Brevard PD "In Crisis," Say Critics Alleging Hostile Workplace, Dangerously Short Staffing and Missing Evidence

A police union's accusations are the latest of many signs of trouble at the agency. The city disputed claims of missing evidence and listed extensive efforts to improve morale.

Brevard Police Department’s former downtown headquarters

BREVARD — The letters a police union official sent last week to the local district attorney, the state labor commissioner and Brevard City Council members landed like bombshells.

Rick Tullis, president of the Mountain Chapter of the North Carolina Police Benevolent Association, wrote of “extreme mismanagement” of the Brevard Police Department and items missing from its evidence room.

The sudden implementation of an unpopular new shift schedule, he also wrote, was “clearly retaliation” against patrol officers who had complained about mold and other safety concerns in the Department’s former headquarters in the basement of City Hall, where, until last month, they sometimes continued to work.

But as alarming as these allegations may be, they are just the latest in a long series of troubling signs at what is now, Tullis said after Monday’s Council meeting, “a department in crisis.”

Public documents and interviews with former employees revealed the following issues, including plunging morale, short staffing and inappropriate behavior on the part of high-ranking officers enabled by Police Chief Tom Jordan:

• Two female officers filed formal Human Resources complaints in late 2022, one of them alleging sexually explicit comments and unwanted physical contact from Capt. Danny Godman and a since-retired captain, both of whom reported directly to Jordan. Though their complaints were determined to be unfounded, these women and other former city employees describe the Department’s work environment as rife with hostility and intimidation.

• Two days after Jordan suggested that Godman had been all but cleared in a state commission’s hearing about reported abuse in a 2023 Blue Ridge Community College law-enforcement training program, this commission voted to revoke all three of Godman’s state instructional certifications. A former Brevard officer said she was also subjected to excessive violence in an earlier class Godman taught at the school.

• The department received rock-bottom scores in a 2023 employee satisfaction survey conducted by the city. Only 12 percent of Department employees, for example, agreed “there is open and honest two-way communication” and six percent said they felt “supported in maintaining a healthy work-life balance.”

• The resulting high turnover and continued  vacancies have imperiled employees by cutting the number of patrol officers on each shift from four to, in some cases, two, several retired officers told the Council Monday. Jordan said the schedules are being managed to maintain officer safety, but Transylvania County Sheriff Chuck Owenby said he’s had no need to shuffle staff. “I have no vacancies whatsoever right now,” he said. “I’m full.”

Jordan, addressing the claim that the shift schedule change was retaliatory, said it has been in the works for months. No officers are currently working in the old office, he added, and there is no proof of misplaced evidence in open cases, a matter he is set to discuss in an upcoming meeting with District Attorney Andrew Murray.

City Manager Wilson Hooper said state law prohibits him from commenting on the details of personnel matters, but he is aware of low morale at the Department. And when city leaders saw the results of last year’s employee survey, he said, “we knew we needed to get to work.”

That work has included the creation of an advisory group that allows Department employees to share feedback with leadership, expanded training opportunities, an enhanced departmental awards program, as well as the opening of a new police headquarters on Commerce Street, east of downtown Brevard. The city also held mandatory training for all employees last year to address workplace harassment, Human Resources Director Kelley Craig wrote in an email.

But while Jordan also framed the new shift schedule as an example of the city’s concern for employees, retired officers and Tullis’ letter say it demonstrates just the opposite.

A poll of the Department officers represented by PBA showed none of them were asked for input about the schedule change, Tullis wrote to Council members, and 82 percent of them do not support it.

Council members should create an independent personnel board to investigate conditions at the Department because “the employees of the BPD have lost faith” in the impartiality of city administration, he wrote, before concluding that “the current management style of the agency has gone on long enough.”

Rich Tullis, president of the Mountain Chapter of the North Carolina Police Benevolent Association

“Incredibly Terrified”

Former Brevard Police Officer Sydney Fox said she enjoyed working at the Department for several months after she was hired as a trainee in August of 2021 and as she transitioned to a position as a full-time patrol officer.

But the following summer, she said, Godman and since-retired Captain Steve Woodson began carrying on sexually explicit conversations in her presence in the cramped break room in the Department’s former headquarters.

