City: Ethics Commission findings in complaint against Fayetteville police chief likely won't be public
A Fayetteville Ethics Commission hearing on allegations of ethics violations by Police Chief Gina Hawkins went into its second day Wednesday in closed session and a city official said the findings will not likely be made public.
“Because the commission will review a personnel matter, it’s unlikely that a decision would be made in an open session,” city spokeswoman Nacarla Webb said in an email to The Fayetteville Observer on Wednesday afternoon.
The city’s decision appears to be in opposition to case law. The NC Supreme Court made clear in N&O v. Poole that the personnel exceptions only apply to records that were first gathered by the employing agency.
Because the record was first gathered by the city Ethics Commission — not the employer — it is not a personnel record exempt from disclosure.
When a second request was made for the release, the city stated that “the Poole case is distinguishable from this matter in that the Poole case dealt with State employee records.”
The commission met in closed session for about three and a half hours on Wednesday before recessing until 5:30 p.m. Thursday.
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The quasi-judicial hearing against Hawkins, police chief since 2017, involves eight of 14 allegations filed in August against her by Wake County attorney Mikael Gross who represents two clients with disputes against the city of Fayetteville and Hawkins.
Gross alleges in the complaint that Hawkins:
• uses city property and employees for her own benefit — a transgression for which she has allegedly fired employees;
• had the department’s K9 trainer to train her family dog, and, in another instance, had on-duty officers search for the dog when he escaped her home;
• hired a verified gang member, and when she was told the individual was a gang member, initiated an Internal Affairs Investigation into the Gang Unit because she had not authorized an investigation into the individual;
• initiated Internal Affairs investigations in November 2018 and November 2020 then guided the outcomes rather than allowing the investigation to come to a fair and equitable resolution;
• attempted to have someone removed from the board of the Fayetteville Police Benevolent Fund, a nondepartmental agency, because she was intending to initiate an internal investigation into the person;
• allowed the K9 trainer to place choke collars on canine officers and place them on the ground to "teach them what it feels like to be a dog on a leash and collar," — an activity Gross states is not an acceptable or standard training procedure for canine officers in the state;
• hired the K9 trainer as an officer with the department, despite his allegedly being unable to attend Basic Law Enforcement Training because of issues with standards and training.
Hawkins has denied the allegations, calling them false and an attack on her character.
Military & Crime Editor F.T. Norton can be reached at fnorton@fayobserver.com.
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This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: The Ethics Commission hearing of police chief goes into its second day
