Markeshia Ricks Photo
Poindexter’s attorney, Segar.
A rookie cop facing termination because of her alleged connections to men with extensive criminal pasts may be giving up her fight against being fired. Or not.
A hearing was scheduled at police headquarters Tuesday night on Police Chief Dean Esserman’s request to fire the officer, Najea Poindexter. The Board of Police Commissioners agreed to postpone the hearing until April at the request of her attorney, Marshall Segar.
Segar said Poindexter, who did not attend the meeting, “was weighing options and considering information from the city.” After the Police Board of Commissioners granted the request, Segar declined to elaborate on what options his client was considering, or what information had been received from the city. But he said that the decision to postpone the hearing another month was one that was mutually arrived at with the city.
Chief Esserman said that one option that Poindexter has always had has been the option to resign. He declined to comment further, saying that he wanted to be respectful of Poindexter, and emphasizing that it was her attorney who requested the continuance.
A 400-plus-page internal affairs (IA) report into Poindexter’s relationships, obtained by the Independent under the Freedom of Information Act, included information about 17 phone conversations she had between Dec. 1, 2014 and Jan. 17, 2015, with a jailed convicted murderer. They allegedly discussed whether to resume a romantic relationship. Poindexter was already in hot water over an arrest of her current boyfriend, whom police arrested for allegedly having large amounts of cocaine and heroin in her car after top cops had warned her to stay away from him. IA investigators concluded that Poindexter violated Rule 15, Section 19 of the department’s rules of conduct, which prohibits employees from “consort[ing] with hoodlums, criminals or other unsavory characters unless such association is specifically required as a matter of police duty”; and Section 5, which prohibits employees from “engag[ing] in any conduct that would cause to discredit, lower or injure the morale of the Department or that of any individual of the Department.”
Poindexter maintained she had done nothing wrong. She requested that hearings to fire her be conducted in public. The hearings began two weeks ago, when commissioners heard testimony from the sergeant who conducted the department’s internal investigation. (Read about that here.)
Poindexter, who has been temporarily assigned to desk duty pending the outcome of her IA case, was found to have “consorted with individuals involved in criminal activity” and to have “publicly discredited the department through both news articles and public response,” Attorney Jared Lucan, who represented the department, said at the initial hearing.
After two hours of testimony and cross examination of the investigating officer that raised questions about the quality of the investigation, Esserman asked commissioners to continue the hearing. Poindexter (at left in photo, at that hearing), who had requested that her termination hearing be public, had been expected to testify.
On, Off, On … What?!
Some Poindexter supporters got a surprise when they arrived at 1 Union Ave. Tuesday night for the scheduled 7 p.m. hearing. The hearing had been postponed, but nobody told them, they said. Several of them arrived just before Poindexter’s hearing would have started, just missing the board’s decision to grant Segar’s request for a postponement of the hearing.
Though Poindexter’s attorney ultimately asked for the postponement, behind the scenes people were raising concerns that the commissioners would be violating the Freedom of Information Act if it proceeded with the hearing.
That’s because of how the meeting was noticed.
First the board issued a public notice, on March 2, saying it would held a regular meeting at 6 p.m. and Poindexter’s hearing at 7 p.m.
Then it posted a new notice on Monday (March 9) saying the hearing would be postponed.
But Tuesday morning, the city clerk’s office received an email message that the special hearing was in fact still on. And technically it was, but ultimately was postponed by Segar’s request at the meeting Tuesday evening.
A woman who identified herself as Poindexter’s cousin (and declined to give her name) said when she arrived at police headquarters she was told that the hearing was cancelled. She was not informed that she could attend. Several of her family members, including her aunt, were still upstairs at the ongoing Board of Commissioner’s meeting.
“This makes me ask, ‘What are they hiding?’ First you have a a two-hour hearing where all you get to hear is testimony from one person against Najea. Then you shut down that hearing so you can gather more facts? And now you cancel this?” she remarked.
Board of Commissioners Chair Anthony Dawson said the board wasn’t attempting to hide anything. Given the confusion with the notices, accepting Attorney Segar’s recommendation to postpone the meeting was prudent, Dawson said.
Previous coverage of this case:
• Cop’s Connection To Drug Arrest Sparks IA Probe
• Cop Was Warned About Companion’s Dealing
• Esserman Moves To Fire Rookie Cop
• Probe Question: What Did Rookie Know, & When?