As time passed, she wrote in a detailed timeline she prepared for the complaint she filed with city Human Resources, Woodson began to “rub my shoulders while I was sitting down, play with my ponytail . . . and mess with my hands or arms.”

Though Godman did not respond to a request for comment, Woodson said Fox’s accusations were “fabrications . . . that were not true in any shape, form or fashion.”

“All I did was one time pat her on the shoulder and tell her good job on some report,” he said.

The single instance of him flipping her ponytail, he said, was a non-sexual, playful gesture like a subsequent one directed at a male officer. “I took his hat and turned it around backward.”

He never carried on explicit conversations with Godman in the headquarters, he said, and never witnessed any improper touching on the part of his fellow captain.

But Fox listed more examples in her timeline.

“On several occasions Godman would come up behind me and place me in a choke hold,” she wrote, and he repeatedly took hold of the protective carrier vest she wore outside her uniform.

“When he would grab the outer carrier his hands would touch my chest/breasts, which made me very uncomfortable,” she wrote.

 When she went to Jordan to confide in him about the “stalking-like” behavior of a former boyfriend, she said, he invited Godman into his office. The captain later spread the news of her personal life to other officers, she said, and he once took her aside to tell her that, because her boyfriend was cheating on her, she needed to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

She objected to that remark, she said, but didn’t confront Godman or Woodson about the comments or touching, which the two men played off as joking interactions.

This was partly because of their positions as high-ranking officers, she said, while “I was on the bottom of the totem pole.” Also, she said, Godman has a reputation for retaliation.

Yes, he does, said Tasha Wickline (previously Little), a former city HR specialist. The more than half dozen officers who came into her office to lodge informal complaints about Godman, she said, were “incredibly terrified because Danny told them he would pull their certifications.”

Veteran female officer Lee Kruse said she also filed a complaint with HR, alleging not sexual harassment but a hostile work environment. She cited a long history of pointed exclusion from criminal investigations during her five years as a detective and repeated gratuitous insults, such as, she said, “ ‘Shut up, you’re not paid to think.’ ”

“I don’t know why the man hated me,” Kruse said of Godman, “but he hated me.”

“They bullied her,” said Rick Harbin, a former patrol lieutenant who retired in May after 12 years at the Department. “They bullied Lee right out the door.”

Though neither he nor the several current officers interviewed off the record witnessed the inappropriate touching Fox alleged, Harbin said she did tell him about it while it was happening.

And by the time she filed her complaint in December of 2022, Wickline said, the emotional toll was obvious.

“Her hair was falling out. She literally looked like the walking dead,” Wickline said.

Working with Godman also took a toll on her, said Wickline, who left the city in late 2023 but remains in contact with officers and said she feels safe to talk only because she now lives several hours east of Brevard.

Godman repeatedly slammed doors in her face and once blasted an inappropriate song, Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy), when she entered headquarters on city business, Wickline said. For a two-week period after she complained about such actions to her supervisor, Wickline would leave work to find Godman’s truck idling next to her vehicle in the employee parking lot.

“He made sure he was right behind me,” she said, “and he followed me pretty much as close as he possibly could until I turned onto my street.”

The Investigation

Brevard City Manager Wilson Hooper

Craig confirmed in an email that Woodson and Godman, both promoted to captain in August of 2022, “served non-disciplinary paid administrative leave” for several weeks in early 2023.

Though confidentiality requirements prevented her from releasing the reason for their leave, Craig wrote that during that same period the city engaged a Charlotte-based HR firm to investigate “allegations of harassment.”

The company was recommended by the North Carolina League of Municipalities, she wrote, and had “no previous connection with anyone on staff.”

The firm was chosen specifically because of its long experience with such investigations, Hooper said, who added it was “not factual” that Jordan had recommended the firm, as Fox and Wickline alleged.

But the company certainly seemed to be working on the city’s behalf, said Fox, who immediately resigned and moved out of the county after learning that, because of the investigation’s negative findings, she was expected to continue to work with Godman and Woodson.

During the initial interview, the woman conducting the investigation appeared to be genuinely concerned, Fox said.

“But the second interview was more of her trying to disprove my statements,” Fox said. “She told me someone else had told her that what I was saying was false and I was like, ‘How is that possible when it happened to me?’ ”

Blue Ridge

The inquiry into abuse at the Blue Ridge training program raised questions both about Godman’s role and Jordan’s statements about it.

