EdCone.com

Mike Barber and Trudy Wade propose "enhancing the Citizen Review Board operated by the Human Relations Commission to give it subpoena powers and more access to personnel records."

Hmm, that sounds familiar. Oh, yeah: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission wanted much the same thing, as have others in the past.

So: the Wray fray has united the Council faction that believes the GPD is biased in favor of black people with the activists who believe the GPD is biased against black people.

Mary Rakestraw says she's considering the review board concept. Maybe she should call Nelson Johnson for advice. I'd like to listen in on that conversation.

Press release on the Barber and Wade show after the jump.

If I were an assignment editor at the local daily, I'd get a reporter to write an article with the working title, "The 'Black Book,' Then and Now," summing up early news coverage of the GPD case and subsequent revelations about the photo array. I'd tell the writer to be fearless and clear-eyed, with respect to the News & Record, the City, former chief David Wray, and anyone else involved.

And if I were the king of the forest, each rabbit would show respect to me, the chipmunks genuflect to me. That seems equally likely to happen.

The primary purpose of the Wray lawsuit seems to be getting the former police chief's legal bills covered. Fair enough.

But what's up with the race-based-discrimination claim?

We're supposed to believe that Mitch Johnson, a white man, "discriminated against David Wray based on his race (Caucasian)"?

Wray got squeezed out in a situation rotten with racial politics, and he got smeared in the process.

But what evidence is there that Wray was discriminated against for being white?

He resigned, and in any case he served at the manager's pleasure, so I guess there's no case for wrongful termination. Maybe this is the only avenue left in that direction. Maybe it's an ironic commentary on the use and misuse of discrimination claims.

I kind of like the last one. Otherwise, it just seems bizarre.

Former police chief files suit: David Wray v City of Greensboro and Mitchell Johnson, in his Official and Individual Capacities. Via Ben Holder, who broke the news. News & Record coverage is pending, one supposes.

Wray claims, among other things, that Johnson discriminated against him "based on his race (Caucasian)."

RSJ: "It is time for local media to correct the record; to report with just as much attention as they originally did when painting the 'black book' as an indictment of Wray that Greensboro City Manager Mitch Johnson has now acknowledged, in a sworn affidavit, that the 'black book' was a legitimate investigative tool and that there is no indication that it was used for any other illicit purpose."

It's not news that the photo array was a legit investigative tool, the question was whether the tool was abused in any way. That question seems to have been answered.

David Wray gets a new job as TSA director for eastern Tennessee.

One reason that it was important to clear his name of allegations of racism was to allow him to find work again. I'm happy to see things working out well for him.

GPD press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 26, 2008

CONTACT: Chief T. R. Bellamy
Chief of Police

RESPONSE TO ALLEGATIONS

Today, public allegations were made that during the administration of Former Chief of Police David Wray, a member of the Greensboro Police Department ordered the destruction of police records related to the November 3, 1979 Nazi-Klan murders. The police department has reviewed the anonymous allegations and is discussing them with the Guilford County District Attorney to determine if the nature of the allegations would constitute a criminal violation if substantiated.

In September of 2007, allegations were brought to the attention of Chief of Police Tim Bellamy regarding the possible destruction of documents related to the 1979 incident. Chief Bellamy met with Rev. Nelson Johnson and requested more information or evidence that this had occurred, but no evidence was produced or persons identified that were willing to talk to Chief Bellamy or investigators.

Between August 2005 and February 2006 the Greensboro Police Department provided numerous documents related to the November 3, 1979 incident to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as requested.They were contained in 49 bound volumes.

If Greensboro police officers destroyed files pertaining to the 1979 Klan/Nazi killings after the department received a request for those files from the TRC, it's a big deal.

You can read the statement distributed at today's press conference after the jump.

Lots of other stuff to discuss -- potential illegality of alleged destruction, contents of files, chain of command in ordering the alleged destruction.

Other stuff I'm not sure has to be part of this particular discussion -- institutional racism, for example -- was introduced by the ministers.

For the moment, though, I'm most interested in the question of those files.

