Officer adds claim against police chief
Filing ties promotion snub to vendetta
A Little Rock police lieutenant suing Police Chief Keith Humphrey with former Assistant Chief Alice Fulk claims she was deliberately passed over for a promotion this year as part of Humphrey’s ongoing vendetta against her and Fulk.
Lt. Cristina Plummer’s allegations were added to the 16-month-old retaliation and discrimination lawsuit this week, the first movement in the case since Fulk and Plummer’s first lawyer, Chris Burks, dropped out of the litigation in December.
Burks withdrew rather than face sanctions for violating a court order in a second related suit by showing newspaper reporters materials that both sides had agreed would remain secret. Fulk and Plummer are now represented by attorney Timothy Steadman of the Holleman and Associates firm in Little Rock.
Fulk, now the chief of the state Capitol Police, and Plummer assert that Humphrey has been out to get them since Fulk publicly
contradicted Humphrey about how an internal affairs investigation into a fatal police shooting was handled. They further contend that the chief’s animosity against them increased after they reported to the city attorney’s office, city Human Resources and to the attorney general possible wrongdoing by Humphrey.
Fulk claims that Humphrey made her job so difficult that she was forced to quit, and both women say the chief has shown a pattern of gender discrimination that includes, among other things, him unfairly denying them training opportunities in favor of male officers.
Tuesday, Plummer bolstered her gender-discrimination claims against Humphrey with accusations that he deliberately bypassed her for promotion to major in favor of promoting two lesser-qualified men.
According to the recent filing, the civil-service exam for promotion was conducted in February and the department had openings for four majors.
Plummer ranked fourth of 11 candidates, and while the city’s practice “has been to promote straight down the list in order which the candidates were ranked,” Humphrey skipped over Plummer and another contender — both of whom have been witnesses in sexual-harassment complaints against Humphrey, the suit states.
The department does not have any women majors, and “Chief Humphrey chose to promote two males who are objectively less qualified for the position than Lieutenant Plummer, a female,” the suit states.
Since the lawsuit was filed, Humphrey has launched his own federal litigation against Fulk, Plummer and his other detractors, mostly members and leadership of the Little Rock Fraternal Order of Police, accusing them of acting in “open, illegitimate revolt” against efforts to impose “societal reform” on the force that was demanded by voters with the election of Mayor Frank Scott Jr. in 2019.