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GREENSBORO - The wife of a high-profile Greensboro police lieutenant who last week found a tracking device hidden under his cruiser has alleged that her home was under police surveillance as well.

Beverly Hinson, though separated since last year from Lt. James Hinson, filed an internal affairs report Monday. She suspects the same retired police detective caught tailing her husband was behind the wheel of a "suspicious vehicle" outside her home May 7.

Her inquiry, filed this week, followed revelations of a covert police unit that the ranks have nicknamed "the secret police."

In that document, Beverly Hinson said she called police the evening of May 7 when a man appeared to be watching her home.

Police Chief David Wray denies that the unit was secret and says the department is not targeting black officers. Lt. Hinson is president of a local black officers' organization.

After reading a News & Record account last week of the so-called "secret police" unit watching her husband, Beverly Hinson was struck by the similarity of the two incidents.

"I thought, ‘That's just like what happened to me,' " she said during a Tuesday afternoon interview. "My thing is, why are (police) watching me? We live in two separate houses."

Police internal affairs Capt. Matt Lojko confirmed Hinson filed on Monday what he called a "citizen inquiry." He said an inquiry differs from a complaint in that no wrongdoing is alleged.

Lojko said his division will share with Beverly Hinson its findings, but he did not know when that would happen.

"We talk with the person making the inquiry; if there are any witnesses, we talk with them," he said Tuesday of the investigation. "If there was any physical evidence we would look at that and make a determination."

Beverly Hinson moved to a new block of condos across from Adams Farm this spring. Because she was the only resident in the new block at the time, she quickly noticed a van parked four spaces from her door the evening of May 7.

According to Hinson, a patrolman who responded to the call said the van driver was a retired detective who had been hired back by the department and was watching the entrance to Adams Farm at Hilltop.

Hinson said Tuesday the explanation is hard to believe, particularly since she cannot see the Adams Farm entrance from her parking lot on Hilltop Road.

"I got the feeling it was lie," Hinson said, "even in talking to the officer I talked to in internal affairs."

She had married Lt. James Hinson eight years ago, as his career quickly ascended and brought the officer frequent awards and media attention for community projects he spearheaded, including the anti-crime "Gathering" and Project Help, a new program to fight prostitution.

But in the past two years, Beverly Hinson said, her husband faced increasing pressure and scrutiny under the administration of Wray. She recalled, for example, driving to the movies last year with her husband, who believed they were being followed.

Hinson, who works for a financial institution, said she watched her husband "lose his love of life" under the stress, and finally refused to discuss work at all.

Though the two are now separated, she said, she still felt an obligation to her husband.

"It destroyed our family," she said of the atmosphere of suspicion and distrust in the department, which Hinson joined in 1991. "It's awful and it's got to stop."

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lahearn@news-record.com

Contact Eric J.S. Townsend at 373-7008 or etownsend@news-record.com