As if one alleged act of retaliation wasn’t bad enough, Austin Police Department whistle-blower Detective Jeff White is now alleging that the department retaliated against him a second time, denying his transfer to an assignment he was requested to fill. The latest court filing in the nearly 3-year-old lawsuit alleges that White’s former supervisor, Lt. Manuel Pena, who retired late last year, blocked White’s 2003 request for a transfer to the APD Gang Unit, even though Gang Unit Sgt. Ron Lara had tapped White to fill the vacancy. After White put in the paperwork necessary to make the move, White alleges, Pena told another supervisor that not only would White’s transfer be denied, but Pena would not authorize any transfer for White “while the current situation” with White’s lawsuit was ongoing. White “asserts that the denial of his transfer, with an opening in the gang unit and having been requested by the supervisor in that unit, constitutes further retaliation against him,” reads the May 16 filing.
White filed suit against the city in 2002, alleging that former Assistant Chief Jimmy Chapman had him transferred, and then blocked his bid for another assignment, in retaliation for statements White made about Chapman’s possible involvement in derailing the mid-Nineties drug trafficking investigation code-named Mala Sangre, or Bad Blood. Chapman retired at the end of 2003, as an outside investigation into whether he committed perjury during a deposition taken in connection with White’s suit came to a close. Details of the investigation have not been made public, but the official disposition was that evidence of Chapman’s veracity was “inconclusive.”
This article appears in May 27 • 2005.