news-record.com

As if it needed it, the long-roiling controversy surrounding the Greensboro Police Department has received a fresh gust of momentum: Former Chief David Wray is suing the city and City Manager Mitchell Johnson.

Wray's lawsuit alleges that Johnson stripped his authority, locked him out of his office and ultimately forced him to resign in 2006 because he is white and because he had been pressured to do so by a powerful black political action committee, the George Simkins Memorial PAC.

"The City and Mitchell Johnson deliberately made working conditions for Wray intolerable," the suit says.

Johnson flatly denies this, and Simkins PAC leaders say they made no such request for the city manager to fire Wray.

On at least one point, however, everyone agrees: Even though Wray has taken a new job in Tennessee, this issue refuses to die.

Maybe this explains how the county manager, the deputy county manager and the county attorney all could be removed recently in the span of days for specious reasons with relatively little public uproar. Meanwhile, the Johnson-Wray affair has divided the community for years.

The tangle of EEOC complaints and other lawsuits has been hard to unravel and continues to affect some citizens' views of both the police department and city government.

Who's the victim? "Me," say both sides. Black officers have filed EEOC complaints and lawsuits alleging discrimination in the workplace. Now Wray's lawsuit contends that if anyone was discriminated against, it was he.

Meanwhile, there have been investigations by the FBI, EEOC, SBI and a private agency, Risk Management Associates.

The Justice Department found no grounds to prosecute Wray or any of his officers for civil rights violations. But the EEOC ruled it found evidence of discrimination against some black officers during Wray's tenure.

The SBI investigation resulted in the indictment of two low-level officers for illegally hacking a black officer's computer on Wray's watch. But a civil lawsuit filed by that officer subsequently was dismissed in October by a Superior Court judge.

The RMA investigation cited a number of irregularities under Wray, including misuse of the department's Special Intelligence unit to investigate fellow officers. But there remain unresolved questions about the legality and appropriateness of the actions of one black officer in particular, James Hinson.

How much more is there to know and would it be equally as tangled and confusing?

Then again, if this case and others go to trial, they could shed important light through sworn testimony and cross-examination. There could be value in moving the debate from the court of public opinion into a court of law.

And, finally ... mercifully ... moving on.