Received via email:

MEDIA ANNOUNCEMENT:     

PASTORS TO DISCLOSE DETAILS ON THE DESTRUCTION OF APPROXIMATELY 50 BOXES OF GREENSBORO POLICE FILES RELATED TO THE NOVEMBER 3, 1979 KLAN-NAZI KILLINGS DURING FORMER POLICE CHIEF DAVID WRAY’S ADMINISTRATION

Media Representatives are invited to join us on Tuesday, February 26, 2008, 11:30 AM, at New Light Baptist Church, 1105 Willow Road, Greensboro, NC for an announcement related to the matter outlined below.

Based on information from an active duty police officer, three pastors – Rev. Cardes H. Brown, Rev. Gregory T. Headen, and Rev. Nelson N. Johnson – will disclose detailed information about the destruction of approximately 50 boxes of police files during the tenure of Former Police Chief David Wray.  The materials were related to the November 3, 1979 killing of five labor and community organizers.  The name of the police officer who gave the order to destroy the materials will be shared during the media briefing.  The pastors will also share the circumstances surrounding the destruction of the files and their view of the broader implications of such conduct.  In addition, they will share steps already taken with city official to have this matter addressed.

The Public Records Project: your chance to plow through a mess o' City records related to the David Wray case.

"This will be an open meeting where interested parties can come together to examine these documents, share what they find to be important and copy what they want. I'm hoping this can be collaborative, with sharing of labor and good give and take about what we find."

Open source journalism, or the seeds of it. Nice.

You know I love Teh Blogz, but any article about alt media's role in roiling city politics and keeping the Wray story on the front burner that does not include the words "Rhino," "Times," or "Bledsoe" is just silly and looks like a deliberate whitewash.

The story cites "A new wave of alternative media, including weekly papers and bloggers, has given dissenting voices a much louder megaphone."

But it does not mention, even once, Bledsoe's epic series, or the Rhino's routine front-page Hammerings of Mitch Johnson and the Council.

Blogs have played a role in this story, and Spagnola is quoted making the apt influencing-the-influencers argument in the article. The publication of the RMA report at 101 was a big moment in local media history, and there is a lot of valuable stuff out in blogland (not all blind Johnson-bashing, either).

Yet the story names just one blogger, cites no posts, and makes no effort beyond the brief quotes from Sam to support its (accurate, partial) argument.

For serious, that is a strange piece of reporting -- and editing.

UPDATE: Yes! reads the memos, suspects Kevin Bacon.

City release: "GREENSBORO, NC – (February 12, 2008) – The attached documents, per request from Councilmember Robbie Perkins, were provided to City Council in an IFYI at the end of last week. We have now received approval to release them to the public, which may be helpful since they are the basis upon which we made many of our decisions concerning release of documents."

The documents are also available on the City’s website.

Download letter-cohen-to-erwin.pdf

Download letter-cohen-to-erwin070220.pdf

Download letter-eckert-to-vanlangingham.pdf

Download letter-erwin-to-cohen.pdf

Download memo-allen-to-council-manager.pdf

Download memo-coman-to-erwin.pdf

Roch Smith Jr.: If he wanted to, Mitch could instruct his legal team, “Don’t just give me the reasons for keeping things secret, if we want to release information, give me the legal justifications for doing so” (there are plenty).

The comment runs beneath a post at Plead the First titled "Maybe It's Not All Johnson's Fault?"

This important point goes beyond lawyers and lawyering. I tried to make it the other day:

Whatever Mitch Johnson has done wrong or right, he works for the City Council, and the Council backed him to the hilt through last year.

Maybe some of the public ire about information flow and lack thereof should be directed at the elected officials who misread the public interest from the start, and in some cases may continue to do so today.

In a comment beneath that post, I said, "The Council misjudged the importance of the police department to the community, and the way problems within the department would resonate with the public."

I thought about it again when reading Ryan's interview. Mitch says the City doesn't have a spokesman. But we do have a mayor, who is the public face of the City.

This is a failure of political leadership as much as anything. Whatever Johnson's missteps, if the Council fires him it should serve scapegoat for dinner that night.

Given the explosive nature of the charges surrounding the "black book" and related issues [...] the people of Greensboro deserve more details...

...One of the statutes covering this kind of thing says city officials can release such information if they deem that doing so is "essential to maintaining public confidence" in city services.

We've crossed that threshold of essentialness, and we need to know more facts. Soon.

