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RALEIGH — The private investigators at Risk Management Associates don't have a lot in common with gumshoes of detective-novel lore.

They're faster to use a computer than a firearm, quite comfortable working alongside police officers rather than skirting the edge of legality, Mike Hammer-style.

But in helping the city of Greensboro investigate then-police Chief David Wray two years ago, the Raleigh-based agency stepped into a donnybrook worthy of Sam Spade.

Supporters of the ex-chief say RMA was heavy-handed, insensitive and careless in investigating claims of mismanagement involving Wray, despite the recent criminal indictment of two Greensboro police officers in a related state-government investigation that would seem to bolster RMA's credibility.

"It appears to me, just personally, that RMA's report was generated with an agenda," says Kenneth Keller, a Greensboro lawyer who represents Wray.

So, what gives a bunch of private eyes from Wake County the gall to swoop into town and raise such a fuss that Wray and two assistants resigned before a full-scale administrative review could even begin?

Michael Longmire, president of Raleigh-based RMA, says the answer is pretty simple: Agents with decades of prior law-enforcement experience, a questioning approach that accepts nothing at face value, and a determination to get at the truth regardless of consequences.

"What we bring to the table, in every case, is a commitment to provide an absolutely unbiased approach," says Longmire, who retired from the Raleigh Police Department after leading its detectives unit, where he supervised a staff of 135.

City Manager Mitchell Johnson says Greensboro got its money's worth from the $154,800 it paid RMA for an investigation that proved allegations that he initially believed were unfounded.

"I wanted to make sure we got people with strong police backgrounds," Johnson says of why he picked RMA for the job.

That's been the firm's stock in trade for nearly 20 years, relying on a staff of 16 who have prior law enforcement experience that includes generic criminal investigation, drug and vice enforcement, bomb detection and disposal, undercover probes, workplace violence, hostage negotiation and computer forensics.

Founded in 1988, the company has a client list that would be the envy of most any similar company: Progress Energy, First Citizens Bank, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, UNC Healthcare, Pepsi Bottling Ventures and Pfizer, among others.

Clients say they admire the company's ability to deliver a clear-eyed analysis when the heat is on, in such tense situations as a court case where big bucks ride on the nuances of a few important facts.

Winston-Salem lawyer Kurt Stakeman calls on RMA "when I need a really expert, comprehensive investigation done ethically."

"I don't hire them to tell me what I want to hear," says Stakeman of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice. "In litigation, you have to play the hand you're dealt. If you have a bad hand, you want to know that."

RMA's government clients have included the N.C. Department of Transportation, the State Bureau of Investigation and the State Board of Education. The company offers corporate and government clients an array of services including security planning, training and monitoring, protective devices, and criminal or civil investigations.

RMA consultants have helped design security for the Governor's Mansion, the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics, the N.C. Museum of Art and numerous other buildings across the state and beyond.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has called on RMA for security work at six sites, including NASA headquarters in Washington and Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The company has a security clearance of "secret" from the Department of Defense, meaning that its agents can work on projects involving sensitive information.

For the state DOT, the company investigated claims of workplace harassment and racial discrimination. In Carterett County, RMA looked into sexual harassment charges against an ABC Board official.

Currently, in Jackson, Mich., RMA is investigating allegations against the recently departed police chief, a case somewhat similar to Greensboro's. The company was summoned after some Jackson officers raised questions about the then-chief's fairness and effectiveness.

Jackson City Manager William Ross doesn't know where RMA's inquiry will lead, but he's struck by its professionalism and attention to detail.

"I don't believe these are folks that anybody is going to pull the wool over their eyes or that they won't be asking the right questions," Ross says.

Asking the right questions is what City Manager Mitchell Johnson had in mind when he called RMA into the Wray controversy two years ago.

Two of Greensboro's assistant city attorneys had done the initial interviews with police officers upset with Wray's leadership and, among other things, the activities of the department's special-intelligence unit.

