Henry v. MOA - Henry's Attorney Destroys Author of Brown Report

A trial builds.  A victory one day seems less important after a few more witnesses.  But this afternoon in court I heard a withering barrage of disparaging questions that Rick Brown didn't have good answers for. This was a bit confusion, because Ray Brown - one of Anthony Henry's attorneys - asked the questions of Rick Brown, the 'consultant' hired by the Municipality in 2014.  Also, this didn't happen live in court.  It was a video of Rick Brown's deposition.  Also, we haven't heard the Municipal Attorney's cross examination of Rick Brown.

Basically, at the end of the day - and there are 50 minutes of that tape left for Tuesday - Rick Brown appeared:
1.  Unprepared for an investigation this complex.
2.  To rely on a few people as his trusted guides to the APD and Alaska National Guard
3.  Set up to target Anthony Henry as though his job was to show he was the bad guy and so he was biased from the beginning to believe things said about Henry, but not believe Henry
4.  Reliant on interviews for information
5  Not to have sought much verification
6.  Overly reliant on Dep. Municipal Attorney Christiansen and reworded the final report to reflect things she wanted him to put in, even though, as Ray Brown asserted, and Rick Brown didn't answer very effectively, he hadn't actually found information to support the allegation

Some possible explanations for Rick Brown's poor performance:
1.  He was jet lagged from flying to Anchorage (I don't recall any details of when the deposition took place.  I suspect it might have been on the video, but from where I sat, I couldn't read it - or how long he was here for the deposition.  I'm even assuming it took place in Anchorage.
2.  He just was out of his depth in doing an investigation like this
3.  He was here to collect a fee and give the MOA whatever they wanted
4.  Other?

Just to give you a sense of the deposition, I've copied just a short snipped of my rough notes.  I cleaned them up a bit - it went really fast and I didn't label which Brown was talking, hoping I'd remember from the context.  And in this section I think it worked.  Remember this is not verbatim or complete, just as much as I could get in the rapid fire questions. Q=Attorney Ray Brown, A= Witness Rick Brown.  I've missed some exact details, but this gives a sense of what the deposition was like:

Q: Did APD reports you received mention the Natl Guard?  Did they mention investigation into other members of the Natl Guard?   Did you ever see documents provided by anyone besides Carson, McMillan, Steve Payne that they were investigating anyone in NG other than EP?
A: Yes.  Not investigating but going to look to see if anything was there.
Q:  Your report says Henry was being deceptive to you because he had stopped one case going forward because he disclosed it to Katkus.  You say the case that dried up.  What part dried up?
A:  EP said he had the ability to transport drugs in military vehicles.
Q:  Did you ever hear that from EP?  Only person you heard that from was Jack Carson, right?
A:  Can’t remember if him alone or also McMillan.  Not 100% sure.  All audios of all EP contacts tape recorded.  Listened to all the interviews.
Q:  To explanation of scope of his drug dealing?  Nothing in any of these audios that suggests he could move drugs in NG vehicles.  If you're investigator, that’s pretty big stuff to know.  Never saw it from EP’s mouth.  Wouldn’t that be important to document?  Especially if others ….
You talked to "P" directly, could have asked him when it occurred, if he continued to cooperate with the investigation.  Was there any info that he stopped cooperating with SAU, FBI, Safe street?
A:  Early March he stopped cooperating.
Q:  Who told you that?  Let me guess - Jack Carson.
A:  Carson or McMillan.  He quit cooperating with SAU investigation.
Q:  What did he stop cooperating in?
A:  I had no ability to investigate the NG.  Cooperating with SAU investigation
Q:  Any evidence that he cooperated?  Wouldn’t it be helpful to have evidence?
Did you look at the police report?
A:  Yes Reports with # Feb 23, 2010.
Q:  What did EP stop doing?
A:  Early March stopped cooperating.
Q:  From Feb to March?  Did you interview - Carson and MacMillan wasn’t a rogue investigation - they were working with SAU.  Interview SAU people.  Eric Smith former SAU.  Why didn’t you ask if there was a separate investigation.
Q:  Did you ask EP if he stopped cooperating?
A:  No
Q:  Why not?  Did you ask Redick if there was a separate investigation?  I
A:   don’t know.  

Ray Brown's tone was derisive the whole way - implying, and sometimes saying explicitly - that a good investigator would have asked this question or asked for proof or would have done this or that.




I'm thinking this through as I write here.  I want to get something up.  Tomorrow there will be new things to report.  And it's getting late and court starts at 8:30am tomorrow.

 I've gone back to the Brown Report (Part 1, and Part 2) to make a list of all the names.  And as I skim through it this time, after hearing today's testimony, it's making more sense.  That is, I'm more familiar with the names and activities described.

I've concluded that my notes are too sketchy to put up.  I've tried to capture the general nature of the questioning  and how it appeared to me.

