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GREENSBORO - The question summed up, in a nutshell, criticism of how the city runs its police force.

"Mr. Manager," an audience member asked City Manager Mitchell Johnson at a forum on the search for a new chief, "how can (former Chief) David Wray have been run out of this department and (Lt. James) Hinson still work here?"

An increasingly charged debate over whether Wray was railroaded from office or - as some of his former commanders say - self-destructed began with a stunning reversal last January.

The chief of the city's 526-officer force resigned when faced with questions about his department's investigation of suspected corruption among black officers. Soon after Wray quit, the lieutenant at the center of the investigation was reinstated - and not to a desk job. Hinson today is a shift commander and was in charge , for instance, at last month's barricade standoff after a shooting near the airport.

A year after Wray turned in his badge, the fallout continues. On one side are Wray's supporters, who echo the theme of some of what he told the weekly Rhinoceros Times. In this view, Wray - the city's first white chief since 1987 - fell victim to racial politics and reverse discrimination.

On the opposing side, City Hall leaders say what brought down Wray and his top commanders were the unethical methods used by the Special Intelligence unit that threaten to mire the city in lawsuits.

Caught in the crossfire is a police department that has yet to fill three top command jobs, including chief of police.

Rank-and-file officers remain silent about the strife. All cite a gag order in place because of a pending criminal investigation by the State Bureau of Investigation . Some say that for the sake of their careers, they wouldn't talk about it even if they could. Likewise, Wray has declined News & Record requests for an interview.

However, three retired commanders who worked under Wray but were not involved in the scandal differed sharply with Wray's explanation of why he stepped down under pressure while Hinson was reinstated.

In a recent interview with the News & Record, former Deputy Chief Tony Scales, former Assistant Chief Bill Stafford and retired vice-narcotics Capt. Rick Ball said Wray's demise was self-inflicted.

The veteran commanders cited missteps they blamed on Wray's inexperience in basic police investigative work, unwillingness to listen to dissent and reluctance to discipline or fire a prominent black officer he believed to be unfit.

Scales, who was interim chief before Wray took office, said he thinks Hinson was reinstated because there was no evidence against him and that Wray's decision to resign did not have the intended effect.

"I think (Wray) believed there would be such a community outcry that the manager would have to ask him to come back," Scales said. "Obviously, that did not happen."

A festering issue

Special Intelligence detectives, whose traditional role was monitoring gangs and hate groups, increasingly began covert investigations of fellow officers during the Wray era.

These undercover operations were forced to go public in June 2005. That was when Hinson, a high-profile officer in East Greensboro, found a tracking device on his cruiser and recognized a driver tailing him as a private detective the department had hired back.

Under the surface, the Hinson issue had been festering since Wray took office in July 2003. That fall, Wray had declined to comment to the News & Record when asked about rumors of a corruption investigation of a highly visible officer. Meanwhile, however, highly placed sources in Wray's administration tipped off News & Record reporters about Hinson, but the leads proved inconclusive. For example:

l Hinson had been in a car accident on duty and had a female passenger, a woman who sources in the police administration suggested was a missing person who was also a prostitute wanted on drug charges. But a patrolman's report on the wreck stated that Hinson was hit by another car on an icy road, and the passenger identified was neither a prostitute nor a missing person.

l Hinson and his ex-wife had in 1999 sold a rental home to Elton Turnbull, whom the Drug Enforcement Administration began investigating in 2000. Turnbull, later convicted in a major cocaine ring, was twice questioned by Greensboro police in jail but could offer no information about Hinson, despite the prospect of reducing his 25-year prison sentence.

During the same time the information was being passed to the newspaper, Deputy Chief Randall Brady, according to a city inquest, directed Special Intelligence to re-examine allegations against Hinson already determined unfounded by Internal Affairs.

The most serious allegation: that Hinson was criminally involved with Turnbull, who had Hinson's phone number in a safe, along with a second dealer who had Hinson's cell number. Hinson also was investigated on suspicion that he patronized prostitutes, several of whom danced topless at his 1997 bachelor party.

Why Wray did not exercise his prerogative to fire Hinson - under the catch-all "conduct unbecoming an officer" - remains a key question.

At the time, when Hinson was suspended in June 2005 after finding the "bird dog" tracker and the story went public, the city manager says he urged Wray to take action on Hinson as soon as possible.

"As far as I was concerned," Johnson recalled recently, "Hinson was a dirty officer, and I didn't know why it hadn't been dealt with."

Johnson said Wray told him he couldn't act because it would compromise a high-level, multi jurisdictional drug case that involved an international cartel, two killings and "bodies in refrigerators."

What Johnson didn't know was that the case had been tried, Turnbull had not implicated Hinson after twice being questioned, and Internal Affairs had closed its case, determining that this and other allegations against Hinson were unfounded.

Ball, who was then vice-narcotics captain, attended an all-day meeting in June 2005 at Wray's condo to discuss the Hinson case, unaware that the allegations had already been investigated twice. The next day, Wray met with Sandra Hairston, the Turnbull prosecutor.

