Spokane mayor: Rachel Dolezal should resign from city commission
SPOKANE, Wash. -- Amid a national controversy, the City of Spokane said Wednesday that an investigation has found Rachel Dolezal acted inappropriately while serving on the city's Police Ombudsman Commission.
CBS affiliate KREM-TV reported that the independent investigation examined a whistle-blower complaint filed in April by a city employee against three members of the commission: Dolezal, who serves as chair, Kevin Berkompas and Adrian Dominguez.
Dolezal is facing controversy over allegations by her own parents that she misled people about her race. She stepped down as president of the local NAACP chapter on Monday amid the allegations.
Investigators began looking into the claims on May 4 and found "behavioral misconduct during interactions with city employees" by the three commissioners, according to a city press release issued Wednesday.
The report "found a revealing a pattern of misconduct and harassment that might be viewed only as rude or unprofessional were it not for the ongoing pattern." Read the investigators' report here.
"We are deeply disturbed by the facts contained in the report of findings from the independent investigator," Spokane Mayor David Condon and Council President Ben Stuckart said in a joint statement. "The conduct is unacceptable and falls far short of the community's expectations of volunteers who sit on City boards and commissions."
At an afternoon news conference, Condon and Stuckart called on the three commissioners to resign.
"She didn't even have the guts to apologize to her own community," Stuckart said when asked about Dolezal flying to New York on for an interview, rather than speak to the NAACP chapter.
Condon and Stuckart said they do not believe that a more thorough background check would have revealed actions of the misconduct. Both men admitted that the misconduct finding is a huge setback for the city's efforts to regain trust and accountability within the community on police matters.
The commissioners began serving on the panel on September 15, 2014. Berkompas' and Dominguez's terms are up in September 2017; Dolezal's term expires on September 15, 2016.
Tuesday night, Spokane's Human Rights Commission passed a resolution calling on Dozezal to resign from the Office of Police Ombudsman Commission.
"While we do not aim to judge the validity of allegations brought against you, we believe that the resulting controversy, as well as ongoing whistle-blower and ethics investigations, damage your ability to be an effective Chair or Commissioner," the HRC said in a statement.
City officials said they are investigating whether Dolezal may have violated any city policy or code of ethics when she applied to lead the commission. The investigation was forwarded from the City Council to the City's Ethics Commission Monday.
In other news, the AP reports that more than a decade ago, Howard University's lawyers questioned whether Dolezal had tried to pose as African-American when she applied for admission to the historically black college in the U.S. nation's capital.
Dolezal had sued the university, claiming among other things that she had been denied a teaching position because she was white. During a deposition, Howard's lawyers pressed her to explain whether she had tried to mislead the admissions office with an essay on her study of black history.
Her lawsuit against Howard never reached trial; a court said she failed to prove her claims and ordered her to pay the university's legal costs.