Houston lawsuit gets day in court, finally

PALMER — A former officer at the now-defunct Houston Police Department testified Wednesday and Thursday that he had been the unwitting victim of a cabal of city officials and firefighters.

Former police Capt. Charley McAnally is suing the city of Houston alleging claims of wrongful termination, emotional distress and damages, and a whistleblower. The city council voted 4-2 to fire McAnally on April 28, 2011, effectively eliminating the Houston Police Department. McAnally alleges near the time of his firing that city officials, including Houston Mayor Virgie Thompson and treasurer Carolyn Grabowski, were under investigation by the FBI, claims he reiterated under oath Wednesday morning, though he admitted under cross examination by Danielle Ryman, the attorney representing the city, that no charges had been filed.

McAnally’s testimony illumined his perspective on the Houston department’s final days. McAnally portrayed one of his subordinate officers as good at performing traffic duty, but of limited utility in investigating crimes. With another police officer — now employed with the Wasilla department — “I struggled to get him out of the nest,” McAnally told the court.

McAnally filed charges against Fire Chief Tom Hood and assistant chief Christian Hartley for embezzlement, but the district attorney declined to pursue them, he said.

“I was a victim of their crime,” he said. “It was the same as if they punched me in the face. They made me the victim of their crime.

When McAnally’s lawyer, Ken Jacobus, tried to ask about the means by which Hood and Hartley embezzled, Ryman successfully objected on the grounds of relevancy.

When officials told him he could either lay off other officers or cut the hours for all three remaining officers near the end of the department’s existence, McAnally said he opted for the latter, despite his reservations about his colleagues.

After a confrontation on New Year’s Day 2011, McAnally said he had spoken with four fire fighters about a confrontation between McAnally and an unidentified member of the public. In verbal testimony, the firefighters told him they were on his side, but all four latter wrote that he had lost his temper, according to McAnally.

He also described practices that imperiled a department already operating on a tight budget, including being ordered to “call the Houston rescue if I saw any damage on a vehicle, even so much as a busted tail light,” he said. “They have to do a fallout, so we have several fireman coming out. They’re volunteers, but every time they work there was a paycheck.”

“This was for the benefit of the fire department?” Jacobus asked. McAnally responded that it was.

During cross examination Wednesday afternoon and Tuesday morning, Ryman asked McAnally whether his decision to bring on two officers while removing several other staff had cost the city additional money. Ryman also sought to have several McAnally answers classified as “non-responsive” during her cross-examination when McAnally would seize on the question to make a rhetorical point about city officials. Ryman read several seemingly amiable emails between Hartley and McAnally, then asked if their relationship could be viewed as confrontational based on those emails.

“Based only on those emails and not his actions, I would say he sounds friendly,” he said.

Defense lawyers also played part of an unauthorized recording by McAnally of a meeting between himself, Thompson, and another officer, in which the officer says he feels unsupported. On the recording, which contained long silences, McAnally repeatedly asserts that he had never turned down a request for help, and that he was tired of “nursing” the junior officer.

After the court issued a pretrial judgment on three of McAnally’s four claims in March, and then denied a motion by the city to reconsider that judgment, the trial began Tuesday. While cases are in trial, particular motions are typically unavailable to the public, so the total amount of damages McAnally was asked for, and the potential results of those judgments weren’t immediately available Thursday. McAnally set his salary loss at about $16,000 during testimony Nov. 5.

McAnally’s lawsuit against the department has languished on the civil docket for years. Both parties had said in the past they were expecting the trial to begin almost exactly a year ago Wednesday.

Plaintiff testimony was expected to take up court time for the rest of this week, with defense testimony expected to begin Monday, attorneys said.

Calls to Thompson went unreturned Thursday evening. Fire Department officials directed questions about the lawsuit to Thompson.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269 or brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com.