Jeff to discipline 7 workers over rope

Section: SoundOFF

Meghan Gordon

Jefferson Parish will initiate disciplinary proceedings against seven supervisors after finding that a knotted rope and other items brought to light by a public works employee violated a parish policy forbidding offensive and harassing materials in the workplace.

The parish released a two-paragraph report Thursday containing the findings of an internal investigation into allegations by Terrence Lee, an African-American sewerage employee who said he felt racial hostility from his supervisors. Lee made public photos he took of what he called a noose, bullwhip, whipping post and dartboard with the image of an African-American man pinned to its bull's eye.

The report said the investigative team led by Darryl Ward, a deputy chief administrative assistant who is black, found a "butt-kicking mechanism" that includes a "knotted pull rope," a sign saying "BILL'S WHIPPING POST," a whip attached to a rope, and a dartboard with the image of a man holding a fish. The report does not give the angler's race.

Danatus King, Lee's attorney, criticized the parish for using vague terms, ostensibly to lessen the items' impact.

"The rope is not just a rope. It's clearly a noose," he said. "The spin that they're trying to put on it to diminish the severity, the terrorism, that those objects perpetuated is discouraging."

The parish did not release the names of the seven employees facing disciplinary action.

But Scott McQuaig, a lawyer hired by superintendent Bill Hartline, general superintendent Glenn Miller and foreman Michael Chauvin, said that because the report doesn't address Lee's claims of intimidation and harassment based on race, the parish did not substantiate those allegations.

"The parish investigative team interviewed over 50 witnesses and spent a week delving into these matters, and what they found was technical violations," McQuaig said. "They found no hurtful or hateful intent. They found no hostile work environment. They found no presence of a noose."

Meanwhile, the seven employees must schedule predisciplinary hearings before Tim Whitmer, top aide to Parish President Aaron Broussard, a process that Civil Service rules hide from public view. The parish expects to conclude the hearings by Nov. 26. The supervisors then may appeal any punishments to the parish Personnel Board.

Broussard said he wants the seven hearings to proceed just as quickly as the investigation's first stage, in which Ward interviewed about 50 parish employees who passed the objects on a daily basis.

"It's obvious that we have wasted no time in aggressively doing a lot of interviews, even over the period of a holiday," Broussard said.

The report ignores the question of who owns the objects. Rather, it says the seven supervisors were in the line of authority to uphold the parish policy prohibiting offensive materials.

"These individuals were in the position to ensure compliance with parish policy and work rules, but did not do so," the report says.

Broussard declined to describe the range of punishments that administrators are considering. He said he gave Whitmer full discretion to make those decisions after meeting with each of them.

King said all seven deserve to be fired, even if they did not own the items or install them in the office. He said all would have had occasion to see them because they hang in an office visited daily by workers picking up keys to parish vehicles. Lee has said they were there when he was hired more than six years ago.

McQuaig said his clients deny owning any of the items, which must have been put in the office by previous supervisors as practical jokes and never taken down.

Hartline was suspended with pay during the investigation, McQuaig said. The other six remain at work, Broussard said.

McQuaig described King's language as "race-baiting" designed to lay the foundation for a lawsuit for damages.

"It takes a person with a predisposition to find prejudice to find prejudice in a piece of rope," McQuaig said.

This week, the Jefferson Parish Council gave the parish attorney authority to negotiate a contract with two attorneys from the Phelps Dunbar firm to handle possible litigation over Lee's complaint.

The FBI also launched its own investigation to determine whether the allegations fit within the federal hate crimes definition.