Cop's warning caught on tape
Uniformed officer faces discipline over beads incident after city's Gay Pride Parade
8/6/2008
As the city's Gay Pride Parade wound through downtown Santa Fe in June, city Police Officer Michele Williams was directing traffic when City Councilor Patti Bushee threw her a strand of Mardi Gras beads.
Williams thanked the councilor, put on the necklace and continued to direct traffic. After the parade, Williams' supervisor told the uniformed officer she couldn't continue wearing the beads. "You need to take that off," Sgt. Russell Gunn said in a brief exchange caught on the microphone of his police cruiser's dashboard video camera. "That's not part of your uniform."
"I got leied for pride," Williams said with a jocular tone in her voice, comparing the beads to a Hawaiian-style flower lei. "Come on, I got leied."
"No, you're going to take that off," Gunn said evenly. "It's not part of your uniform."
Williams' response is inaudible.
"Seriously, you need to take that off," Gunn said again. "That issue has come up before. So ... it needs to be off now."
After Williams apparently left the scene, the conversation continued over a police radio — a recording of which The New Mexican obtained along with a copy of the videotape from Gunn's car, through a public records request.
"Michele, if I need to make it an order, it will be an order," Gunn told the officer by radio. "It needs to be off."
"I'm on my 70 (meal break)," Williams responded, using a police radio code. "So you can make it an order, and we'll 87 (meet) later for the red (disciplinary) form."
"It is not part of your uniform," Gunn said again. "You're 70 is on-duty too, I remind you."
Williams now faces a disciplinary hearing over the incident. She said in a phone interview Wednesday that she is accused of insubordination for allegedly refusing to take off the beads.
The situation likely would have remained an internal matter at the department — as is the case with most personnel matters — had a city councilor not made a public issue of the case.
Bushee said in an interview Wednesday that Williams' union representative asked her to pen a witness statement for the officer's disciplinary hearing. The councilor then decided to submit her statement to The New Mexican for publication as an op-ed piece.
In the article, published July 27, Bushee, an openly gay member of the City Council, recalled serving as grand marshal of the Gay Pride Parade on June 28 and throwing the beads to Williams, who was on duty and in uniform.
"It was brought to my attention that because Officer Williams had donned the plastic beads I had thrown to her ... for a very brief duration, she was to be disciplined by her supervising officer for 'being out of uniform,' " Bushee later wrote.
"If Officer Williams is to be disciplined for being friendly while doing her job, then there is something wrong with the system or the so-called 'chain of command' that she is required to serve under," Bushee wrote. "Community policing is a concept that the Santa Fe Police Department supposedly embraces. In my opinion, Officer Williams should be congratulated, not punished, for the community respect that was shown to her."
Bushee then conjured the specter of controversial former Santa Fe Police Chief Don Grady and wondered if Williams would have been disciplined for wearing a bolo tie.
"I recall a previous chief who lost sight of the end game and created some shortsighted policies (no bolo ties, no personal belongings in patrol cars, etc.) that had nothing to do with keeping our community safe," the councilor wrote. "Anyone who remembers the Chief Don Grady era could recall the effect that those policies had on the morale of the department."
A united police force, Bushee wrote, "helps the entire community. A divided force with inequitable disciplinary procedures will not lead to the kind of policing our community deserves."
Although the city code says Santa Fe's part-time elected councilors are supposed to confine their role to making policy and leave administrative matters to the city manager, Bushee said she wrote the statement to explain her role in throwing the beads to the officer.
"(Williams) participated in a way I thought was very professional and I wanted to applaud that," Bushee said. "It was in the vein of community spirit and I didn't see that as an offense that needed to be punished. There are plenty of other situations where the police department could be putting their attention."
Bushee, however, said she didn't know what happened after she threw Williams the beads and has no proof of any unequal disciplinary procedures at the Police Department.
Deputy Police Chief Aric Wheeler said Wednesday that he couldn't talk about the Williams situation because it's a personnel matter. But he said if an officer at one of the annual Santa Fe Fiesta parades, for example, accepted and wore a button or sticker advocating a position on a political issue, such an act would violate department policy.
"We're supposed to be unbiased," Wheeler said. "For example, if someone who's against whatever the issue is showed up and needed police assistance, would they feel this officer is unbiased?"
Still, Wheeler said that if a supervisor asked the officer in the example to remove the button or sticker and the officer promptly complied, the situation likely would go no further.
Williams said Wednesday that she had "issues" with the release of the tapes to The New Mexican. While she didn't want to discuss those issues prior to her disciplinary hearing, she said, she believes department policies are sometimes inequitably applied.
"If I thought it was fair and equitable, I wouldn't be fighting it," she said of the disciplinary action. "But I actually have full confidence the chief will understand when he hears the full picture. I have full confidence in him to do the right thing despite what's happened in the past."
A year ago, Williams expressed vocal support for a vote of no confidence in Chief Eric Johnson. Members of the Santa Fe Police Officers Association, by an almost 2-to-1 margin, supported the chief.
On Wednesday, Johnson said he doesn't initiate disciplinary actions and has no ill will toward Williams, who had made the motion to hold the June 2007 no-confidence vote. "I'm a fair person, and I would never retaliate against anybody," Johnson said. "That vote spoke for itself, and as far as I'm concerned, we're beyond that."
Johnson declined to discuss the situation with Williams, saying it would be inappropriate for him to discuss a personnel matter. "I think it's inappropriate for anybody to be discussing a personnel issue, especially in a public forum," he said.
Mayor David Coss agreed. "I guess I would say that any personnel action, especially when an employee is represented by a union, shouldn't be commented on publicly by members of the governing body," the mayor said Wednesday. "I thought (Bushee's) letter to the editor and harkening back to Don Grady and bolo ties was not helpful."
Jose Valencia, the interim president of the Santa Fe Police Officers Association, said Williams' union representative acted without the knowledge of the association board when he asked for Bushee's statement.
"When it comes to union matters, the board would rather not involve city councilors," Valencia said. "With the facts I have now, I'm not sure why he did that."
Such involvement compromises the integrity of an investigation and can lead to assumptions and decisions being reached before all facts are known, he said.
In his experience, Valencia said, Johnson has been equitable in handing out discipline, and the association's board plans to investigate why the union representative asked Bushee for the statement.
Contact Jason Auslander at 986-3076 or :jauslander@sfnewmexican.com.