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GREENSBORO - Two former city police officers and the former chief, David Wray, are asking the city to cover their defense in a fellow officer's civil lawsuit, attorneys confirmed Wednesday.

"We've asked before and they denied it," said Seth Cohen, who represents former officer Scott Sanders and ex-Deputy Chief Randall Brady. He sent a letter to city officials asking that his clients' defense be covered by the city.

The lawsuit, filed in May by Officer Julius Fulmore, also names as defendants the city, the Greensboro Police Department, Officer Brian Bissett, Lt. Craig McMinn, former Assistant Chief Craig Hartley, private investigator Art League and Randy Gerringer, a former police officer who worked for League.

Greensboro has a decades-old resolution stating that city employees who are sued are entitled to representation by the city if the employees were acting within the scope of their job and did not act maliciously, Cohen said.

He said the city has already agreed to pay for Hartley, Bissett, McMinn and Gerringer.

Attorneys for the city would not discuss specifics of the lawsuit or verify if the defense for any employees or former employees was being covered by the city.

Deputy City Attorney Jo Peterson-Buie confirmed that the resolution Cohen refers to exists, but she said that because of city policy she could not comment on pending litigation.

The News & Record was unable to obtain copies of the letters Wednesday. Cohen and attorney Kenneth Keller, who represents Wray, declined to release copies. They said the letters are public documents and the city should release them.

Peterson-Buie said late Wednesday afternoon that she had to redact some information from the letters before sending them. She expected to have them ready today.

Such cases are unusual, but not unheard of, said Steven Friedman, a professor at Elon Law School.

Generally speaking, whether city employees qualify to be defended by a city's attorney depends on whether they were acting as agents of the city at the time, he said.

It's not a matter of "picking or choosing who they like or based on who they believe is right or wrong," he said.

Fulmore's lawsuit accuses Sanders and Bissett of being the instigators of a conspiracy that was run with the knowledge of high-ranking police officials, including Wray, and that invaded his privacy.

Fulmore claims the disparate treatment was the result of professional jealousy and started in the mid-1990s when he was working on a federal drug task force.

Contact Jennifer Fernandez at 373-7064 or jennifer.fernandez@news-record.com