"We were specifically told that James Hinson was not a target," Ball recalled of the meeting with the U.S. attorney's staff, "and that what we would do administratively was a police department matter."

‘Bending over backward '

What, then, prevented Wray from firing Hinson?

This is where the retired commanders think race played a part in the story, but in an unexpected way.

As the city's first white chief in 16 years, the former commanders noted, Wray actively courted the black community. To Scales, who is black, Wray appeared "highly sensitive" to possible charges of racial discrimination and "bent over backward " to avoid them.

Wray initiated new efforts to attract minority recruits, sponsored a screening of the race-relations movie "Crash" for city staff and personally defused a potential community relations debacle over the arrest of an elderly Muslim customer at Wal-Mart.

Against this backdrop, taking action against Hinson, well-known in the black community for sponsoring youth and crime-watch events, carried a risk.

If the action were administrative, Wray wouldn't be able to explain it publicly because of personnel rules. If, on the other hand, there were criminal charges involved, it would have been, in Ball's estimation, a "slam dunk" reason to fire Hinson, with little likelihood of a backlash.

"It's my opinion he felt, ‘Sooner or later, I'm going to have everything I need on this,' " Ball said.

Wray's friend, High Point police Chief Jim Fealy, sympathizes with the predicament of a chief dealing with an emotionally charged personnel matter he couldn't publicly discuss at the time.

"Oftentimes people will wait to see if the case gets better," Fealy said . "They dig a little deeper to make sure they have all the data and information. Sometimes we make mistakes by not acting quickly enough."

But instead of the Hinson case getting stronger, a city inquest concluded, Special Intelligence detectives and private investigators rehired by the department were left chasing old allegations, following Hinson at work and attempting to document that he was working off-duty security when he was on the city clock.

Even that last double-dipping charge may have been difficult to sustain: As an exempt supervisory employee, Hinson's hours were flexible and did not always adhere to a schedule.

The commanders agree that the allegations against Hinson "absolutely" needed to be investigated - either to charge him or to clear him.

Where they think the Hinson case ran amok - and brought about the very backlash Wray sought to avoid from the local NAACP and some black clergy - was when the accusations weren't substantiated but the investigation kept going.

"Once you've done the investigation, you've done it," Scales said. "Why did this continue on if these things had been brought to a conclusion?"

For Ball, the vice-narcotics captain, this violated the basic tenet of police work.

"The first thing you're taught as a young cop is, never take one side of a story, on a domestic call or anything else," Ball said. "Never make your decision ahead of time and then try to back it up."

As for the city manager, who had pushed for Wray's appointment as chief, he said he had made his decision about Hinson when Wray briefed him in June 2005. Johnson continued to back Wray's handling of the case through that fall, convinced the investigation involved killings and drug cartels.

But Johnson was meanwhile troubled by reports he began to receive about the department from veteran officers and highly placed sources with the SBI and d istrict a ttorney.

What would ultimately cost Wray the support of his boss, however, was the discovery of a "black book" photo lineup of African American officers.

Wray had previously assured city leaders that such a book was an "urban myth," but his deputy chief told investigators that Wray meanwhile ordered him to "secure" the book, which he did, in the trunk of his cruiser.

Wray later said the photo array of officers had been compiled in response to a specific complaint that an officer had groped a woman during a body search.

Such a lineup would not be unusual, Wray's retired commanders agreed. But they said the way the photo album was allegedly used - showing it to random criminal defendants and asking for information about anyone in the book - was improper.

"Once (Wray) found that book, he had an opportunity to say, ‘Look what I found,' " said Scales, who retired as deputy chief in 2004. "How do you not do that and still keep the trust of your supervisors?"

A tarnished legacy

Wray's unceremonious exit from the department - turning in his gun, badge and city-issued Tahoe after being locked out of his office - was a stark contrast to the desired legacy he spoke of to his peers.

Overseeing one of the fastest expansions in the department's history with 40 new officer slots created in his first year, centralizing crime-fighting efforts and cutting the murder rate, Wray envisioned an agency that would be a regional leader.

Over an occasional lunch at Steak Street with High Point's Fealy and Chief Pat Norris of Winston-Salem, Wray spoke of establishing a regional crime lab and a local leadership academy for police - both ideas that are now under way.

From early in his tenure, Wray set about remaking the image of the department, ordering that cruisers bear a new paint scheme, that officers wear hats and that for every four years of service, another stripe be placed on an officer's sleeve.

Despite these efforts to bolster the agency's prestige, Johnson now fears the fractious tone of the debate, and the weekly drumbeat of negative publicity, might scare off applicants for the chief's job.

At the very least, High Point's Fealy thinks the Wray experience might give prospective applicants pause.

"There's an unwritten rule in chiefing: The most important thing for a chief, and to the department, is his relationship with his boss," Fealy said. "That's going to determine the tenor of your tenure."

But Stafford, the former assistant chief who was a finalist when Wray was appointed, sees the reverse: a rare opportunity for Greensboro's next chief of police.

"Following a situation where everything was great," he said, "you stand a lot better chance of messing up than when you go into a place with turmoil."

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

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