From a column I wrote in January...2006.

Whatever Mitch Johnson has done wrong or right, he works for the City Council, and the Council backed him to the hilt through last year.

Maybe some of the public ire about information flow and lack thereof should be directed at the elected officials who misread the public interest from the start, and in some cases may continue to do so today.

Beleaguered City Manager Mitch Johnson reaches out to a blogger to make his case.

For better or worse, this is not the way Greensboro politics have been practiced in the past.

Rakestraw and Wade are bringing a County commission vibe to the City Council.

That said, this has been a long time coming. I wrote more than a year ago that "the long knives are out for Mitch Johnson, and the Wray fray is the reason."

One hears less often these days that David Wray did nothing wrong. This column seemed to reflect something in the zeitgeist, in terms of both Wray's alleged missteps and some unfair characterizations of his nature.

But Mitch Johnson has become an issue unto himself for many people, apart from anything Wray did or did not do. If that wasn't clear before, it's in the open now.

Mitch Johnson responds to this morning's N&R article on Oh That Memo.

The gist: It wasn't clear from the document request that the paper was seeking the memo in question ("Other than the one paragraph, this document only meets the description as provided by the News and Record’s request in that it is a two page document.")

And, this memo would have been released long ago had Mitch known about it because it is "a 'smoking gun' regarding the issue of Chief Wray's lack of forthrightness regarding this issue."

You can read the whole thing after the jump.

Yes! Weekly posts audio of Jerry Bledsoe's interview with Mitch Johnson.

Completists will want the boxed set when it comes out, but this will do for the average fan.

Green reads Bledsoe, Part Two.

Interesting to see how the Brian James story plays out.

Green quotes Mitch Johnson on one of the key points about which Wray is alleged to have been less than truthful to his bosses:

"If you put Ed Kitchen and I [sic] together in a room on July 10, 2005, we would have told you that James Hinson is the focus of a multi-jurisdictional, international investigation, that he's involved in narcotics trafficking and possibly the disappearance of another person, but that we couldn't act because we would compromise the investigation, and - this is the chief's words - 'that would have tipped off the suspects.' I was telling people that this was about much more than a tracker.

"You could have pushed me over with a feather when I learned that the OCDETF [organized crime drug enforcement task force] investigation was largely terminated with the arrest of Turnbull in 2002.... The tracker incident was in '05. The killer of it was that Walton [the internal affairs officer] did an investigation about it looking at work by special intelligence and said he didn't even have to talk to Hinson about it."

He added, "The absolute fact of the matter is that at the time the tracker was put on the car the question was whether or not he was reporting his timecard accurately and whether he had an inappropriate person in the car."

I think the influence and general awfulness of the Simkins PAC is much overrated, but Green's protestation of its complete lack of relevance in the 2005 election is undercut by the fact that Vaughan lost after the PAC withheld its endorsement.

Lots more to chew on in the piece.

Discussion of Part One here (send links to other comment threads if you've please).

Jordan Green says Jerry Bledsoe's epic series in the Rhino "has selectively deployed facts to present black police officers in an unflattering light, endlessly recycling allegations that were investigated under Wray, while burying information or delaying the inclusion of information for months on end that suggests their innocence."

Readers bring their own POV to the stuff they read.

I got a long, anonymous, and generally positive letter about this column.

What I found odd was that it spent considerable verbiage defending Jerry Bledsoe's work from the "mandatory shot" I took at it, which the writer suggests may have been "mandated" by my editor.

The idea that the opinion editors at the N&R would ever pressure me in that way, or that I would accede to such pressure, shows a serious misunderstanding of our working relationship, and a serious mistrust of the institution.

I did rib Jerry for an "exhaustive (and exhausting) Rhinoceros Times series, already boasting more chapters than the Nibelungenlied and more granularity than your average beach." A shot? With a water gun, maybe.

The writer is correct that without Bledsoe's work, Wray would be remembered unfairly as a racist. That doesn't mean the series is immune to criticism, and as I wrote I'm waiting for some specifics on Wray's alleged transgressions, but the whole negative frame suggested by the letter feels wrong to me.

The letter also says I express "consternation" and naive surprise at Matlocke's remark, "Only in Greensboro," when in fact I used the remark to launch the broader arguments about race and politics that anchor the column, and that I've been making in one forum or another for a decade.

Anyway, my point is really that it's interesting to see how people read things through the lenses they bring with them.

It explains a lot.

(The letter was addressed to me and copied to David Wray, Jerry Bledsoe, The Rhino editor, Greensboro City Council, Mitch Johnson, Mayor Holliday, Lorraine Ahearn, and "others," so maybe it will turn up somewhere soon.)

PS My limitations as a writer, and the constraints of the limited space I have in the paper, may also be factors in failures to communicate.

UPDATE: An as-yet-unposted letter to the editor in this morning's N&R is quite similar in format and content to the one I received, right down to the complaint about slagging Bledsoe. Hmm. Keep an eye out for a third letter...

Jim Rosenberg says the N&R's role in promoting the racial angle of the Wray story deserves more scrutiny. His conclusion: "I think Wray was probably justly fired for failure to communicate fully with Johnson, but it's crucial to fully appreciate how the fog created by sensational coverage of this story exacerbated that disconnnect."

David Wray, whatever else he did or did not do, deserves to reclaim a vital piece of his good name.

My newspaper column is about race and the Wray case and the larger context of local politics.

Whatever else may be alleged, uncovered and disputed in this endless saga, Wray deserves to have that part of the record made clear. Not even the man who locked him out of his office thinks he's a racist.

That doesn't mean Wray did nothing wrong...

...That's the Greensboro way: Trot out the accusations of prejudice at the drop of a hat, without waiting to find out if the underlying narrative supports them...

You can read the whole thing after the jump.

Previously, quite previously.

Relevant:  "Project Homestead did a tremendous amount of good for the city." Read this whole piece.

Taft Wireback looks at Risk Management Associates. Impressive, at least on paper.

Allen Johnson talks to Mitch Johnson: "Say what you will about Johnson (and who doesn't?), at least he has been willing to address the situation front and center. With the press. The public. Bloggers. Even Bledsoe. Wray -- for whatever reason -- hasn't."

Which takes me back to a fairly simple point: there are some straightforward allegations about Wray's behavior on the table. Wouldn't you like to hear some simple answers? Not speculative explanations from outsiders, not oblique justifications via the Rhino, but simple statements from Wray himself?

The City Manager's statement on the Wray case provides the most straightforward account to date of the former chief's alleged sins of commission and omission.

Documentary evidence in the form of notes and transcripts would be a welcome addition to this file.

So would a response from Wray to the specifics of the statement.

John Robinson on the City's latest data dump: "Unfortunately, it's about 20 months late."

Hmm. 20 months. Sounds about right to me.

More from JR: "There are many lessons to be learned from the GPD investigation by city leadership, the media and the citizenry. Here's one that I hope city leaders and the City Council learn: Release everything you have sooner rather than later."

N&R:

Mitchell Johnson said he and former City Manager Ed Kitchen had received assurances from Wray that the focus on Hinson was the result of a highly sensitive, multijurisdictional criminal investigation that Wray dared not compromise.

In September 2005, Wray ordered a third investigation of Hinson to be done by two former Internal Affairs officers, D.C. Thacker and D.A. Wyrick, hired back solely for that purpose.

Their report, released Tuesday night, would ultimately clear Hinson for a third time, although Mitchell Johnson would not learn of that finding until months later.

Nothing new there: the City's case is that the Chief of Police misled his superiors about the multijurisdictional and internal investigations of James Hinson. If that is true, Wray had to go. If it is not -- if there was a multijurisdictional investigation involving Hinson, and if Wray did inform Johnson that Hinson had been cleared again, then those serious allegations go away.

Does Wray stand by his claim about the multijurisdictional investigation? If so, is there some proof of his claim? Does Wray claim that he did in fact tell his superiors that Hinson had been cleared by internal investigations? Is there documentation of any meetings between City officials and Wray in which this subject was discussed?

UPDATE: Documents released Oct 2 posted at City website.

MMB says she's looking at the letter (scroll down, then click to enlarge) from attorney Walt Jones that is portrayed by some as a smoking gun in the Wray Fray.

Jones says City attorney Linda Miles had her own agenda in the case, although it is not clear from the letter that such an agenda would necessarily undermine the City's arguments against the former GPD chief.

