SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) - Four South Bend police officers sued the northern Indiana city, saying that a city council member libeled them during a wiretapping investigation.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday by Officers Brian Young and Steve Richmond, St. Joseph County Metro Homicide Commander Tim Corbett and Assistant Commander Dave Wells alleges that Councilman Henry Davis Jr. committed libel in a 2012 letter to the Department of Justice accusing the officers of “racially based misconduct” in conversations the city recorded from their department phones. The four police officers are white and the councilman is black.
The lawsuit was filed against Davis and the city of South Bend by the four officers, who contend their conversations were illegally recorded. The four reached a $500,000 settlement with the city in December.
The wiretapping case began in early 2012 when Mayor Pete Buttigieg demoted the police chief in light of what he said was a federal investigation into the department’s phone recording practices.
Corbett, Richmond, Wells and Young alleged that the chief illegally recorded their private lines at the police department. A federal judge is currently determining whether the recordings should be released.
In the new lawsuit, the officers call Davis’s letter to the Justice Department a “rogue attempt to damage the plaintiffs by said unfounded accusations.”
Davis scoffed at the officers’ new allegation and said that making the phone recordings public would prove whether there was any wrongdoing on his part. “The truth is the best defense,” he told the South Bend Tribune (https://bit.ly/1jLbUJl ).
The letter asked the Department of Justice to investigate racial issues at the South Bend Police Department.
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Information from: South Bend Tribune, https://www.southbendtribune.com
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