Rhino Times to return before city council primary

After a 5-month hiatus, the Rhino Times will return on Oct. 3, according to the paper's Twitter account.

With a new office a few blocks away from its old downtown location and new ownership, the Rhino Times plans to print its first issue since announcing its closing at the end of April the Thursday before the Greensboro City Council primary election.

A screenshot from the paper's Twitter page

We heard a rumor last week that there would be two issues before the primary, but that appears to have either changed or have been inaccurate. 

There's a lot to speculate about regarding potential conflicts between developer Roy Carroll, who bought the paper, and Editor John Hammer. Carroll is tied into plenty of issues a solid, local paper would need to cover: He said he's planning to build a hotel downtown, donated to the  planned Tanger Center for the Performing Arts downtown, pushed strongly for a stricter noise ordinance and has received money from the city in the past. Carroll's positions may clash with Hammer's explicitly conservative editorial stance (which regularly co-mingles with his news coverage). 

Maybe it's convenient, then, that the latest round of noise ordinance revisions is on track for approval Tuesday before the Rhino puts out its first new issue.

Rhino Times possibly reopening

After announcing the closing of the Rhinoceros Times on Facebook a few months ago, William Hammer is back with some vague but very suggestive news about the paper:

A quick internet search didn't turn up any results for Snap Publications: This was the closest thing we found.

We don't have any other information right now but will post it when we do.

The Rhino Times is closing

Former Rhinoceros Times publisher William Hammer just announced that the city's conservative paper will cease publication. 

From his Facebook post earlier this morning: 

"Through The Rhinoceros Times, my brother, John Hammer has kept people of Guilford County informed and entertained for over 20 years. The many sleepless nights and tireless work that it required of him to bring the news to us is impossible for me to accurately convey. 
John through The Rhino has broken many incredible stories and shined a bright, satirical and often irreverent light in corners that some of our elective officials and bureaucrats had hoped to keep dark and always without fail, he called it as he saw it. He attracted World Class writers to the paper such as, Orson Scott Card, Jerry Blesdsoe and staff writers such as the hilarious Scott Yost and the reliable Paul Clark and gave them lot's of room to wow us with their talent. It was my honor to have been a part of such a refreshing truth-telling paper for many years. It is a sad day for Guilford County knowing that the paper which did such a wonderful job of keeping us informed will no longer be able to continue in that crucial role. Thank you John Hammer. Goodbye Rhino."

Pastors call for boycott against Rhino Times advertisers

Three pastors associated with the Pulpit Forum demonstrated before the ribbon-cutting at the International Civil Rights Center and Museum on Monday, brandishing a manifesto and shouting, "We cannot wait."

There's a lot to unpack in their bill of particulars, which includes the treatment of Officer AJ Blake, allegations of racial discrimination by 39 black officers, the gang unit's treatment of the Latin Kings and the Klan-Nazi shootings of '79, but one item in particular grabbed my attention.

The manifesto, which bears the names of the Revs. Cardes Brown, Gregory Headen and Nelson Johnson, and that of Jibreel Khazan, calls for a boycott of Rhinoceros Times advertisers:

The Rhinoceros Times and the damage it is doing must be challenged: All who advertise with The Rhinoceros Times are unwittingly complicit with the division, confusion and hatred this media source is fermenting in our area. We, therefore, call upon all who advertise with The Rhinoceros Times to withdraw their advertisement. Further, we call upon the citizens of Greensboro and the surrounding area to organize a selective buying campaign and cease buying from businesses that continue to advertise with The Rhinoceros Times.

Rhino and city attempt to keep Sanders tapes under wraps

Author Jerry Bledsoe, lawyer Seth Cohen and Rhinoceros Times Editor John Hammer leave a Guilford County courtroom on Tuesday.

Judge Edgar Gregory of Wilkes County said yesterday he will take about three weeks to decide whether to grant a motion to compel filed by two black Greensboro police officers seeking to obtain recordings, transcripts and other documents made by Officer Scott Sanders over a seven-year period.

Capt. Brian James and Officer Julius Fulmore are seeking the documents as part of a defamation lawsuit against author Jerry Bledsoe and The Rhinoceros Times.

The hearing yesterday in Guilford County Court was notable in that it featured lawyers for The Rhinoceros Times and the city arguing on the same side. Bledsoe’s “Cops In Black and White” series, whose publication in the weekly newspaper began more than three years ago, has taken a critical stance against city administration.