A letter from a division of the state Department of Justice informing the college of the program’s suspension, said the investigation had revealed the training “subjected students to oral and physical abuse, violated commission rules for instructors . . . and caused multiple significant injuries to students.”

When it was reported in early August that Godman was one of the six teachers whose state instructional certifications had been suspended as a result of the investigation, Jordan emphasized that the action was temporary. A scheduled hearing of the state Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Commission, he said, might determine “there is no issue at all.”

That appeared to be the case on Aug. 21, the day after the first session of the hearing. Jordan said then that though he could not comment on the details of the confidential proceedings, the outcome was “very positive.” Godman’s instructional certifications had been restored, Jordan also said, “and he will continue in his role as the Brevard Police Department training coordinator.”

But even then he had a copy of a document, later shared with NewsBeat, showing the Commission’s Probable Cause Subcommittee had found “probable cause” for the allegations. It also recommended a three-year suspension of the state certification needed for Godman to teach Subject Control/Arrest Training classes, the main subject of the investigation.

Two days later, Jordan released an “amended statement” clarifying that Godman would only continue as training coordinator “if he so chooses.”

But by that time the Commission had voted to revoke all three of Godman’s state instructional licenses.

How did Jordan explain his comments? The recommended suspension of Godman’s SCAT certification would not have prevented him from continuing as training coordinator, he wrote, and Commission votes typically affirm Subcommittee recommendations.

He didn’t find out differently, he said, until he read media reports of the revocations imposed on Godman and two other instructors. (Transylvania Sheriff’s Office Capt. Chase Owen, who did not teach SCAT classes, was one of three named instructors cleared by the Commission.)

Mikael Gross, the Raleigh-based lawyer representing Godman and two other instructors facing loss of their certifications, told the Transylvania Times earlier this month that he had appealed the Commission's decision to override the Subcommittee, which he added “undermines the credibility of the Commission.”

The letter to Blue Ridge summarizing the investigation said the injuries came at the hands of “non-certified role players.” And Gross, who did not return an email or calls to his office, told the Times that ”my clients have nothing to do with the selection of the role players.”

He also said that the instructors had received positive reviews from cadets who attended the class.

Though Commission Chairman Chris Blue said that he could not speak about the findings that led to the revocations, Jordan wrote that the Commission had determined Godman did nothing wrong “other than violate a technical rule. There was no substantiation that he had injured, harmed, or harassed anyone.”

“Just Awful”

But Fox has seen Godman in action during the SCAT classes that are part of the Basic Law Enforcement Training (BLET) program required for state certification.

She was not in the 2023 sessions that were the subject of the state investigation, but she and her classmates at the Blue Ridge program endured similarly excessive violence in their 2021 SCAT classes, which were captured on a video aired earlier this year by WLOS TV News.

Godman was an active participant in the training and, Fox said, can be seen grappling with one of the cadets in the video, which also shows instructors standing next to role players administering blows.

At the end of one SCAT session, she said, “they literally had to pick me up and carry me outside because I couldn’t move.”

She and her classmates didn’t question the violent treatment because it was presented as a make-or-break challenge on the path to certification, she said. “We were manipulated into thinking that this is what SCAT is supposed to be all about.”

It’s not, said Tim Powers, deputy chief of the police department at Emory University in Atlanta, who previously served as Criminal Justice program coordinator at Brevard College.

After viewing the WLOS video emailed to him by NewsBeat, he wrote that he agreed with a law-enforcement expert interviewed by the station who said the training unnecessarily exposed cadets to danger.

He remembers Fox, who received a four-year criminal justice degree from Brevard as a “great student,” he said, and vouched for her credibility. He also remembers a years-long pattern of battered cadets returning to his classes after completing SCAT training at Blue Ridge.

“It was every single class . . . they came back bruised all over, cut up. I know I had one young lady with a broken nose,” he said.

“They were saying, ‘We did it, man. We did great,’ and I was like, Jesus, if you’re happy about it, that’s awesome,” he said. “But that’s awful.”

Thumbs-Down Reviews

The results of the employee survey released in response to a public records request do not single out Godman or any other employee by name.

