Accusations target Durham, SBI as a cop fights to clear his name
Some of North Carolina’s top law enforcement officers are facing a defamation lawsuit that claims they conspired to destroy the reputation of a fellow officer by attacking him with a false rape allegation and numerous other violations.
The head of the State Bureau of Investigation and two of his top deputies are accused of targeting Donald Ray Richardson, a former Alcohol Law Enforcement agent under their command, with help from a Durham Police Department sexual assault investigator. That investigator is also named in the lawsuit, as are the City of Durham, the SBI, the woman who first accused Richardson, and others.
Investigators “knew that (Richardson) had not committed a sexual assault or kidnapped (the accuser), but executed the warrant anyway knowing that it was based on perjured information and for the sole purpose of maliciously harassing, embarrassing and injuring (Richardson),” the lawsuit claims.
Richardson has already won once in court against his former bosses. In 2018 the state Office of Administrative Hearings ruled that the SBI had likely violated his constitutional rights as well as their own agency policies by suspending Richardson following a flawed internal investigation.
Richardson was awarded back pay and legal fees when he won that case. The state has appealed, however, and the outcome is still pending. In the meantime, the new defamation lawsuit — filed this month in Durham County — is asking for a jury to decide if Richardson is owed even more money.
“Somebody has to hold the agency accountable,” Richardson’s lawyer Mikael Gross said in an interview. “You can’t just say, ‘Yes, the agency violated his constitutional rights, but just give him his job back and that’s that.’”
Gross had a long career in law enforcement himself, including as the chief operating officer of the N.C. Department of Public Safety. He said if there are no real repercussions for the litany of violations Richardson already showed in his last case, then there’s nothing to protect other officers from being treated similarly in the future.
Durham police and the SBI have mostly declined to comment on these issues, or make the key players available for interviews, in the past. Spokespeople for both agencies also said Thursday that they would not make any comments outside what their attorneys file in court. However, neither agency has filed any legal response yet.
“Because of the nature of the pending litigation, we are restricted in the response we can provide publicly,” Angie Grube, the SBI spokesperson, wrote in an email. “We will respond with our position in our filings with the court, which is where this matter will ultimately be decided.”
Investigation or witch hunt?
Richardson’s claims stem from an internal fight in 2017 at the SBI — news of which The News & Observer broke at the time — that involved a strange mix of extortion, rape allegations, constitutional law and the Islamic State.
Richardson put himself into the crosshairs of SBI Director Robert Schurmeier, he claims, by investigating threats against the CEO of Bank of America, who lives in North Carolina. A man sent a letter threatening to “team with ISIS” to harm the CEO unless the bank increased his credit card limit. Richardson received a tip and arrested the man, who later pleaded guilty to communicating threats.
Richardson says Schurmeier became angry at him and his ALE bosses for taking the case — which had nothing to do with the ALE’s territory of alcohol laws. Then, about two weeks later, a woman accused Richardson of kidnapping and raping her at a gas station in Durham, after Richardson and other ALE agents searched her car.
Richardson said the SBI used the rape accusation as a way to punish him over the extortion case.
Following an internal investigation, Richardson was suspended from work without pay and ordered never to work again in his longtime territory of Durham.
But an administrative law judge reversed all of that, ruling Richardson should never have been suspended.
The ruling said SBI officials broke numerous state government policies, as well as likely violating Richardson’s constitutional rights and also potentially committing perjury.
SBI denies wrongdoing
The judge’s ruling found that a Durham police officer falsely claimed that he had seen video of the attack in order to get a search warrant against Richardson. In fact, video refuted the alleged victim’s story, the judge concluded.
SBI leaders also looked at both the video and the application for a warrant. They knew the application contained false information, Richardson claims in his defamation suit — a claim backed up by the ruling in his previous case — but allowed it to go forward anyway.
Former SBI Assistant Director Kanawha Perry knew, or at least should have known, that the warrant application “contained false information and was not accurate in its portrayal that a rape had occurred, and that this alleged rape was not supported by video evidence,” the administrative law judge in that case, Donald Overby, wrote when he ruled in Richardson’s favor.
The SBI originally declined to comment for the N&O’s 2017 and 2018 articles about the Richardson case. But a few days after the second article was published, Schurmeier wrote a letter to the editor in which he claimed Overby’s ruling got it wrong.
“... it has been reported that various SBI personnel were untruthful during the hearing of the personnel matter and acted in violation of agency policy during both the criminal and internal administrative investigations into these matters,” Schurmeier wrote. “The SBI strongly disagrees with these reports and any such findings made by the administrative law judge.”
Perry was, at the time, in charge of SBI internal investigations. He has since been promoted to lead all internal investigations for every agency within the N.C. Department of Public Safety.
“Perry would have known even prior to the search warrant being signed by Judge (Carl) Fox that it was based on false information,” Overby wrote, later adding: “The problematic search warrant put everyone in a bad spot.”
Durham police abuse claims
The search warrant application was written by Jesus Sandoval, a veteran Durham sex crimes investigator. Durham later investigated Sandoval without suspending him, the N&O reported. Durham police haven’t revealed the outcome of the investigation.
Sandoval didn’t respond to a letter the N&O sent him during the reporting of the 2018 article. The N&O requested an interview again Thursday through a Durham police spokesperson, who said she would relay the request to him.
The defamation lawsuit includes a previously unreported claim, regarding one of the agents accused of standing watch during the debunked assault. That ALE agent, Jack Cates, is a former Durham cop who had written Sandoval up for violations when they worked together, according to the lawsuit.
Cates “had previously been Sandoval’s supervisor at Durham Police Department and had disciplined him, in the past, for various reasons,” Richardson’s lawsuit claims.
Cates has also filed a lawsuit of his own against Sandoval, claiming defamation and malicious prosecution, although it’s not as detailed as the filing from Richardson. He doesn’t say whether he used to be Sandoval’s boss, and Durham police also declined to say.
One of the constitutional violations laid out in Richardson’s previous case was the way in which Durham police and the SBI took some of his personal property, including his cell phone, during their investigation. One of the reasons Richardson was ultimately suspended was his initial refusal to turn over his phone in that search, claiming it was a Fourth Amendment violation. Overby ruled that although Richardson did eventually comply with the search, he was probably correct about the violation of his rights.
In the new defamation lawsuit, Richardson said unnamed Durham police officers threatened to use force on him if he didn’t comply with the likely unconstitutional search and seizure.
This story was originally published January 24, 2020 at 12:02 PM with the headline "Accusations target Durham, SBI as a cop fights to clear his name."