The newspaper and the city have found themselves making common cause in that the city is also a defendant in separate lawsuits filed by James and Fulmore related to Sanders’ activities as an investigator in special intelligence during the administration of former Chief David Wray. Arguing for the city on Tuesday were Assistant City Attorney Jim Clark and outside counsel Alan Duncan.

Bledsoe and The Rhinoceros Times are represented by lawyer Seth Cohen, who also represented Sanders during a criminal trial earlier this year that resulted in his acquittal.

Sanders listened to the proceedings from the gallery, and conferred with Cohen, Bledsoe and Rhinoceros Times Editor John Hammer during a break from the hearing.

“Mr. Sanders is the investigator who at the behest of Wray and [former Deputy Chief Randall] Brady, targeted my clients by following them, recording them, and secretly getting into a computer,” plaintiff lawyer Amiel Rossabi told Judge Gregory.

James and Fulmore subpoenaed the city in March 2008 for all recordings and transcriptions made by Sanders from 2003 to the present, including any that include statements made by or about the plaintiffs. They also asked for all recordings made by Sanders that were seized from the Guilford Building in downtown Greensboro.

On Monday, the city filed an affidavit by Officer David Stewart, a detective who is assigned to internal affairs. Stewart’s affidavit states that the department reviewed and transcribed more than 144 hours of recordings that could be relevant to the subpoena.” The city handed over an accordion file of documents to Rossabi on Tuesday. Stewart stated that the documents produced by the department did not include personnel records or records containing criminal intelligence.

To appreciate the morass of documents in the police department’s possession, consider that Sgt. Nathaniel Davis, one of the internal affairs officers responsible for the administrative investigation, reported to his commander in October 2008 that the criminal investigations division advised that it has a terabyte of data on a computer, 55 boxes, five 3” binders and 5 2” inch binders accumulated in the department’s criminal investigation of Sanders’ activities during the Wray administration. The professional standards division, which holds administrative documents from the investigation, has 111 gigabytes and 4,668 pages of documentation relevant to the request.

The city contends it has no documents responsive to one aspect of the request.

An affidavit by Sgt. Davis, states that he was one of the officers who entered the Guilford Building, and that no recordings, documents or other information were seized from that location.

In September, the city requested a protective order, asking the courts to limit what it was required to release, arguing that some of the documents include protected personnel information, and material from criminal investigations and criminal intelligence activities.

“I can tell you that confidential informants are identified,” Clark argued before Judge Gregory. “There’s also an overarching federal concern. A lot of the criminal matters have to do with OCDETF [organized crime drug enforcement task force] matters. I don’t even want to get anywhere near releasing that. I have no desire to spend any time in federal prison.”

Rossabi recapped the central themes of his argument for Judge Gregory’s benefit.

“Bledsoe says, ‘The reason I wrote these article is to restore Wray’s reputation, get [former City Manager] Mitch Johnson fired and to show that political correctness is the order of the day in Guilford County,” Rossabi said, adding that he believes the author’s motive was something other than to get to the truth.

Rossabi told the judge that in contrast to a claim by the city that it would take a year to transcribe the relevant tapes, he believes the city had been working on them “for quite awhile” before receiving the subpoena. He further argued that the city was trying to get around releasing the documents to avoid embarrassment, considering that it had commissioned an outside agency to conduct an investigation into allegations of discrimination, which was sustained by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and provided the basis for lawsuits against the city by both clients.

“The city is trying to do as much damage control as possible, and they’re doing it on the backs of my clients,” Rossabi said.

James and Fulmore had previously attempted to obtain Bledsoe’s reporting notes. Earlier this year, the NC Court of Appeals upheld a trial court ruling by Judge Brad Long that the reporting notes were privileged documents that were protected.

“I have to prove actual malice,” Rossabi said. “I have to prove knowledge that the statements were false or reckless disregard of the truth in these published statements. Judge Long said, ‘You’ve got other places where you can get this information.’ I went to other places to get the information.”

Cohen argued that the plaintiffs were taking a “backdoor” approach to obtain the same material Judge Bradford Long told them they couldn’t have.

“They have to do something to get over the ‘privilege hump,’” Cohen said. “It’s the same request in a different outfit.”

Arguing for the city, Duncan said, “As to the plaintiffs’ claims that Wray and Brady are quoted extensively in these articles, depose them. That’s your alternative.”

Rossabi acknowledged that the materials sought by his client would probably be too cumbersome and time-consuming for a superior court judge to review to determine what documents might be relevant to his clients’ lawsuit, so he suggested that he could do it himself.

