that they were targeted for surveillance and how actually the taping was done to gather intelligence about a suspicious task force member are central to the story at hand. The taping story has already been told. My focus here is David Wray, and Jerry Bledsoe and The Rhinoceros Times, along with the three black police officers who are at the heart of the contention between the city and its former police chief.
Holder misconstrues my statement that “one [premise], unproven, is that Miles thrust herself into the middle of the Project Homestead investigation.” If this is a genuine misunderstanding, then I am happy to clarify my reporting.
As the next paragraph states, “Then-Capt. Gary Hastings came to Wray several times to complain that Miles had intruded on meetings between auditors and detectives, Bledsoe wrote in the fifth installment in his series, ‘and once told a woman being interviewed by [Detective] Ken Rickard and [city internal audit director] Len Lucas that she would make the detective leave if the woman felt uncomfortable in his presence, Wray recalled.”
This allegation, contradicted by three separate sources, entirely rests on David Wray’s say-so. I leave it to readers to determine for themselves who is most credible.
By providing a link to his own article, Holder simply recycles the canard that City Attorney Linda Miles tried to interfere in the police department’s Project Homestead investigation, citing her legal decision to release public records to the media as his support. The reasons for Miles’ decision to release the records are well documented and I do not need to repeat them here. Whether this disagreement led to a “fight” or “personal grudge” is largely irrelevant. By calling attention to Miles’ presumed personal feelings, Wray’s supporters are distracting attention from the former chief’s exercise of judgment in this incident.
Holder notes that I omit reference to a reported proposed hit against Bledsoe because of his reporting. I neither deny the truth of this account nor have I done the reporting to corroborate it, but from my understanding, the hit targeted not Bledsoe but Rhinoceros Times Editor John Hammer. As will be detailed next week, my story concerns the unsustained allegation that Officer Julius Fulmore was criminally involved with a local drug dealer, Bledsoe’s handling of this material, and other contextual information that presents this episode in a different light. I challenge Holder to show how the reported hit against Hammer supports allegations against Fulmore, absolves Wray of wrongdoing or calls into question City Manager Mitchell Johnson’s handling of the controversy.
A handful of commenters on Ed Cone's blog have attempted to poke holes in my reporting and questioned by ability to handle this story with independence and fairness.
In response to my reporting that Bledsoe misquoted Mitchell Johnson by writing that the city manager found allegations that police officers under former Chief Robert White used their police identification cards to gain free admission to a strip club to be "no big deal" when in fact Johnson told him that command staff had allegedly said that the practice was "not that big of a deal," Fred Gregory accuses Johnson of tacit approval.
Johnson told me that the allegations were brought to him after White left Greensboro for a job with the Louisville Metro Police Department, and that because of the dearth of evidence to back up the claims Johnson treated them as rumor.
Later in his conversation with Bledsoe, Johnson says, “I think a lot of what I was hearing was this cultural difference between what some officers in our department felt like were appropriate standards of behavior and maybe what Robert thought were appropriate standards of behavior from a different environment.”
One might conclude that the behavior to which Johnson was alluding is badging into strip clubs. Sources frequently make ambiguous statements. If that's the case, reporters have the opportunity and indeed the responsibility to seek clarification. We’ve made plans to post the audio of the Bledsoe/Johnson/Miles interview, so you can decide for yourself the context of Johnson’s statement.
As to Samuel Spagnola's question about why a reporter such as myself with a perceived liberal bias would report favorably on civil authority and Ian McDowell's suggestion that I might be friends with News & Record reporter Lorraine Ahearn, others have answered those questions as eloquently as I could have. Spagnola asks why I don’t apply the same scrutiny to the News & Record that I do to The Rhinoceros Times. I would respond that Bledsoe has already taken a crack at that one, and I don’t find that he’s made a compelling case.
And finally, Joe Guarino posts an interesting analysis of how my perceived journalistic slant dovetails with what might be considered the liberal pathology of Greensboro. I don’t pretend to have any particular gift for polemics, so I simply refer interested readers to his argument and redirect Guarino to the facts in my articles.
I thank Ben Holder for initiating the conversation. His
statement that “I think it is fair to say that God is writing ‘Cops in Black and White’; Bledsoe is just holding the pen” strikes me as emblematic of the unquestioning faith with which many readers have treated Jerry Bledsoe's articles in particular and The Rhinoceros Times' coverage in general.
Holder, along with Brenda Bowers objects to my use of the term “retraction” to describe the post-script provided by lawyer Walt Jones and published by The Rhinoceros Times concerning Officer Stacy Morton’s disciplinary case. This is a matter of semantics. I leave it to readers to draw their own conclusions about the truth of Morton’s case by examining Bledsoe’s initial account juxtaposed with the information that was subsequently provided to him.