But the attorneys weren't law-enforcement officers. Johnson wanted a group with that perspective to look over their shoulders and make sure they didn't jump to unwarranted conclusions.

"It wasn't so much that they would be doing the work, but provide oversight and counseling," Johnson says of RMA.

Longmire and other RMA agents went into the Greensboro case with a favorable impression of the city department's "history and tradition of excellence," Longmire said.

But they were stunned by the irregularities they found, he said. "We kept looking at each other. 'What is this? Is what we are seeing real?' We challenged ourselves to make sure we had considered every possibility."

They were troubled particularly by the special-intelligence unit that was supposed to focus on gathering information about such threats as gangs and extremist groups.

Under Wray, it emerged, the unit veered off course into such areas as trying to discredit one of the then-chief's pesky neighbors and investigating other officers, a role that departmental regulations assign to the internal affairs office.

"I hesitate to say this, but I was extremely disappointed to see what it was being used for," says RMA investigator Wayne Truax, a 26-year veteran of the State Bureau of Investigation who worked closely with Greensboro's special intelligence unit years ago when it was known far and wide for the quality of its information gathering.

Today, after the RMA report and a subsequent SBI investigation, two of the unit's officers face criminal charges that include obstruction of justice and felonious conspiracy.

City Manager Johnson says that in late 2005, as evidence began to mount that Wray had been deceptive, he expanded RMA's role in the inquiry.

He asked company representatives to take the lead in investigating Wray's truthfulness about such issues as the existence of a "black book" showing pictures of the department's black officers. The special intelligence unit was rumored to be using it to improperly target some of those officers.

Asked about the book, Wray told Johnson that "although he also had heard rumors about such a book, he had never seen it or talked to anyone who had," the city manager says.

RMA proved otherwise, showing that Wray did know about the book but, after telling a colleague to keep it in a safe place, said nothing about it to Johnson, his boss.

RMA unearthed other misleading statements Wray had made, ultimately submitting a report that said the overall evidence "brings into question his veracity and management of the GPD."

Some critics contend they have found flaws in the report, suggesting RMA did not clear up every inconsistency.

Wray, for example, said in a written statement after his resignation last year that the black book RMA found was not the "Black Book" rumored to exist because it didn't contain enough photos and had only been used one time.

Another critic, Greensboro private detective Art League, says the RMA report defames him by questioning what he was doing one day parked near a home that belonged to the ex-wife of a black officer then under scrutiny by special-intelligence officers.

League says he was working on a completely unrelated case and had evidence to prove it, but RMA never followed up.

Longmire counters it wasn't RMA's job to track down such minutiae. Its job was to focus on Wray.

RMA included the League incident in its report only because it showed Wray was not completely candid at a news conference in the summer of 2005, Longmire said: The then-chief asserted that the incident had been fully checked out as innocuous when, in fact, he had applied pressure to wrap up the investigation before adequately looking into League's explanation.

Wray's attorney Keller says RMA investigators showed bias against Wray in what he characterizes as a brusque, surprise interview of the chief in late 2005.

"It was kind of sprung on him, 'Oh, by the by, there are some folks that want to chat with you,'" Keller says. "Then it turned out to be fairly accusatory in tone and it lasted four hours."

Longmire says he and his company have nothing to apologize for; they treated Wray no differently than anybody else they interviewed.

They gave no advance notice of the interview because they wanted to question Wray and several others in quick succession so the interviewees couldn't compare notes and their answers would be unrehearsed, the RMA executive says.

That is a common investigative tactic, Longmire says.

The report, he says, is the careful handiwork of trained investigators who used assertive, but not excessive police tactics to ferret out the truth.

The way he sees it, if Greensboro residents don't understand that they had some serious problems in their police department that now have been set right, that's their problem, not RMA's.

"No matter what we say, there are some people who are going to support David Wray," he says. "And these people are not going to give Mitchell Johnson the benefit of the doubt, no matter what."

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or twireback@news-record.com