“I’ll listen to these tapes,” he said. “I’ll go through these folders and binders. I’m an officer of the court.”
Rossabi also suggested that the city is being disingenuous in its claim that the materials include protected information about criminal investigations.

“Scott Sanders, who’s in court today, he’s one of two defendants who were indicted,” Rossabi said. “A jury acquitted him of one of the charges, and the other was dismissed by the state…. His criminal charges are gone.”

Rossabi also countered the city’s argument that the documents contain protected personnel information, noting that some of the other black officers investigated by Sanders are plaintiffs in a discrimination lawsuit involving 39 or 40 plaintiffs against the city. John Bloss, a lawyer for the 39 or 40 black officers handed Rossabi a note at one point, after which Rossabi announced that the officers had agreed to waive their confidentiality.

Rossabi said he believes the Sanders recordings will show that Bledsoe’s reporting was inaccurate.

“The strange thing is that Mr. Cohen, because of his defense of Mr. Sanders, already has this,” Rossabi said. “And he’s also representing Mr. Bledsoe and The Rhino Times…. When the defendants’ lawyer has it and it’s able to get in the hands of a weekly newspaper, then they can publish it all over again, and I can’t have it.”

Cohen responded by denying that he has provided any privileged material from Sanders’ criminal trial to Bledsoe and The Rhinoceros Times.

In a preview of his arguments if the case goes to trial, Rossabi showed Judge Gregory a transcript of a recorded conversation between Sanders and Brady as an example of the kind of material the city might have and its relevance to the black officers’ complaint.

“The recordings shows that Chief Wray had trouble with a neighbor,” Rossabi said. “Chief Brady tells Scott Sanders to do something about it. Brady says Chief Wray knows about it, but if anyone asks, don’t implicate Wray.” Rossabi went on to read some of the allegedly defamatory statements in Bledsoe’s series, and then to contend that the author would likely tell the court that Wray and Brady were his primary sources for much of the material. Relying on such sources, Rossabi contended, could be considered a reckless disregard for the truth.

“Mr. Rossabi has made unsubstantiated allegations that Mr. Bledsoe must have known that everything he wrote was a lie, that John Hammer knew that what he was publishing was a lie,” Cohen retorted. “He has everything in his possession that Mr. Bledsoe relied on to write his articles. He has to show actual malice. He thinks he’s going to listen to all these recordings, and then say, ‘Oh, here it is, judge. Here’s what I’ve been looking for.’ This is a quintessential fishing expedition.”

A conservative surge in the Greensboro municipal election?

John Hammer is a gifted polemicist. Depending on whether you agree with his point of view or not, he's an engaging writer. Readers invariably find themselves mouthing in response to his essays, alternately, "amen" or "excuse me?" At first blush, Hammer's ordering of the facts sings with cognitive harmony. On second glance, his writing betrays glaring omissions and inconsistencies of logic.

Hammer writes in this week's Rhinoceros Times that “conservatives in Greensboro have a once-in-a-decade opportunity to bring change to city government,” and cites the 1995 election in which Carolyn Allen defeated Tom Phillips in the mayoral race as the last time such an opportunity existed.

Playing the “party” card in Greensboro, where municipal elections are nonpartisan, would seem to be a high-stakes gamble.

“The truth is that since [1995] the mayor has been a liberal Democrat and the council has been dominated by liberal Democrats," Hammer writes. "Take a look at the city council that was elected in 2005, the one that was in office when former police Chief David Wray was locked out of his office and the one that caused all the police and city manager problems that led to all the lawsuits that plague the city today. On that entire nine-member city council there was one Republican – Phillips.”

As Tom Phillips once said to me, Hammer "doesn't let the facts get in the way of what he wants to say."

The problematic omission in Hammer's polemic is that Phillips has been an ardent supporter of Mitchell Johnson and his handling of David Wray’s departure from the police department. And one of the three Republicans elected to council in 2007, Robbie Perkins, has also staunchly defended Johnson. (The other two Republicans, Mary Rakestraw and Trudy Wade joined forces with Democrat Mike Barber to remove Johnson.)

While never mentioning that Bill Knight and Danny Thompson, among this year’s crop of candidates, are Republicans, Hammer infers the connection by saying in the headline of his editorial that “Knight, Thompson could change city” while bemoaning that the Greensboro City Council has been dominated since 1995 by “liberal Democrats.”

Knight has repeatedly called on the city to reimburse Wray’s legal expenses and apologize to the former chief; he has said that he opposes a financial settlement with the black officers who allege that they were subject to racial discrimination under Wray’s administration. Thompson has taken no public stand on the Wray affair; what he has said to Hammer or voters at Republican Party is not known to me.

