CITY HALL CHARADE
Frustration between landlord, housing official led to confrontation
NEWPORT NEWS — A heated and racially charged confrontation between a local landlord and the city’s top building codes official took place on the first floor of Newport News City Hall late last year, according to video footage of the incident obtained by the Daily Press.
Harold Lee Roach Jr., Newport News’ director of codes compliance, and David Lee Merryman, who owns 50 rental properties in the city, nearly came to blows in the City Hall lobby on Nov. 20.
The argument — which Merryman contends stemmed from years of frustration over the city’s targeting of him — appears to have led to Roach being disciplined earlier this year.
City pay records indicate he did not get paid for about a month beginning in early January.
Merryman was recording with his cellphone when he approached Roach following an argument on the phone minutes earlier over the condemnation of one of Merryman’s homes in southeast Newport News.
As he approached, Merryman taunted Roach for using the logo of “Black Lives Matter” as the profile picture on his personal Facebook page.
The movement began after the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida, and continues to draw attention to racism and the deaths of black people at the hands of police.
Merryman contends the group and its tactics are racially divisive. Merryman is white, and Roach is black.
Heated confrontation
“What’s up,” Merryman asks Roach on the steps of City Hall after the late afternoon sky turned dark. “What you gonna do about it, Black Lives Matter?”
In the minutes that followed, Merryman, 55, of Hampton, repeatedly attempts to provoke Roach, 53, of Newport News. Meanwhile, the codes director repeatedly tries to goad the landlord into hitting him.
“All you have to do is lay your hands on me,” Roach warns Merryman. “You talked a whole lot of stuff on the phone about what you’re going to do to this n----- This n----- is here. What do you want to do to this n----- now?”
No blows were exchanged in the nearly five-minute altercation.
Roach told city officials that Merryman used a racial slur during the
phone call leading up to the City Hall confrontation, Newport News city spokeswoman Kim Lee said.
“Mr. Merryman called Mr. Roach a racial epithet when they were speaking on the phone immediately prior to that incident,” Lee wrote in an email. She declined to identify the slur.
Merryman denies that. “I never, ever called him the N-word” or any other racial epithet, he said.
The dispute began the night before, Merryman said, when a drunk driver crashed into a home he own son Chestnut Avenue, heavily damaging the front porch.
Roach ordered the home condemned, Merryman said, meaning no one could live in it until it was fixed. The landlord called Roach, and said: “You’re condemning a house that he didn’t need to be condemned,” Merryman said he told Roach during the call that quickly got heated.
“I asked him why he condemned my house,” Merryman said. “And he said, ‘Come down here to City Hall, and I will tell you why I condemned your house.’ I said, ‘I’m right around the corner, and I’ll be there in a couple minutes.’ ”
Roach was standing outside when Merry man showed up at City Hall, the video recording shows. The landlord later provided the footage of the incident to the Daily Press.
“I provoked him a little too much,” Merryman acknowledged later. “I shouldn’t have provoked him so much.”
Unfair targeting?
But the property owner contends that the city has unfairly targeted him and his homes for years. “I was tired of his antics,” Merryman said, asserting that codes and compliance director “was out of control” during the altercation.
Roach, who began working for the city in 2004, did not return several phone calls for this story. Lee told the Daily Press that Roach would not discuss the case.
Merryman said he’s had issues with the codes compliance office going back several years, adding that he likely leads the city’s landlords in housing code violations.
“Let’s put it this way — they make me the top of the list,” the property owner said. “The city has made Dave Merryman a top priority for code violations.”
He said that southeast Newport News, where all his homes in the city are located, has been unfairly targeted since the city began a program to more stringently enforce codes on rental homes there a few years ago.
If he tries to raise the issue with Roach, Merryman said, “he scoots me out of his office and tries to get rid of me.” The landlord said he asked for inspection reports from Denbigh and Midtown, but Roach rebuffed him.
“He said, ‘Mr. Merryman, our efforts are starting in the Southeast Community,’ ” Merryman said, adding that Roach told him to “worry about your own properties .”
Lee, the city spokeswoman, said the enhanced inspection of rental homes began in southeast and downtown “because that is where we have had the most complaints in terms of rental properties not being appropriately maintained.”
The city has explored expanding the program to other parts of the city, she said, but isn’t seeing enough violations elsewhere to justify doing so.
“Mr. Merryman is not being targeted,” Lee said.
The day after the City Hall argument, Merryman filed a complaint with City Manager Cindy Rohlf’s office, providing the video footage of the incident. The landlord said Rohlf turned the matter over to Assistant City Manager Ralph “Bo” Clayton.
A few weeks later, Roach’s paycheck appears to have been docked for about a month, according to city paycheck records provided to the Daily Press under the Virginia
Freedom of Information Act.
Roach got only half his normal pay in a two-week stretch in early January — and did not receive a paycheck at all for a two-week pay period that ended Jan. 24, the records show. He got a small partial paycheck for a two-week stretch that ended Feb. 7.
With Roach’s city salary listed at just over $128,000 a year, a monthlong suspension translates into a hit of more than $10,000 to his gross pay. Lee declined to speak further about the case, saying it was a personnel matter exempt from mandatory disclosure under open records law.
Back and forth
The following is a condensed version of the back and forth between Roach and Merryman outside City Hall in November — with some of the dialogue omitted but key portions included.
“What’s up,” Merryman says. “What you gonna do about it, Black Lives Matter?”
