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Former city police Chief David Wray said he changed the findings of an Internal Affairs report this fall because he believed it incorrectly cleared a high-profile black officer of wrongdoing.

Wray , calling his first news conference since resigning 11 days ago, also said Wednesday that he has given officials a point-by-point rebuttal to a critical independent report commissioned by the city that led to his departure.

In his 20-minute statement, Wray said city attorney Linda Miles agreed with him last fall that an Internal Affairs memo clearing Lt. James Hinson "did not square with the preponderance of known facts." He offered no specifics on why the Internal Affairs findings were wrong.

"Ms. Miles agreed with me that she could not follow the logic of the investigator's recommendations either," Wray said, reading from a statement. "I made specific recommendations for discipline of Lieutenant Hinson, which I then believed, and still believe, to be well-founded."

Calls to Miles' home and city cell phone numbers were not returned.

Hinson returned to the force last week after a seven-month paid suspension started by Wray in June.

Wray read his statement at his lawyer's downtown Greensboro office but declined to field questions, telling reporters he has pneumonia. He spoke out just days after the FBI started its own review of the department.

"I look forward to an impartial FBI investigation which will get to the truth and clear the good name of all of us who have been unjustly accused," Wray said.

Wray said Hinson's name first surfaced in an "ongoing" federal investigation from 2002 that Wray was briefed upon after becoming chief in 2003.

He said it was only last summer that he learned of an Internal Affairs investigation that cleared Hinson in a one-page memo in fall 2004. But Wray said the investigation had not been thorough enough, and that he twice ordered Internal Affairs to reinvestigate.

But another arm of the city police force was conducting its own investigation into Hinson.

The Special Intelligence section, nicknamed the "secret police" by the rank and file, investigated Hinson's connection to a second federal investigation in early 2005.

Hinson has never been charged with a crime. He is the lieutenant who now oversees patrol officers in east Greensboro.

When "issues" about the lieutenant continued to surface throughout the spring, Wray said his top deputy assigned a contracted private detective to gather intelligence independent of Internal Affairs.

It was not immediately clear whether Internal Affairs, which had cleared Hinson, knew that Special Intelligence was doing its own surveillance.

Wray said a tracking device was placed on Hinson's police cruiser by Special Intelligence, which reported directly to Deputy Chief Randall Brady, who retired with almost no notice the week after Thanksgiving.

It was Hinson's discovery of that tracking device in June that initially made the story public and led to allegations of racial discrimination by Wray's administration.

Allegations of internal racial profiling were fostered by rumors of a "black book." And it is this three-ring binder that city leaders said got Wray into trouble.

City Manager Mitchell Johnson said one day after Wray's resignation that he lost trust in the chief when, among other things, the city-ordered consultants' report found that a book of 114 black men had been kept by an officer in Special Intelligence.

Johnson said Wray claimed last summer to have no direct knowledge of the book, though the chief said it was possible one could exist.

Consultants hired by the city would later learn that Wray asked Brady to "secure" the book. Brady hid it in the trunk of his city-owned police vehicle.

Wray denied Wednesday that there was anything improper about the book, which included photos of 19 city police officers. He said it was compiled after a woman complained she had been groped by an unidentified black police officer .

Wray said he ordered it "secured" because the woman had been unable to identify anyone in the book, and it therefore could support the 19 officers' innocence were any of them later accused by the same confidential informant.

Johnson is reviewing the second of two reports detailing irregularities in the police department.

He released a brief statement Wednesday evening saying that Wray offered nothing new.

"Mr. Wray's afternoon press statement essentially supports the summary of events as given in my January 10, 2006, press conference," Johnson said, "that Wray had critical information, which he did not share with the city manager, the City Council or the community regarding the Hinson investigation and the existence of the purported ‘black book.' "

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

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