No criminal charges after investigation into Pineville officer and town councilman, DA says
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation has finished an investigation into allegations against a Pineville Police Department officer and his father who is a town councilman, and no criminal charges will be filed, according to the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office.
The DA’s Office issued a letter to the SBI on Wednesday with an analysis of the SBI’s findings. The agency had been looking into allegations that Pineville Police Officer Ryan Gladden had potentially “discharged a firearm within an enclosure with the purpose of inciting fear” this past June, and that his father, Pineville Town Councilmember Les Gladden, had “unlawfully obstructed an internal police investigation regarding his son.”
First, the SBI talked to witnesses about the allegations of the gunshot. Gladden’s wife told investigators that she “did not believe Gladden was attempting to harm her or her child” and she said she believed it was more likely that Gladden was “attempting to do harm to himself.” The SBI said witnesses offered theories that Gladden either fired the shot by accident or with a potential intent to harm himself.
ALSO READ >> 9 Investigates: Pineville councilman accused of workplace misconduct
Investigators said there was no evidence to support a criminal charge against Gladden for the gunshot. Another incident of an alleged gunshot outside of Gladden’s home was reported to the District Attorney’s Office, but that wasn’t investigated by the SBI. Before the investigation concluded, Gladden resigned from the Pineville Police Department in September.
According to the SBI, Les Gladden had contacted two PPD officers after the police chief opened an internal investigation into department policy violations by Ryan Gladden. One of those officers was leading the internal investigation, and the other was Ryan Gladden’s direct supervisor.
One of the officers reported that Les Gladden presented an “overwhelming barrage of questions” about Ryan’s investigation.
Both officers said that Gladden expressed negative sentiments about Police Chief Michael Hudgins. One of the officers reported that the exchange was inappropriate and made him feel uncomfortable.
READ MORE: County expands Pineville Police Department’s jurisdiction
When the SBI interviewed Les Gladden, he acknowledged speaking to the two officers but denied trying to influence them. He said he approached them because he had known them for a long time. An SBI investigator explained that it would seem like Gladden was using his position on the town council to intimidate the officers from cooperating with the investigation, but Gladden responded saying: ”The words I used probably sounded intimidating because I was so pissed at them because of their lack of caring for Ryan. Was my choice of words correct? Probably not. It was disturbing for me to see them turning their back on somebody so close to them and close to me … then, yeah, I was pissed off.”
The SBI says that Gladden “regularly conflated his desire to protect his son’s employment interests with his obligation to provide institutional oversight to the police department as a town councilperson.” But while the SBI investigation says Gladden’s actions “raise clear questions of impropriety, they do not amount to criminal illegality.”
DOWNLOAD WSOC APPS - Keep up with news and weather wherever you go
According to the DA’s Office, Gladden “very well may have intended to chill the cooperation of these officers in an investigation where his son was the principal subject, but in considering the available evidence, it’s just as plausible that Les Gladden ... was attempting to line up allies against a police chief he did not favor.”
Gladden has since been censured by the Pineville Town Council, but he is still on the council as of January. Police Chief Michael Hudgins is still with the Pineville Police Department.
You can read the full letter from the DA’s Office at this link.
(WATCH BELOW: Woman accused of assault seriously hurt while being transported to jail, Pineville police say)