“Come on in here,” Roach says, having Merryman follow “so we can get this on camera” in the City Hall lobby. “Come on, I’m gonna give you one for the team.”
“What do you mean for the team?” Merryman says, following Roach inside. “I’ve got a camera right here, brother.”
Once in the lobby, Roach tries to goad Merryman into striking him. “Is there anything that you would like to do to me?” Roach says. “You talkedalotofs---whenyouwereon the phone.”
“I sure did,” Merryman replies. “I feel threatened right now. Back up.”
“Back up for what?" Roach persists, brushing off a female city codes official who tries to get between the men. "Is there anything you want to do to me right now?”
“I would love to do something to you,” Merryman says.
“Then do it!” Roach responds. “Then do it! … You got all that mouth on the phone.”
“You’re damn right I do,” Merryman replies.
“So what are we going to do?” Roach says.
“What do you mean?” Merryman says. “You need to get your s--together.” “Do you have something you’re supposed to be doing to me?” Roach says. “Otherwise you’re wasting my time. Yeah, if you got something you want to do, let’s get it done.” “I ain’t got nothing to do, p---y,” Merryman says. “You heard me. Little p---y.” “I want you to touch me so I can whoop your a-- in front of this camera,” Roach says. “You understand me?” “I feel threatened,” Merryman says. “You’re a director. You’re a city official and you’re acting like this? … Okay. Harold Roach.” “You get that s--- right,” Roach says. “You’re gonna get your a-whooped by city official. You run and tell that.” “Black Lives Matter,” Merryman says. “Black Lives Matter.” “You’re barking up the wrong one,” Roach says. “You’re gonna catch one.” “Oh, is that right?” Merryman says. “Bring it. If you feel froggy, jump, dude. If you feel froggy, jump.” “David, all you have to do is lay your hands on me,” Roach says, taking off his jacket. “I’m not laying my hands on nobody,” Merryman says, as the other employee again attempts to get between the men. “You asked me to come down here.” “You talked a whole lot of stuff on the phone about what you’re going to do to this n-----,” Roach says. “This n----- is here. What do you want to do to this n----- now?” “You’re out of control,” Merryman says.
“That’s what I thought it was,” Roach says. “Get back in your truck, go home, all right, before you get hurt.”
“Before I get hurt?” Merryman says. “So that’s a threat. So what are you going to do to me?”
“Here is the threat,” Roach says. “If you put your hands on me … I’m going to whoop your a--. You understand that?”
“Wow ,” Merry man says .“Harold Roach, director of codes compliance ... You’re the one who’s got Black Lives Matter all over your Facebook page. You’re the racist.”
As Roach leaves the lobby with two boys, Merryman says: “That’s a great example to be setting to your kids. Black Lives Matter. That’s a great example. All lives matter.”
Roach replies that if Merryman puts his hands on him, “I’m gonna show them a lesson.”
‘Multiple complaints’
Merryman contended later that Roach’s support of Black Lives Matter on his Facebook page doesn’t fit with someone leading a codes office impacting all races. “You’re a city official, and you’re supposed to be serving all the citizens,” Merryman told the Daily Press.
Several weeks after the City Hall confrontation, the city took steps to limit Merryman’s access to the codes and compliance office.
Clayton, the assistant city manager, wrote to Merryman on Jan. 17, barring him from calling or showing up at the codes office, and telling him he could communicate with the office only by email or regular mail.
“I have received multiple complaints from City employees … regarding your behavior when they attempt to inspect or otherwise respond to your request for services to your properties,” Clayton wrote.
Clayton told Merry man thatifhe communicates with employees “in an unprofessional or derogatory manner,” then “I am directing City staff that they have no obligation to communicate with you.”
Text message case
A court case over a text message Merryman sent in February to an employee of a different city department is now pending.
That case has its backdrop in August 2018, when John Lash, an employee of the Department of Public Works, charged Merryman with “illegal dumping” after the landlord’s workers left shrub clippings outside one of his commercial buildings at Jefferson Avenue and 45th Street.
Merryman said last week that Lash could have simply told the workers they couldn’t leave the clipped shrubs in front of a commercial property — which the landlord said is a different rule than for residential homes.
“It all could have been avoided in a simple 20-second conversation,” Merryman said. “All he had to do was to pull up and say, ‘Hey guys, you can’t do this, you’re not allowed to put clippings in front of a commercial building.’ ”
Instead, he said, Lash secretly recorded the workers leaving the shrubs, then went to the magistrate’s office and swore out a warrant charging Merryman with illegal dumping.
A General District Court judge dismissed the case Feb. 26, saying there was insufficient evidence against the landlord because he wasn’t with his workers that 2018 day. That led Merryman to fire off a text message to Lash an hour later: “Lol I won you piece of crap … you ought to be fired you dumb a--,” he wrote.
The next day, Feb. 27, Lash swore out a warrant charging the property owner with “misusing a telephone line” with that text message.
State law says that anyone who uses obscene, profane or indecent language over a phone line — or threatens someone with the intent to coerce or harass them — is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.
Merryman was served with that warrant while in City Hall on other business March 9, with the case now scheduled to be heard June17.
Resolution
A day after the heated City Hall confrontation with Roach in November, Merryman said, another city official in the codes office “un condemned” the Chestnut Avenue home.
“We’re literally out there today fixing it up,” he said March12.
But maybe there’s hope, he said: He passed a city codes inspection on a different residential property a few weeks earlier “with flying colors.”