Four employees sue police chief, cite files access
Legal action third in weeks to say Humphrey retaliated
Four employees of the Little Rock Police Department filed a lawsuit Tuesday accusing Police Chief Keith Humphrey and the city of denying access to their personnel files in violation of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, the third recent lawsuit pitting lower-ranking members of the department against their chief.
The plaintiffs in the suit are three officers — Capt. Russell King, Sgt. Christopher McCauley and Lt. Rusty Rothwell — and a civilian employee of the department, Kandice Hause, who works as a police victim services coordinator.
Two assistant chiefs within the department sued Humphrey on April 22 and 29, respectively, over allegations of retaliation by Humphrey stemming from an investigation into the fatal police shooting of 30-year-old Bradley Blackshire last year.
Plaintiffs in all three lawsuits are represented by attorneys Chris Burks and Degen Clow of the Arkansas firm wh [sic] Law.
The latest complaint filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court alleges that before denying them access to their personnel records, Humphrey retaliated against Hause and the three other individuals in her chain of command by disciplining them during an internal affairs investigation.
Humphrey issued written reprimands for the officers involved and ordered counseling for Hause, according to an exhibit included with the complaint. The plaintiffs say that Humphrey handed down his disciplinary action a day after Hause sent a signed settlement agreement to the department, ending a back-pay lawsuit that Hause filed against the city in January.
In that lawsuit, Hause’s chain of command — including King, McCauley and Rothwell — had backed her on the issue of overtime pay, an attorney for the plaintiffs told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Tuesday.
Little Rock City Attorney Tom Carpenter did not respond Tuesday to an emailed request for comment about the lawsuit. Lt. Michael Ford, a Little Rock police spokesman, said the department had no comment at this time in light of the pending litigation.
The complaint says that on April 7, “despite the recommendation of the Assistant Chief of Police that no discipline was warranted, Chief Humphrey overturned the recommendation of the chain of command and Plain
tiffs were disciplined by the Chief for supposed ‘dereliction of duty.’”
An administrative evaluation document included in the lawsuit shows that on the day in question, Humphrey wrote that he “did not concur” with Assistant Chief of Police Hayward Finks’ recommendation of no discipline for the four employees.
Attorneys representing the plaintiffs said in an interview that the internal affairs investigation was in regard to the timely submission of a report documenting the arrest of a Police Department civilian employee accused of driving while intoxicated.
The four plaintiffs requested their personnel files shortly after they were officially disciplined in April, but the Police Department and the city’s Human Resources Department did not provide the records, according to the complaint.
“In addition to not giving Plaintiffs their files to view because they do not want Plaintiffs to learn details of the retaliatory discipline against them, Defendants also do not want Plaintiffs to have their files because the Internal Affairs recommendation that is a part of Plaintiffs’ personnel files indicates that there are questions about Chief Humphrey’s honesty,” the complaint states.
The complaint also alleges that Stacey Witherell, the city’s director of the Human Resources Department, called Rothwell and “attempted to persuade him to drop his request for files and for him not to proceed with a complaint against Chief Humphrey.”
In an interview Tuesday, Burks said Humphrey “trumped up” the issue of misconduct on the part of these four employees during the DWI internal affairs investigation as “a pretext for retaliation,” which the lawsuit suggests was connected to Hause’s back-pay suit.
“Humphrey is on what we think is a campaign of illegal retaliation,” Burks said.
He said a memo from the internal DWI investigation calls into question Humphrey’s honesty because of conflicting statements made by the chief. Humphrey’s actions indicate he is retaliating “not only against the assistant chiefs, but also against rank-and-file officers who go against him,” Burks said.
Burks and Clow also represent Finks and one other assistant chief in the Police Department in separate lawsuits accusing Humphrey of wrongdoing.
In a lawsuit against Humphrey and the city, Finks and two other police officers alleged intimidation and retaliation after the February 2019 shooting death of Blackshire, which led to Humphrey firing officer Charles Starks, a decision upheld by the city’s Civil Service Commission. Starks’ firing was later overturned by a judge, and he was reinstated.
In his lawsuit filed last month, Finks says he — along with his brother and a friend, who also work for the Police Department — were subjected to retaliation after Finks told the Civil Service Commission that the internal investigation into Blackshire’s death was rushed at the urging of Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr.
One week after that lawsuit was filed, Assistant Chief Alice Fulk and an associate, Lt. Christina Plummer, sued Humphrey, alleging a similar pattern of retaliation after the Starks investigation.
When he tapped Humphrey, the former chief of police for Norman, Okla., to become the city’s next police chief in March 2019, Scott passed over three other finalists, including Finks and Fulk.
The legal fallout from the firing of Starks also has divided organizations representing Little Rock police officers.
In a statement Thursday after the two lawsuits were filed by the assistant chiefs, the Little Rock Fraternal Order of Police denounced “retaliatory actions taken by management against our members.” The union called on Scott to initiate an investigation into Humphrey to determine if the chief violated city or department policies.
In a news release the next day, the Little Rock Black Police Officers Association expressed support for Humphrey and said the chief has the final say on personnel decisions.
“We applaud Chief Humphrey in calling out poor performance and addressing it immediately,” the association said in a statement. “Not surprisingly, employees sometimes reject constructive criticism of their employment and instead embark upon a path to blame others and deny the need for improvement in their behavior or performance.”