Houston Council fires police captain

HOUSTON — Houston City Council voted 4 to 2 Tuesday to fire Houston Police Capt. Charley McAnally, leaving the local police department unmanned by the end of next week unless a new officer can be hired.

“They’ve successfully closed the police department down against the will of the public,” McAnally said Wednesday of Mayor Virgie Thompson, Deputy Mayor Jim Johansen, Councilwoman Kathleen Barney and Councilman Paul Stout, who voted to terminate him. “Those buffoons fired me because they think I lied about the FBI investigation, but I am willing to take a lie detector test to prove I’m not lying about the investigation currently underway on Mayor Thompson and Treasurer Carolyn Grabowski.”

McAnally said he plans to file lawsuits against Thompson, Johansen and City Treasurer/Human Resources Director Grabowski for allegedly violating city policies and possibly breaking the law.

Council members Ruth Blanchard and Lance Wilson were the only ones voting in the captain’s favor Tuesday.

Johansen, Barney and Stout could not be reached for comment today.

Wilson said today he doesn’t think the termination was legal.

“I think it violates city code and the city’s employment handbook,” Wilson said, explaining that the handbook states that city employees are encouraged to report to the mayor and/or council any act that is unlawfully or improperly committed by an employee or council member and that the reporting employee shouldn’t suffer any repercussions or retaliations.

“There have been multiple acts of retaliation against Capt. McAnally since he began to investigate allegations of improper acts by the city administration,” Wilson said. “Multiple requests from Capt. McAnally to address this retaliation through the city’s grievance process have been ignored, including his request that an independent arbitrator be called in to help resolve the issue.”

Thompson said she voted to fire McAnally because she felt it was what was best for the community. She would not discuss the details of the decision since they were made in executive session, but she said she chose not to recuse herself from the vote to fire the captain because she didn’t feel she had a conflict of interest.

“City code states I should recuse myself if I have financial or personal gain from any decision and I didn’t have either in this case,” Thompson said when asked why she chose to vote on the matter when she had declared a conflict of interest previously during council’ s discussion on McAnally’s performance evaluation.

She said the city will be seeking to hire a new police officer and, in the meantime, has contacted Alaska State Troopers to cover emergency calls.

“We’ve already done some proactive things such as contacting the DA’s office to make sure they work with the officer in charge to get ongoing cases taken care of so that all that hard work won’t be let go,” she said.

One Houston police officer already had taken a job in Fort Yukon and the other officer will be gone May 6. Thompson had asked McAnally recently to either lay off his two officers or cut everyone — including himself — to 20 hours per week to save the city money. He said he chose the latter because he didn’t want to put his men out on the street. They were starting families and one had just purchased a home, he said.

But because they were still on emergency call 24/7, they couldn’t get another part-time job to make up the drop in income. So they chose to leave, he said.

The department’s administrative support staff had been laid off already, so Capt. McAnally would have had to run the entire department by himself. Now that he’s been terminated for reasons he feels are unwarranted and possibly illegal, he’s fighting back.

The captain told the council after the vote that they had made a huge mistake.

“You guys have made a very unwise decision,” he said. “You will see for yourself that I was telling the truth about the FBI investigation. The agent I’ve been working with will be in court, too. He’s going to be there to help me win a lawsuit against you.”

While on his way to meet with a reporter to get his story on television, McAnally gave the Frontiersman his own parody dialogue for panels from the animated Disney film “The Emperor’s New Groove.”

The cartoon panels show a rather evil-looking female character representing Thompson telling a large man with a crown that she’d make him deputy mayor if she became mayor and that they’d immediately close the police department. McAnally’s dialogue has the female mayor figure claiming she’s so powerful nobody can stop her.

A smaller male character — presumably representing McAnally — tells her she still needs to obey the law and that he’ll be watching her.

The next panel has the female character grinning up at the crowned man, saying, “Jim, we have to get rid of the police captain. Let’s make up lies and run him off. If that doesn’t work we will take his budget and give him a bad evaluation.”

McAnally laughed and said the Frontiersman could run the parody as a letter to the editor submitted by him.

He said that although he realizes pursuing legal action against city officials could make it harder for him to find employment in the future, he feels it’s what he needs to do to not only vindicate himself, but stop the same thing from happening to other officers in the future.

“It is really a circus up there,” McAnally said. “They’ve ignored the city attorney and they’ve ignored common sense. I mean, how idiotic can they be to fire me for something I can easily prove I wasn’t lying about? This will be an extremely easy case for me to win because they’ve been so blatant with their harassment.”

McAnally said it could cost the city more than $100,000 to fight him in court.

“The citizens deserve better,” he said. “They don’t deserve to be managed by a cage full of monkeys. This needs to be addressed and fixed.”

In the meantime, a petition to recall Thompson from the council that had been submitted by Councilwoman Blanchard and Planning Commissioner Ralph Buzard and signed by 64 residents was certified by City Clerk Michelle DeLong. Council will set a date for a special recall election at its May 12 regular meeting.

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.