But if the Jones letter is to be considered an unimpeachable source on the matter, it's hard to see how this part helps Wray: "I passed along to the city concrete evidence that internal affairs reports were being changed and the original's (sic) destroyed...that general subject matter played a prominent part in the demise of Chief Wray."

And this one: "I gave [Miles] names of people to contact and used my experience as a federal practioner to explain the obvious flaws in Chief Wray's assertions that there was an ongoing federal investigation."

Or this one: "Officer Fulmore's 'claims' were patently clear...well before Risk Management Associates was ever heard."

A theory of what went wrong in the GPD/GSO showdown: "I think the Chief got fired for what happened and didn't happen at three key moments..."

Councilwoman Sandy Carmany on the release of information: "For God's sake -- don't you think I would tell anything/everything I knew if I could and end these merciless attacks on my integrity and motives, being called a liar, if I could?"

A readers tells Carmany: "It is not up to us to get an explanation from Linda Miles. That is your job. And considering she has given you an explanation, you owe it to the people who elected you to answer the questions about it and her response."

And an email: "If it's important and meaningful that no investigation has (thus far) resulted in charges against Wray, isn't it equally as important and meaningful that no investigation has (thus far) resulted in charges against Hinson? (And if not, why not?)"

Maybe I'm missing something, and I'm crunched for time this afternoon, but did the City's latest document dump tell us anything new?

An unredacted version of the RMA report was put online last October (the old link at GSO101 is rotted, though -- someone needs to repost the thing). The City attorney's report was widely distributed at the same time.

We've got it, some bad stuff was allegedly going down in the GPD -- not just the bad stuff Bledsoe has exposed, other bad stuff, and the recent indictments lend credence to at least some of those allegations -- but what exactly did Wray do to lose the confidence of the Manager and the Council?

Were there conversations between Johnson and Wray in late 2005 that sealed Wray's fate?  If so, where are the notes or recordings or transcripts? Did Wray tell his boss that no obstruction of justice issues existed? Or that he knew nothing about them? What other factors that may not have led to indictments were involved?

Again, the lock-out meeting is of secondary importance to whatever led up to that day.

Is it just me, or do other people (and not just the vocal minds-made-up-early group) feel that some key points in the City's case need to be spelled out, nice and slow?

Wray's take on his resignation, via attorney Kenneth Keller.

Press release: "The City of Greensboro will conduct a news conference this morning at approximately 10 am, immediately following the special City Council meeting that begins at 9 am. Speakers will include a representative from Risk Management Associates, Inc., Police Chief Tim Bellamy, City Manager Mitch Johnson and Mayor Keith Holliday. The news conference will be held in the Plaza Level Conference Room of the Melvin Municipal Office Building, 300 W. Washington St."

I asked Councilman Tom Phillips this morning if he was still confident that Mitch Johnson did the right thing and David Wray needed to go.

"Oh, yeah," he said.

"If you believe David Wray that he knew nothing about what was going on, then he deserved to go for being incompetent. If he knew about it -- and many believe he was a micromanager -- then he deserved to go."

On the lockout: "I wouldn't have given that guy the weekend. Mitch was trying to be a nice guy. No good deed goes unpunished."

On what the Council will decide to release tomorrow: "I'd imagine not a whole lot."

It's not a matter of the City taking sides in the court case, he says, but of letting the legal system work. "The Duke situation changed a whole lot -- Mike Barber wanted to put everything out there, but we don't want to have these guys tried in the media."

Sandy Carmany: "Over the next several days and weeks, I anticipate a steady release of additional information and explanations to fill in more of the blanks to help the public fully understand everything that has occurred."

That would be helpful.

I'm much less interested in the lockout drama than I am in what led up to it. What are the specifics that are said to have cost Wray the City's trust? What statements were made, and against what facts were they judged?

Johnson told Wray during their last conversation: "To be frank, they either did what they did to some degree without you knowing about it and your finding about it later or they did what they did with you knowing about it and you directing them and knowing about and allowing it to continue. Either way it's a serious issue, obviously...my trust has been completely shattered by what I have read and what I have been told...my greatest disappointment is that the organization and myself, [redacted], the Mayor, the public has been led to believe something that based on the information that has been provided just simply was not so and that, at the end of the day, is unacceptable."

