Assistant El Paso Police Chief Diana Kirk, who is suing the city for employment discrimination, added another lawsuit to the mix Monday in which she alleged she was placed on administrative leave in retaliation for her first lawsuit.

Her lawyer, John Wenke, went a step further, calling for Police Chief Greg Allen to step down in a statement excoriating Allen.

"Greg Allen’s recent conduct needs to be examined by the mayor, city council and public at large," Wenke said in a statement emailed to NewspaperTree.com after a request for comment. "He is unable to command the department because he lacks the qualifications and abilities to be a police chief.

"He has had no contact with the Juarez police chief in the last fourteen months while El Paso sits at the front lines of a violent drug war. We recently learned that the Arlington, Virginia police chief, at the request of Joyce Wilson, had to come down here for two days to train our police chief.

"Now in an arrogant attempt to retaliate against Chief Diana Kirk because of her lawsuit, he places Kirk on indefinite administrative leave, providing no written notice or reasons for the suspension. Chief Allen is out of control and needs to resign for the good of the department and the community."

City Manager Joyce Wilson called Wenke's comments "an attempt to discredit people inappropriately and unfairly."

To see the lawsuit, click on the links below the article

Kirk sued the department in September, alleging discrimination and arguing that the city of El Paso used a "suspect" selection process to hire the least qualified candidate for police chief. [NPT, Sept. 10, 2008]

The new lawsuit states that on Jan. 7, 2009, Allen berated Kirk during a meeting with Deputy City Manager Bill Studer. "I gave you good advice and I told you not to file this lawsuit," Allen allegedly told Kirk in front of Studer. Allen allegedly also told Kirk: "Your career is over."

On Feb. 20, the lawsuit states, Kirk was told by Human Resources Director Linda Thomas that she was being relieved of her duties and placed on administrative leave.

The lawsuit lays out the sequence of events in making a case for retaliation, and also quotes Allen from his deposition March 5, in which he explained Kirk's administrative leave: "The environment there was being so subversive -- or not subversive -- but so uncomfortable that we couldn't work effectively."

Wenke argues that it was Allen who could not work effectively, and notes that in the deposition Allen admitted to having such a poor working relationship with his former supervisor, the now-retired Assistant Chief Paul Cross, that the two almost came to blows during an argument. Wenke attached the deposition -- which contained the basis for his comments, such as the one about the Arlington, Va. chief coming to El Paso to help Allen -- as an exhibit in the new lawsuit.

Part of Wenke's case is making an issue of Allen's selection over other candidates in general and Kirk in particular. In the initial lawsuit, Wenke argued on behalf of Kirk that the city failed to have a legitimate selection process.

"How you can select a police chief and not have interviews with the candidates, no selection criteria or final rankings of candidates I think is pretty suspect. This is the most significant position in the city that is not subject to election," he told NPT in the Sept. 10, 2008 article. That lawsuit asked for a new selection process to be instituted that includes written criteria and ranking, as well as lost wages and benefits and compensatory damages to Kirk.

The most recent lawsuit seeks much the same, and requests that Kirk be taken off administrative leave and put back to work.

In making the argument about Allen, Wenke noted instances in the deposition that he said raised questions about Allen's performance:

-- Allen could not answer when Wenke asked him for the name of the Juarez police chief.

-- The police chief from Arlington, Va., came to El Paso at the request of Wilson. Wenke characterized it as training Allen, which Wilson flatly denied in her deposition. "I thought it would be healthy and helpful for Greg to have a professional colleague who was a chief that he could interact with and get to know just for networking and peer-to-peer perspective and kind of bounce things off in an environment where it was kind of chief-to-chief," she said in a deposition taken March 5, the same day as Allen's.

In the deposition, Allen answers the question of why Arlington Police Chief Douglas Scott was brought to El Paso by stating, in part, that "my staff up there, for the most part, were all selections from -- by Richard Wiles. And I wanted to bounce ideas off of him as far as what he thought about the different people in the office there, as far as their loyalties to the -- me."

Allen also said that Scott's travel costs were reimbursed by a staff member with a personal check, which then was repaid by the city.

Contacted by NPT, Wilson declined to discuss specifics, but said: "It's really unfortunate the attorney is doing that. Trying to discredit a new chief I think is really inappropriate. I'm not going to say anything else beyond that. We're defending ourselves against the first suit, we're defending ourselves against the second suit.

"This is nothing more I think than an attempt to discredit people inappropriately and unfairly and we're going to fight it aggressively."

Allen was not available for comment, said Police Department spokesman Chris Mears, citing the pending litigation.

One other element of the retaliation lawsuit is the Police Department's organizational chart.

Following Kirk's placement on administrative leave, the lawsuit states, the police department cut off her access to department and city email and to the police employee website. "On February 27, 2009, the EPPD's organizational chart was amended and Chief Kirk's name was removed and replaced by Interim Chief Gardner," the lawsuit states.

The city's lawyer, Chris Borunda of Ray, Valdez, Mc Christian & Jeans, P.C., said that it was a mistake, as attested to in the depositions of both Allen and Wilson, and that the organizational chart was immediately fixed.

"It was corrected as soon as Joyce left that deposition," Borunda said. (View organizational chart as of March 5 via link below this article.)

Related Documents: