A lawsuit claiming that Little Rock Police Chief Keith Humphrey is out to get an assistant chief because she publicly contradicted his account of an internal investigation into a fatal police shooting is based on exaggerations and distortions with no evidence of wrongdoing, lawyers for Humphrey and the city said Tuesday.
The retaliation and sex-discrimination lawsuit filed by Assistant Chief Alice Fulk and Lt. Christine Plummer is the product of disgruntled employees who don't like the way Humphrey is running the force so they're hoping the courts will take over the job of human-resources management, the attorneys told Pulaski County Circuit Judge Alice Gray at the three-hour hearing.
The lawyers, Khayyam Eddings for the chief and Susan Kendall on behalf of the city, told the judge that the plaintiffs have misapplied the Arkansas Civil Rights Act and Whistleblower's Act. They called for the 5-month-old litigation to be thrown out of court, a decision that Gray said she will make in the coming days.
Kendall told the judge that all Fulk and Plummer have done is string together a series of "trivial ... inflammatory" accusations so they can "dramatically" accuse him of engaging in a "campaign of retaliation." What they can't prove is that Humphrey did anything outside his authority or that they've been illegally harmed, Kendall said.
The suit is one of four against Humphrey, who has been on the job for about 17 months, filed by nine officers, including another assistant chief, Hayward Finks, and a civilian employee, all represented by attorney Chris Burks.
Burks told the judge that at this stage in the litigation, court rules require that she give Fulk and Plummer the benefit of the doubt and consider their accusations to be true when she weighs defense arguments that the lawsuit should be dismissed.
Fulk's testimony about the internal investigation into the February 2019 slaying of Bradley Blackshire, delivered to the city's Civil Service Commission, showed how the probe had been rushed at Humphrey's orders, rebutting the chief's version of events, Burks said.
Blackshire was a suspected car thief shot dead by police officer Charles Starks after refusing Starks' order to stop the car Blackshire was driving. His family has since mounted a wrongful-death lawsuit while Starks, who recently quit the force, is suing over the way he was disciplined by the department.
Burks said Fulk's testimony showed how Starks' due-process rights had been violated by the internal review, making her entitled to whistleblower protections.
Instead, angered at the embarrassment of being contradicted so publicly, Humphrey has been illegally punishing Fulk and sometimes taking that anger against her out on Plummer, which is illegal, Burks said.
That punishment has included Humphrey demeaning Fulk, giving her a negative job-performance evaluation, limiting her access to command offices and denying Fulk and Plummer training opportunities that would have qualified them for pay raises, Burks said.