By Wiley Hall, The Associated Press
BALTIMORE, Maryland (AP) - Former Police Commissioner Kevin Clark has filed a lawsuit claiming he was wrongfully fired last week and alleging that his dismissal may have been motivated by an attempt to disrupt an ongoing internal investigation, his lawyers said Wednesday.
In the suit filed Tuesday in Baltimore Circuit Court against Mayor Martin O’Malley, Clark asked the court to reinstate him as police commissioner and to award him $60 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
“Some people leave gracefully, and some choose to leave another way. I think it’s unfortunate for him and it’s just something we’ll have to deal with,” O’Malley told WBAL-TV.
City Solicitor Ralph S. Tyler told The Associated Press on Wednesday the suit is “totally lacking in merit. We will defend it aggressively and we will prevail.”
Clark, 48, has retained former Baltimore State’s Attorney Stuart O. Simms, former City Solicitor Neal Janey and defense attorney A. Dwight Pettit to represent him.
Clark accuses O’Malley of going beyond his authority by firing him and by instructing Tyler to intervene into an internal police probe of commanders who responded to a May 15 domestic incident at Clark’s home.
The suit alleges the mayor fired him unlawfully “at a critical stage of several sensitive investigations that were being conducted by the Baltimore Police Department. They included internal administrative investigations that involved not only instances of possible official misconduct but also possible criminal conduct,” according to the complaint.
Also, “the police department was also conducting several sensitive criminal investigations, one of which may lead to criminal charges against a city official,” the lawsuit said.
The suit claims Clark was fired within 48 hours after the chief of the department’s internal investigative division conferred with federal authorities for assistance on the probes.
Calls The AP made Tuesday evening to spokespeople for U.S. Attorney Thomas DiBiagio and the local office of the FBI seeking comment were not immediately returned.
O’Malley fired Clark on Nov. 10, saying the controversy surrounding domestic abuse allegations against the police chief were a distraction from the fight against crime.
Clark and his fiancee denied that he assaulted her in the May incident. He took a voluntary paid leave of absence while Howard County police, brought in as an independent agency, investigated. He returned to duty June 3 after the investigation could not document that an assault took place.
The city refused to release the Howard County report, but lost a legal battle with news organizations. When the media obtained the document Nov. 2, it revealed that officers who responded to the Clark home were certain they had heard the fiancee claim she had been assaulted. The report also indicated that Clark had been investigated for domestic problems when he was a New York City police officer, but gave no further details.
A week later, the mayor fired the police chief and named Deputy Commissioner Leonard Hamm as interim commissioner. Clark also filed a request Wednesday for a temporary restraining order that would block the city from replacing him.
In his seven-count complaint, Clark describes an increasingly acrimonious exchange of correspondence between himself, the mayor and the city solicitor, apparently over an internal investigation of “a certain commander” and his handling of the May 15 domestic dispute.
In one e-mail quoted in the lawsuit, the mayor asks “Why are we tearing apart your upper command staff ... when this could be resolved with education and training ... This is such a big distraction from the job that isn’t getting done.”
In another, the mayor says “My main point is, we’ve got big threats and bigger threats ... Let’s move on and get back to the people’s business.”
The suit also describes “circumstances that appear almost surreal” on Nov. 10, when Clark was intercepted upon his arrival to police headquarters by a SWAT team and prevented from entering his office. Other SWAT teams secured the satellite office of the department’s internal investigative division and the headquarters offices of the chiefs of education and training and computer crimes.
Police spokesman Matt Jablow confirmed Clark was escorted out of headquarters by members of the department’s SWAT team, formally called the Quick Response Team.
“I was told that is standard procedure,” Jablow said.
Tyler said the allegations in the suit were “absurd.”