Former Officer Sues APD
Officer claims firing was retaliatory
By Chase Hoffberger, 10:15AM, Sun. May 22, 2016
The standoff between Austin Police Department brass and former APD officer Blayne Williams continues.
Late last month, Williams filed a lawsuit seeking declaratory judgment. In the suit, Williams alleges Police Chief Art Acevedo retaliated against Williams and ultimately found a way to fire him after Williams filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the chief and department. The suit is the latest in a series of court proceedings and complaints related to Williams’ time at APD. It comes on the heels of a third-party arbitrator’s decision to uphold Acevedo’s second indefinite suspension of Williams after an Internal Affairs investigation determined that Williams – an APD officer since June 2008 – gave false statements and failed to comply with department policies pertaining to investigating instances of family violence while responding to a Jan. 23, 2015 disturbance off Decker Lane.
The circumstances that led to the IA investigation continue to be disputed by the former officer and his defenders. The situation arose out of an alleged fight between a mother and her 18-year-old daughter; at issue was whether or not the daughter caused physical harm to her mother and served as the situation’s “primary aggressor.” Williams, who spent more than an hour on the scene investigating the altercation before calling his corporal, had concluded that the narratives were too vague to take anybody to jail. His corporal arrived, spoke with the mother and a few witnesses, and decided that the daughter should be arrested. An IA complaint was filed four days after the arrest. (See “APD Officer Fired, Again,” July 24, 2015.)
In his appeal, Williams alleged that he “made significant efforts to fairly resolve this call for service and protect the parties involved,” and was terminated for violations that he did not know to be under review at the time that he was notified of the investigation into his actions – particularly with regard to allegations that he was dishonest in his statements. He noted that an assisting officer concurred with his original assessment that no one needed to be arrested. If the situation sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the third time that Williams has been disciplined for his handling of an incident for which the circumstances aren’t cut-and-dry. In 2011, he was suspended for 90 days and placed on probation for two years after pushing an elderly store employee at a North Austin H-E-B. (At the time, investigating officers concluded that the employee was the aggressor, and that Williams was acting in self-defense.) In Oct. 2013, two months before his probation was set to end, he was fired for failing to report and collect as evidence a cell phone hidden behind a ceiling tile at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Barton Springs Road, where Williams was moonlighting as a security guard. In that instance, Williams was fired for dishonesty and failing to investigate. The following October, however, an independent arbitrator overruled the termination and reduced the suspension to 15 days after noting that Internal Affairs and Acevedo had failed to specify what exactly Williams was lying about. (See “Officer Wins Firing Appeal,” Dec. 26, 2014.)
This lawsuit, filed by Williams’ attorney Gary Bledsoe in Judge Tim Sulak’s 353th District Court, is the third such complaint Williams has filed in the past two years. He filed his first suit in July 2014, when he claimed that the chief retaliated against him for filing an EEOC discrimination complaint alleging Acevedo’s racial favoritism. Williams, who is from Austin, is black – a race that makes up roughly 9% of the department’s composition. Yet the majority of the rank-and-file's recent claims that the chief is no stranger to discrimination or retaliatory tactics (see the cases of Johnny McMiller, Jermaine Hopkins, and those formerly of the Organized Crime division currently engaged in a lawsuit against the department) have come from black officers. Last March, Williams filed a second lawsuit alleging that his series of complaints were the reason that he was passed over three times for a promotion. (The second suit is still pending.) Williams is seeking monetary compensation, the reinstatement of his job, a promotion to the rank for which he was denied, a clearing of his name, and “remediation of all matters where the city of Austin has inappropriately used information … against him in violation of state law.”
Got something to say on the subject? Send a letter to the editor.
A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.