THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 28, 1996 TAG: 9603280350
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAC DANIEL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
Three Chesapeake police officers who were the focus of a recent department internal investigation have filed a court complaint against city officials, claiming that the release of some personnel records violated the state's Privacy Act.
The action, filed in Circuit Court late Tuesday by police Capt. William L. Spruill, Detective Ira T. Galbreath and Lt. Kenneth R. Kumm, asked the court to prohibit further distribution of the officers' personnel records.
The complaint alleges that personnel files were provided to the media last month for ``improper purposes, including, but not limited to, the advancement of a politically expedient agenda which bore no relationship to the restoration of public confidence.''
It does not identify who released the information, but named as defendants are: Chesapeake Vice Mayor Robert T. Nance Jr., City Attorney Ronald S. Hallman, interim City Manager Clarence V. Cuffee, personnel director Carolyn Darden, and police Maj. Melvin Hall, head of the department's records bureau.
``The plaintiffs and the rank and file of the Chesapeake Police Department felt it important to enforce the provisions of the (privacy) act,'' said Michael F. Imprevento, the plaintiffs' attorney. ``We feel that the release of these documents to further either a personal or political agenda was flatly wrong, and we will find the leak in the context of discovery.''
Spruill, Galbreath and Kumm were among five officers reprimanded in January after a two-month internal investigation into the department's handling of theft cases that resulted in the arrest of the sons of Spruill, Councilman John W. Butt and sheriff's Capt. William Brickhouse.
Alan Keith Butt, 27, and William Jeremy Brickhouse, 20, are charged with receiving stolen property allegedly taken in a 1994 burglary at Givens Honda in Chesapeake.
In a separate case, William Lawrence Spruill Jr., 23, the son of Capt. Spruill, was charged with grand larceny and breaking and entering in the theft of an all-terrain vehicle from the property of Vice Mayor Nance.
Capt. Spruill and Galbreath were issued permanent written reprimands by Chief Ian M. Shipley Jr. Kumm received a written reprimand that will be expunged from his personnel files in a year, according to city officials.
The City Council sought an independent investigation of the matter last month after Shipley failed to satisfy the council's concerns about the internal investigation, city officials said.
However, both the state police and the city's chief judge declined to conduct independent investigations of the matter.
State police officials said that, based on the information they received, the matter appeared to be more administrative than criminal, and Chief Judge Russell I. Townsend Jr. said that, based on the information he was provided, an investigation by a special grand jury was not necessary. by CNB