By Ben Nuckols
Associated Press Writer
BALTIMORE (AP) -- The Maryland State Police should release the files detailing its investigation into a trooper who uttered a racial slur in a voicemail message for a black woman and disclose how the trooper was disciplined, the ACLU of Maryland argued in a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
Last November, state police Sgt. John Maiello left Teleta Dashiell a voicemail and apparently thought he had hung up when he had not. He can be heard using the N-word in conversation with another trooper.
Dashiell, of Princess Anne, filed a complaint, and state police told her that the incident was investigated and that her complaint had been sustained. The agency also indicated that Maiello, who remains a state trooper, had been disciplined, but it did not say how.
Dashiell and the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland filed public information requests for details on how the complaint was handled and how Maiello was disciplined, but the agency refused, saying it was a confidential personnel matter.
The lawsuit, filed in Baltimore County Circuit Court, attempts to compel state police to release the information.
State police spokesman Greg Shipley said Wednesday that the agency released everything it was permitted by law to disclose and detailed its reasons for denying Dashiell's public information requests in two letters to her attorneys.
"We have not refused to cooperate in this case," Shipley said. "We have done everything within our power, under the law, to provide all the information and details as to our investigative and administrative actions in this case."
The files Dashiell is requesting are protected from disclosure under both Maryland's public information law and the Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights, according to the letters from police to her attorneys. Disclosing the investigative file would inhibit candor in the decision-making process and dissuade witnesses from cooperating in internal investigations, police argued.
According to the lawsuit, Dashiell is a "person in interest" under Maryland law, which gives her legal standing to view the files because she is the subject of the records. State police argue in their letter that she was not a "person in interest" because Maiello, not Dashiell, was under investigation.
But the lawsuit also makes the broader argument that the file should be accessible to the public.
"Our view is that they are public documents that others who are interested in seeing how the state police investigates complaints should also be able to see," said Deborah Jeon, legal director of the ACLU of Maryland.
Another case that pits the ACLU against state police could have bearing on this lawsuit, Jeon said. Next week, the Maryland Court of Appeals is set to hear arguments over whether state police should release investigative files relating to troopers who were the subject of racial profiling complaints. ACLU attorneys are representing the state NAACP in that case.
The ACLU and the state police have butted heads over a number of issues, including the agency's covert surveillance of political activists that police acknowledged were improperly labeled as terrorists.
According to the lawsuit, police spoke with Dashiell on Nov. 2, 2009, as troopers were searching for an alleged fugitive. She told the troopers she had no information about the person's whereabouts.
The next day, Maiello called Dashiell's cell phone and left the message, in which he asked her to call him back before he could be heard using the racial slur. Dashiell made a formal complaint a few days later, and in February, she received a letter indicating that her allegations had been confirmed and that "the appropriate disciplinary action was taken against Sgt. Maiello."
The agency's refusal to be more specific means "there's something wrong with the complaint process," Jeon said.
"Just the notion that a citizen can make a complaint with the police agency, that the complaint would be sustained, but the complainant would not get to know what action the agency took, just doesn't make any sense," she said.
Published: Fri, Oct 29, 2010