But they do reveal deep dissatisfaction with leadership and working conditions.

As Hooper pointed out in an email, not all the responses were negative, with 81 percent of Department employees agreeing that they “know what they need to do to be successful” in their roles and 63 percent stating their jobs allow them to contribute to the community.

But the lowest scores were very low — far below the “benchmark” ratings among Brevard workers as a whole and even farther below the average scores of other public agencies.

Only six percent of Department workers reported that they have “confidence in the elected leaders of the city,”  19 percent that they “receive appropriate recognition for good work,” and 18 percent that city leaders “demonstrate that people are important to the organization’s success.”

Because the city pledged anonymity to respondents to encourage participation, Hooper wrote that he was “disappointed” that comments from the survey obtained by the records request would be published at all.

But to comply with state confidentiality laws, the comments had been screened for names of both their sources and subjects. Several of the remarks also merely echo the public statements of retired officers and/or point directly to issues the city has worked to address.

For example: “We continue to lose employees due to the administration in the department. We have officers working 120-160 hours per (two week) pay period to fill shifts.”

Yes, the city has struggled to fully staff shifts, Jordan wrote. But the Sheriff’s deputies are on hand to provide backup when necessary and until recently the Department was able to fill empty slots with officers volunteering to work overtime. The Department, he wrote, only began requiring officers to take on additional hours “after we received input from patrol lieutenants that we needed to to bite the bullet and just do mandated overtime shifts.”

Hooper wrote last week that the department, funded for 25 sworn officer positions, currently has three vacancies. Recruitment will continue to be a challenge, especially with the loss of the Blue Ridge program, he wrote.

But the city has instituted a program that provides pay and benefits to cadets while they attend BLET and has been able to hire six new officers in the last 12 months, he wrote. “We’re hanging in there.”

Another comment from the survey: “Our office is absolutely disgusting and shameful.”

Such feedback prompted Hooper to initiate the move to the new office at a cost of $150,000 for renovation and $125,000 in annual lease payments.

Work stations have been available for patrol officers in the new building for several months, Jordan said, and he has been encouraging his troops to use them.

“There was no reason for them to loiter, linger or just hang out over there,” he said of the old office, and when he sent an email on Aug. 8 advising them to stay out of the old building “it was was a reiteration of something that we had already told them, like, all the way back in June.”

The Evidence

Retired Brevard Police Lieutenant Rick Harbin

The change from the old “DuPont” shift schedule to a “Panama” schedule, Jordan wrote, reduces the number of times that officers are required to move from night to day duty and was implemented to “promote better health and wellness.”

Though his decision came in the form of an “executive order” relayed by email last month, he wrote, it was based on both the results of the survey and more recent conversations with individual officers.

But Harbin, echoing comments of current officers interviewed, said “everybody that worked shifts was happy with the DuPont schedule, where you get a week off every month that gives you time to decompress.”

The new schedule is both an example of the Department’s “my way or the highway” management style, Harbin said, and the erosion of trust in its leadership.

Tullis took up this theme in comments to Council on Monday.

He said after the meeting he could not provide additional information about the missing evidence because it is being forwarded to the district attorney for potential investigation.

But commenting on Jordan’s previous published statements that he was not aware of missing evidence, Tullis told Council “we have documents in our possession that are public record that contradict his statements.”

“Not only was he aware,” Tullis continued, “We have documents that show he acted in a manner to subvert and block the efforts of his staff.”

Not so, Jordan said later.

The Department has been conducting an audit of the evidence room’s contents both because it is being moved to the new building and because it is being managed by a new employee.

Evidence from closed cases is routinely destroyed with written permission from the district attorney’s office, he said, and in some instances the city does not have the statements documenting this approval.

“We’re talking about items that she (the evidence room specialist) is trying to find paperwork for, from, like 2018. It’s old stuff and we're just verifying that it was appropriately destroyed,” he said.

“If the audit finds that there is in fact missing property, we will notify the appropriate authoritative body and go from there.”

Email: brevardnewsbeat@gmail.com

Taking a break. I’ll be gone for the next 12 days on a vacation/work trip, riding and reporting on a bike trail in New York state. I will respond to emails, but won’t be publishing any new stories until after I return.