As to Bledsoe’s preoccupation with Nelson Johnson and the Nov. 3, 1979 shootings, I’ll let my reporting speak for itself, except to say that I believe it was healthy to explore allegations by both blacks and whites that racial tension and distrust has been passed down through the ranks of the Greensboro Police Department over the years. I invite people to read my articles, and judge them on their merits. In a relatively concise, two-part story, I’m not going to take on myself as an additional subject.
Holder correctly points out that I have reported about black leaders’ concerns about secret taping by an employee of the police department. Holder is in a position to know that I also reported the true motive for the tapings in a subsequent article when the information became available to me.
I have written a lot about truth and reconciliation, and about the police controversy. I might have recycled any number of stories, but I’m not sure how black leaders' perceptions that they were targeted for surveillance and how actually the taping was done to gather intelligence about a suspicious task force member are central to the story at hand. The taping story has already been told. My focus here is David Wray, and Jerry Bledsoe and The Rhinoceros Times, along with the three black police officers who are at the heart of the contention between the city and its former police chief.
Holder misconstrues my statement that “one [premise], unproven, is that Miles thrust herself into the middle of the Project Homestead investigation.” If this is a genuine misunderstanding, then I am happy to clarify my reporting.
As the next paragraph states, “Then-Capt. Gary Hastings came to Wray several times to complain that Miles had intruded on meetings between auditors and detectives, Bledsoe wrote in the fifth installment in his series, ‘and once told a woman being interviewed by [Detective] Ken Rickard and [city internal audit director] Len Lucas that she would make the detective leave if the woman felt uncomfortable in his presence, Wray recalled.”
This allegation, contradicted by three separate sources, entirely rests on David Wray’s say-so. I leave it to readers to determine for themselves who is most credible.
By providing a link to his own article, Holder simply recycles the canard that City Attorney Linda Miles tried to interfere in the police department’s Project Homestead investigation, citing her legal decision to release public records to the media as his support. The reasons for Miles’ decision to release the records are well documented and I do not need to repeat them here. Whether this disagreement led to a “fight” or “personal grudge” is largely irrelevant. By calling attention to Miles’ presumed personal feelings, Wray’s supporters are distracting attention from the former chief’s exercise of judgment in this incident.
Holder notes that I omit reference to a reported proposed hit against Bledsoe because of his reporting. I neither deny the truth of this account nor have I done the reporting to corroborate it, but from my understanding, the hit targeted not Bledsoe but Rhinoceros Times Editor John Hammer. As will be detailed next week, my story concerns the unsustained allegation that Officer Julius Fulmore was criminally involved with a local drug dealer, Bledsoe’s handling of this material, and other contextual information that presents this episode in a different light. I challenge Holder to show how the reported hit against Hammer supports allegations against Fulmore, absolves Wray of wrongdoing or calls into question City Manager Mitchell Johnson’s handling of the controversy.
A handful of commenters on Ed Cone's blog have attempted to poke holes in my reporting and questioned by ability to handle this story with independence and fairness.
In response to my reporting that Bledsoe misquoted Mitchell Johnson by writing that the city manager found allegations that police officers under former Chief Robert White used their police identification cards to gain free admission to a strip club to be "no big deal" when in fact Johnson told him that command staff had allegedly said that the practice was "not that big of a deal," Fred Gregory accuses Johnson of tacit approval.
Johnson told me that the allegations were brought to him after White left Greensboro for a job with the Louisville Metro Police Department, and that because of the dearth of evidence to back up the claims Johnson treated them as rumor.
Later in his conversation with Bledsoe, Johnson says, “I think a lot of what I was hearing was this cultural difference between what some officers in our department felt like were appropriate standards of behavior and maybe what Robert thought were appropriate standards of behavior from a different environment.”
One might conclude that the behavior to which Johnson was alluding is badging into strip clubs. Sources frequently make ambiguous statements. If that's the case, reporters have the opportunity and indeed the responsibility to seek clarification. We’ve made plans to post the audio of the Bledsoe/Johnson/Miles interview, so you can decide for yourself the context of Johnson’s statement.
As to Samuel Spagnola's question about why a reporter such as myself with a perceived liberal bias would report favorably on civil authority and Ian McDowell's suggestion that I might be friends with News & Record reporter Lorraine Ahearn, others have answered those questions as eloquently as I could have. Spagnola asks why I don’t apply the same scrutiny to the News & Record that I do to The Rhinoceros Times. I would respond that Bledsoe has already taken a crack at that one, and I don’t find that he’s made a compelling case.
And finally, Joe Guarino posts an interesting analysis of how my perceived journalistic slant dovetails with what might be considered the liberal pathology of Greensboro. I don’t pretend to have any particular gift for polemics, so I simply refer interested readers to his argument and redirect Guarino to the facts in my articles.
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