What are the details behind those opaque words?

Wray maintains he told the truth.

They can't both be right.

More here.

The City Council has been unanimous in its support of Mitch Johnson throughout the long GPD saga, saying that David Wray acted in a way that cost him the trust of his boss -- but insisting that the public couldn't know the details while investigations were ongoing.

So...when do we get the rest of the story?

Two GPD officers indicted.

Maybe Bledsoe will lede his next installment by addressing what Wray knew, when he knew it, and what he told his boss about it.

Keith Holliday says Mitch Johnson handled things properly when he put David Wray on administrative leave. In fact, the Mayor says he would not have been so solicitous of Wray, and that Wray is responsible for going out the way he did. ""I regret that David Wray chose that course of action rather than accepting for himself a process he endorsed and practiced with other men and women of the Greensboro Police Department."

Hoggard tries to connect some dots on the GPD mess:

Dots are everywhere:  Drug dealing dots.  Check-kiting dots.  Prostitution dots.  Project Homestead-related dots.  Even assassination-planning dots popped up when we read that certain characters were reported to be in the planning stages of doing in best-selling author Jerry Bledsoe...

...During what has been an almost complete black-out of new information emanating from city hall regarding all of the ongoing investigations, local blogs are trying to keep up with all of dots as they appear.

...Although none of us really knows where these investigations will lead, the sheer length of time and resources being brought to bear leads me to believe that those agencies are going places that few outsiders ever expected.

Fecund Stench is feeling sorry for Jerry Bledsoe after reading the latest installment (as yet unposted) of the David Wray saga: "It was strange reading of events for the third and fourth time. Thankfully, the re-telling was salted with important new info such as how the Chief and his co-horts were taunted with misspelled text messages. The inference is obvious.

"What’s next, jokes about their mothers?"

Jordan Green profiles T. Dianne Bellamy-Small, who comes across as a complex and at times sympathetic figure. An excellent piece of journalism by Green, and a valuable addition to the political conversation in GSO.

A councilwoman who defied the Simkins PAC and irks the good-old-boy network, and who (allegedly) leaked key documents about the Wray investigation to an information-starved public -- seems like she'd be more of a folk hero in some quarters of this town.

Bledsoe (not yet posted) reports the sordid details of activities at the Game Time Lounge (discussed here), but the biggest news to me is that Ben Holder is said to have worn a wire for the GPD while posing as a journalist and reported his findings directly to David Wray.

We are in a new era of shifting roles and ill-defined rules.

The latest installment of Bledsoe's series, in which he addresses some of the specifics of the City reports on Wray's GPD -- is now online.

N&R front-pager on the GPD tapes: "As one investigative officer told me," City Manager Mitchell Johnson said last week, "this is almost like a blueprint of how these guys did business."

In hindsight, city officials think that "blueprint" — an alleged pattern of using deception and unsound methods to solve problems — was the key to what went wrong in the department under Wray.

Something's about to break in the GPD saga, or so read the signs and portents.

Rumors of indictments swirl, as the City goes on the offensive with the Brady tapes and Bledsoe (not yet online) finally gets around to disputing the stuff that allegedly got Wray squeezed out.

Now comes Wray's lawyer, the folksy-but-deadly Matlocke Clifford, with a salvo in this morning's N&R.

Buckle up, this may get interesting.

Carmany: Why we released the Brady tapes now.

Hoggard on the Brady tapes: "Based on the recordings released tonight, it is even more clear to me that David Wray had to go.  Also, after hearing Randall Brady’s casual, seemingly business-as-usual disdain for the law, I support the City Council’s efforts to appeal Judge Tilley’s ruling about the disposition of Brady’s pension and benefits.  I hope the citizen’s of Greensboro never pay Randall Brady one more cent of our money."

He's got lotsa links, too.

Plenty of interesting information in part 22 of Jerry Bledsoe's Cops in Black & White series in yesterday's Rhino (as yet unposted), including some hinky-sounding stuff involving payoffs, informants, and big-ass drug deals. Jerry continues to provide troubling details about the inner workings of our police department.