Hammer says that in this election conservatives have an opportunity to elect a majority on council, presuming the victories of Zack Matheny, Mary Rakestraw and Trudy Wade respectively in districts 3, 4 and 5 – all majority-white districts.

Voter turnout in Greensboro municipal elections is typically around 10 percent, Hammer writes, proposing that “if it was 20 percent, and that was because more conservative voters showed up to vote for conservative candidates… that would change the future of Greensboro. It is almost assured that Greensboro would no longer have the highest tax rate of any comparable city in North Carolina.”

Hammer goes on to say that “the liberals, led by the Simkins PAC, organize their voters and get voters to the polls. The conservatives do nothing and the liberals win city election after city election.”

The racial dimension of this argument is obvious in that the Simkins PAC is designed to express the candidate preferences of a consortium of black elected officials to the black electorate, which primarily resides in east Greensboro. Hammer presents the Simkins PAC as a distortion to the political process and “conservative voters” as a necessary corrective. Yet if there’s a distortion it would appear to be that east Greensboro voters in predominantly black and working-class districts 1 and 2 consistently turn out to vote in lower numbers than their counterparts in predominantly white and affluent districts 3 and 4.

If there’s a skew in Greensboro politics, it would seem to be towards conservative candidates given the high rates of political participation in north-by-northwest neighborhoods such as Irving Park and Starmount.

Hammer celebrates the Tea Party movement’s ability to mobilize a grassroots conservative movement to protest various Obama administration initiatives in Washington, then calls on the movement’s organizers to harness the movement’s power at the polls.

“There is an election in less than two weeks that has a far greater effect on the lives of the citizens of Greensboro than anything that will happen in Washington, DC, and that is the city council election on Nov. 3," Hammer writes. "Somehow, the Tea Party organizers are able to raise large crowds of people. It would make a huge difference in Greensboro if those same grassroots techniques were used to get people to the polls instead of to a rally.”

There’s no doubt that local government has immeasurably more impact on ordinary citizens’ lives than the decisions of politicians in Washington, so the same mobilization principle could just as easily be applied to another constituency that has so far remained dormant in this municipal election: the 80,000-plus, or more than two out of every three, Greensboro voters who cast their ballots for Barack Obama last year.

Surveillance of black leaders

I rarely make common cause with the Rhino and the Troublemaker. But in at least this instance, they're right to demand an accounting from Greensboro City Manager Mitchell Johnson and police Chief Tim Bellamy.

Ben Holder has been showing up at council meetings and making a scene about this lately. And Rhino Editor John Hammer picks up the story this week, writing:

"On Tuesday, Holder brought up the "police surveillance" matter the council should have dealt with a long, long time ago, but instead the council handled the issue as it has so many and just hoped it would go away. The council does have a problem because in dealing with this issue, councilmembers will have to confront the fact that City Manager Mitchell Johnson and police Chief Tim Bellamy mislead the council. The question the council will have to answer is, was the misrepresentation deliberate or not."

What's surreal is that the facts of this case have been in the public realm for sometime. Mitchell Johnson admitted in a press conference in November 2006 that the reason black community leaders were recorded by a nonsworn police employee was because a fellow task force member was, as he put it, "doing something inappropriate."

The background of the story has been amply reported in YES! Weekly, the Troublemaker blog and the Rhino. The trouble is, not everyone in the community faithfully reads, YES! Weekly, the Troublemaker or the Rhino. Several prominent citizens remain persuaded that the Greensboro Police Department under former Chief David Wray deliberately targeted black leaders for surveillance, based on a press release put out by the department in April 2006. I know because I had to explain what really happened to the Rev. Nelson Johnson, one of the black leaders who was recorded, last spring. If all you know is that black leaders were recorded, but you don't know that the reason for the recording was to gather information about a task force member who led a wired nonsworn police employee around to the offices of various black leaders, it looks sinister.

When I interviewed Chief Bellamy in December 2006, he said the recordings could not be released to those who were recorded because they were part of an administrative investigation. It sounded ridiculous to me then — eight months after the disclosure that the recordings had been made. So it's aggravating to read today in the Rhino that Bellamy wrote in a Jan. 29 memo to City Attorney Terry Wood that "this matter is included in an administrative investigation which is being completed at this time," and that "this information is protected."

It's time for all involved — Mitchell Johnson, Tim Bellamy — to come clean, and Mayor Yvonne Johnson should insist on a full airing of the facts.

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.