By Associated Press - Friday, August 21, 2020

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A jury will decide if the new police chief in Virginia’s capital city acted with malice when he ordered the detention of a mother on a charge of child abuse for leaving her children unattended in a car briefly while asking for directions to a birthday party.

On Tuesday, the N.C. Court of Appeals overturned the “public official immunity” that a lower court granted Richmond Police Chief Gerald Smith, protecting him from liability in a civil lawsuit, the Richmond Times Dispatch reported Friday. The lawsuit alleges “angry, aggressive and hostile” behavior toward the woman that “stemmed at least in part from racial or socioeconomic biases.”

The initial appeal accused Smith of bullying subordinate officers, who disagreed with him, lying to support his version of events, and asking a witness to lie.

The misdemeanor charge filed against the woman, who is white, was ultimately dropped by prosecutors. Smith, who is Black and was a captain with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, Police Department at the time, was reprimanded for breaking with department procedure.

“Six years ago, I wrote a mother a citation for leaving her 1- and 3-year-old in an unattended, non-running, hot car,” Smith said in a phone interview Thursday. “If the same thing happened today, I would take the same steps to protect those children.”

The ruling comes less than two months into Smith’s tenure and as he attempts to quiet protests against police brutality and misconduct. Smith took over the Richmond Police Department on July 1, becoming the city’s third chief in three weeks.

“There are wide-reaching issues of justice and liberty at stake in this case,” opined N.C. Judge Richard Dietz on behalf of the Court of Appeals, writing that the three-judge panel sided with the plaintiffs, the woman and her husband, despite repeated procedural errors by their lawyer that would have otherwise seen the case dismissed. “Specifically, the lawsuit alleges serious misconduct and abuse of power by the government in violation of both the U.S. Constitution and (North Carolina’s) common law.”

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