Discrimination claims within Alpharetta police raise questions of fairness

Several minority or female officers in Alpharetta alleged they received harsher discipline for missteps or fewer opportunities for promotion than some of their white colleagues — or were retaliated against for pointing out unequal treatment, according to the AJC’s review of the EEO charges and interviews with former officers.

Alpharetta officials deny the discrimination claims in each case, including a sexual harassment claim that the city settled for $125,000. They say the EEO complaints simply demonstrate that the former employees are disgruntled and couldn’t live up to Alpharetta’s high standards.

They also said the Department of Public Safety — which includes police, firefighters and communications officers — had fewer complaints come through the Internal Affairs Office last year than during any of the previous three years.

“When you’ve got people that are unhappy with the way their career in the city of Alpharetta went, I’m not surprised that they talk bad about us,” Mayor Jim Gilvin said.

However, two professors who research issues around race and policing reviewed summaries of cases provided by the AJC and concluded Alpharetta was meting out discipline unevenly.

“It’s not equal across the board,” said Asha Layne, an associate professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore, who has researched the cultural climate within Maryland State Police around diversity, equity and inclusion. “And because you do not have this equal treatment across the board, it becomes inequitable working in that environment.”

Layne and one of her Morgan State colleagues, Natasha Pratt-Harris, who investigated the community impact after the Department of Justice found a practice of unconstitutional policing at the Baltimore Police Department, both said officers jeopardize their careers by speaking up against discrimination.

“They take a gamble when they file these complaints and raise these concerns,” Layne said.

Former Alpharetta Police officer David Garcia, who is Latino, filed an EEO charge of racial discrimination after he was terminated in 2023, alleging he was harassed by management. Attorneys for the city say Garcia had been untruthful and had inadequately responded to a burglary call.

Garcia told the AJC he was fired without an internal investigation, unlike other officers.

“It has hindered me from ever stepping into this world again,” Garcia said of policing. “I feel disappointed because I gave eight years of my life to civil service.”

Credit: Daniel Varnado

Credit: Daniel Varnado

Maurice Bradford, a Black Alpharetta officer who filed an EEO complaint against the city, alleges in a separate federal lawsuit that he has been treated more harshly than some white officers in disciplinary matters. The suit claims he was the victim of racial discrimination and retaliation in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Bradford, who still works at the department, alleges he was demoted in 2020 from detective sergeant to a uniformed patrol officer because Alpharetta’s director of public safety didn’t like the way he worked a case. Bradford alleges a favored white colleague was promoted to take his place.

Attorneys for the city say Bradford failed to follow a direct order to “stand down” from a bank robbery investigation and instead went to a suspect’s apartment complex “in street clothes and his personal vehicle” to gather evidence.

Bradford’s lawsuit, filed in October, lists more than two dozen officers he argues were treated more favorably than him under the department’s policies.

The list includes three white supervisors, Sgt. Joshua McKamey, Sgt. Matthew Burger and Maj. Scott Mechler, none of whom were demoted like Bradford.

Last year, McKamey was suspended for three days without pay for planting a recording device in a wellness room at the city’s public safety headquarters to determine if two co-workers were in a sexual relationship. An internal investigation concluded McKamey violated department and city policies by making an unauthorized recording.

Burger, who was charged with DUI while off duty in 2023, was suspended for five days without pay. He also was suspended in 2005, 2009 and 2016 for past issues and in 2009 “was on a final warning for employment,” according to internal records.

Burger and McKamey did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Mechler reported in 2022 that he accidentally fired his service weapon, shattering his glass shower door because he forgot to unload it before practicing “drawing and dry firing.”

John Robison, Alpharetta’s director of public safety, said in an interview that he gave Mechler a “verbal counseling” after the accidental discharge.

“Obviously he made a mistake,” Robison said. “He fully admitted that.”

Mechler called the experience “remarkably humbling.”

“I violated the first rule of weapon safety, which is all guns are always loaded,” he said, adding: “I know better and I just plain old screwed up.”

Robison said every disciplinary case is different and his department thoroughly investigates every complaint against an officer. He said there are policies that guide discipline decisions, though he is the arbiter of punishment within the police department, which is approved for 114 sworn officer positions and has eight vacancies.

One of the EEO cases led to a $125,000 settlement with a former officer in 2021. The officer, who is Asian, alleged that a training officer told her Japanese women “loved him” when he was stationed in Japan on military duty.

A letter her attorney wrote to the city also alleged that he made derogatory comments about Asian drivers, told her she “looked pretty,” suggested she should buy a house in Alpharetta “so he could move in with her” and showed her a picture of some young Black men and said: “When I looked like this, you would have dated me back then.”

The AJC does not publish the names of sexual harassment victims without their consent. The officer in this case asked not to be identified.

After she expressed concerns about lapses in her training and asked her training officer to stop making racially and sexually derogatory comments, he allegedly documented that she was complaining about other training officers and gave her low ratings on her attitude, her attorney wrote.

The training officer denied making discriminatory comments, and an internal investigation did not sustain the woman’s allegations against him.

The department also informed the woman she was being fired for failure to meet expectations laid out in a performance training plan. Her attorney argued that she had been told the plan would last seven shifts but that she was fired after only two shifts, both of which were with the same training officer she had logged complaints against.

Alpharetta City Administrator Chris Lagerbloom said the city settled the case because the training officer died from COVID-19 before he could give a deposition. “We were in a position where we didn’t have a case because we didn’t have a witness,” Lagerbloom said.

Of the Alpharetta officers who filed EEO complaints, five are men and three are women. Five of the eight are minority officers. One former Puerto Rican officer said he was micromanaged and that a supervisor made a racially derogatory comment to him. A white female officer reported that she resigned in 2023 after being passed over for promotion for six years, and was retaliated against for speaking out about gender discrimination.

In at least five of the cases, the EEOC notified the former officers that it was dismissing their claims without judging the merits, and that they could sue in state or federal court.

Butch Ayers, executive director of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police, said charges of discrimination and questions about fairness within a department can hurt morale and raise questions about its leadership. He added that not all allegations have substance.

“Probably somewhere in the middle is the truth,” he said.