Also, a curious omission: Perhaps you thought, upon being reminded on the front page that GPD Lt. James Hinson was investigated for alleged misconduct involving prostitutes and drug dealers, hmm, the results of those investigations seem important to the story, how odd to mention the investigations and just leave them hanging like rotten fruit without saying what happened.

Indeed.

So, in the collaborative spirit of the internets, here's a handy reminder from the RMA report of what was going on as David Wray pursued yet another investigation of Hinson in 2005:

By this time Hinson's association with the Turnbull criminal organization had been reviewed by the U.S. Attorney's Office and there was no evidence to support a criminal investigation into Hinson (2002).

Sanders, Bissett and others had spent 16 months investigating Hinson for possible violations of state or local criminal offenses and had not found evidence to support any criminal charges against him (2002-2004)

The Internal Affairs Unit had conducted a thorough review of the criminal investigation submitted by Sanders, followed appropriate IA protocol, and found no evidence to substantiate allegations of administrative rule violations. (2004)

Something about these results  must be hard to remember: The RMA report goes on to say that Wray did not tell members of his own command staff about these results, either, even as they questioned him about the substance of his 2005 investigation. The RMA report calls this omission "an issue of concern regarding the actions of Chief Wray."

Wharton, the classicist: "Wray's story seems to have the essential arc of a Greek tragedy: a good man makes a serious mistake which entangles him in his own destruction...

"...It's a tragic irony that Chief Wray may have become a bad cop out of an obsessive desire to collar a bad cop, and acquired a reputation as a racist out of his efforts to avoid a race incident."

I agree with many of Jerry Bledsoe's criticisms of N&R articles about November 3, 1979, including the importance of the previous confrontation at China Grove, the responsibility of the CWP for the location and nature of its rally, and the motives and success of the CWP's union organizing mission. I've said so in print, and the TRC report supports these arguments.

But for Jerry's long and detailed article dealing largely with the police, the march, the contested nature of the relationship between police and CWP, and omissions in media coverage to omit any mention of the police informant riding with the Klan that day, and to  gloss over the lack of police presence at the site of the deadly shootings...well, it's a bit odd, don't you think?

UPDATE: Bledsoe did mention in the previous installment of the series that CID officer Rooster Cooper "had an informant in the Klan, Eddie Dawson, who led Klan members to Morningside Homes."

Also, the October 31,1999 article he cites by Ahearn was accompanied by a sidebar and a map, which between them contain much of the information discussed:

FAST-FORWARD COUNTDOWN TO AN 88-SECORD DISASTER...AND A SLOW, 20-YEAR - RECKONING FOR GREENSBORO

Date: October 31, 1999   Page: A6

MILITANT COMMUNISTS ON THE LEFT

In the late 1970s, a group of hard-core Marxists...is agitating for its vision of social and economic change in Greensboro.

...In 1979, the established textile union decertifies and seizes control of locals organized by Communists. Their labor efforts thus stymied, the leftists seek confrontations with the most sensational symbol of racial division between the black and white working class: the Ku Klux Klan...

...(PHOTO) The Associated Press - Forsyth Nazi leader Wayne Wood strikes a kung-fu pose during a confrontation with leftists in China Grove on July 8, 1979. Police prevent violence, and as leftists walk away with clenched fists, white supremacists vow revenge.

...(PHOTO) A CWP flier for the Nov. 3 march likewise uses provocative rhetoric to taunt the Klan. A flier, posted in black neighborhoods, asks residents along the parade route to stand on their porches with shotguns to defend the march.

RED FLAGS As the march draws near, local and federal investigators have several indications of potential violence...Dawson tells Cooper the Nazi-Klan contingent has guns. Cooper and a police photographer, in plain clothes and an unmarked car, tail the Nazi-Klan caravan all morning and are still following as the cars arrive at Morningside.

...STICKS AND STONES: WORDS TURN DEADLY The demonstrators, despite their violent words, are not heavily armed as they assemble the morning of Nov. 3. One shotgun is placed in a truck but never fired by the Communists. Four others carry low-caliber handguns, including a derringer and another gun that jams.

N&R: [T]hree 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.

On the alleged multi-jurisdictional investigation: "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."

More: 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.

On the "black book": "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?

Three former senior people, pretty much backing up the RMA report.

Read the whole thing.