I'm still not comfortable with the plaintiff's depiction of Katkus as this great administrator who was on top of issues of sexual abuse and other improprieties in the Guard.  Ray Brown made a big deal of the fact that there was this close relationship between the APD and the Guard  and FBI and the State Troopers when fighting drugs.  And thus there was every reason to share the information with the Guard.  But if Katkus and the Guard were out of control, then sharing the information might have enabled the people in the Guard to clean things up, hide evidence, etc.  And so there were only one or two actual convictions.  If Katkus was wrongly terminated, why haven't we seen his lawsuit?  There are still lots of unanswered questions.

But what's clear is that there was a lot of conflict going on in the APD.  Feuds, vendettas.  The morning session witness was  Jason Whetsell (I think I've got the spelling right but I'm not completely sure.  I used the Brown Report to find a lot of names, but there were still some I wasn't sure about.)  I'm still figuring out where he fit into the bigger picture.  He testified Thursday they said.  (I didn't get to court until Friday.)  They spent all morning on Whetsell, so one would think it's important to the plaintiffs' theory of the case.

Basically Whetsell was an officer who worked with a dog named Alex.  He was in the canine unit, but also worked with the SAU (Special Assignment Unit).  He worked with Anthony Henry over the years and was directly reporting to him for about five months.  But generally he was supervised at the Canine Unit and had a long, poor relationship with a supervisor Sergeant Jason Schmdtt. From what I could figure out, Whetsell felt hounded by Scmidt.  A key factor was that Whetsell was diagnosed with MS and was taking serious drugs that were affecting his performance.  An issue was that allegation that Henry and the other officers in the SAU had tried to protect Whetsell from Schmidt and the various complaints about his erratic behavior.

Some larger issues that came out in the testimony raise serious question about how well the APD was operating then  And of course questions about whether it's any better now.  There were serious divisions.  At one point Chief Mew calls Whetsell into his office to try to work out a deal with him.  He wants him to drop his EEOC complaint (based on discrimination based on his medical condition I'm assuming).  From Whetsell's testimony:

"He wanted me to drop the EEOC complaint.  He said it was causing a fire.  The fire had spread to second floor (admin) and now the whole building is on fire." 

Mew told Whetsell that if he settled the EEOC complaint, then Mew would guarantee that if he laid low and kept his head down, he'd make ti to retirement.  (From what Whetsell said, he made it to a medical retirement, but they wouldn't extend the retirement date a day so his APD health insurance would cover an MRI test.  

Whetsell's record got pretty spotty and it's not clear how much of that was the MS, how much the drugs he was taking for the MS, and how much was the pressure he was feeling from the series of complaints Schmidt was making against him.  There were several incidents that were written up where he had problems performing his job.  Should the APD have made accommodations for him and moved him into a position that allowed him to continue working with his disability?  The did move him to other positions.  One could see that Whetsell, a basketball player and as the MOA attorney characterized him - a good athlete' once - must have been going through hell on several levels.  He was seeing his health deteriorate and he'd been diagnosed with a serious disease.  And with that deterioration, his livelihood was being threatened.  His family live suffered as well.  As portrayed today, Henry and the SAU staff were supporting him and the Canine Unit head was hounding him.  

Other issues came up.  Whetsell was asked about missing lots of work time.  He responded that he took flextime.  The attorney for the Municipality pointed out that the union had given up flextime. Whetsell said that everyone still took it.   I believe that flextime can be very useful as a way of dealing with uneven work loads, allowing people to take time off after a period of heavy workload beyond one's regular duty.  But it has to be carefully monitored and it runs into conflicts with paying people overtime.  What Whetsell seemed to be describing was an unofficial flextime.  But, of course, we don't know whether everyone was doing it.  But it's something to follow up.  

The fire on the second floor was also described as lots of yelling on the second floor - it was hinted that Henry was fighting over how Schmidt was treating Whetsell.  

And Chief Mew's hardball to get Whetsell to drop the EEOC suit was another issue.  Did he not want an outside agency looking to closely at the APD?  What else was he hiding?

And the questioning of Rick Brown raised questions about whether the Brown report was really a custom made report in order to support the position of the MOA legal department?  The impression I got of Rick Brown today was NOT of a competent, independent investigator.  It's a reminder of an old definition of an expert - someone who lives more than 100 miles away.  

And how does all this relate to the discrimination case two police officers won against the Municipality two years ago?  

There's good reason the MOA tried to keep this report hidden.  Today it didn't stand up well to scrutiny.  

I'm afraid this is going to be an active think piece, rather than a well thought out conclusion.  There just isn't time to do more now and I need this up before tomorrow's notes swamp me.


One last thought.  I have great respect for court transcribers.  If you saw my rough notes, you'd know why.