KNIGHTDALE NC Jan 14 2013- A year after taking her claims of discrimination to a federal agency, a former Knightdale police officer will take her case to mediation in federal court.Vickie Powers, who worked for Knightdale from 1986 to 2011, filed a civil lawsuit against Knightdale in Wake County Superior Court on Dec. 20. Powers claims she was mistreated by Knightdale staff during in the final years of her career because of her age, gender and sexual orientation. That lawsuit recently moved to mediation in federal court, according to Powers’ attorney, Andy Gay.The lawsuit comes almost a year after Powers took her complaints against Knightdale to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which investigates claims of discrimination in the workplace. In September, the EEOC told Powers that she has the right to sue, but that the agency was “unable to conclude that the information obtained establishes violations of the statutes,” according to documents in the lawsuit.Powers’ lawsuit doesn’t center around a single flagrant violation of the town’s policies. It points to several instances she says make the case for a discrimination charge and ultimately led Knightdale in 2010 to wrongfully demote her to a newly created position that would cease to exist after 2011. That decisions forced her to retire, and effectively costing her thousands of dollars in retirement pay.North Carolina towns are required to make retirement payments to police officers. The payments are based on an officer’s annual salary during the final year of work. When Powers was reassigned in 2010, her salary dropped from $71,750 to $62,603 – costing her a total of about $16,800 in retireent pay.To date, Knightdale has spent more than $17,200 on legal fees involving Powers’ claims.Knightdale has said that it demoted Powers because she could not pass state-mandated firearms tests after 23 attempts. The lawsuit doesn’t say how many times Powers attempted the firearms test. It does show that Powers thinks her test failures were the result of working in a “hostile work environment,” created mostly by officer Don Ayscue and former officer Ricky Todd. In September 2010, Powers claims she took her complaints about Ayscue and Todd – which aren’t specified in the lawsuit – to Public Safety Director Shawn Brown. On Nov. 2 and Nov. 6, 2010, Powers says Todd mocked her in front of other officers because she complained about him. The lawsuit doesn’t list witnesses to those interactions.While doing firearms testing a few days later, Powers says she was leaning on a barricade when Ayscue grabbed her belt and “pulled her back from the barricade,” according to the lawsuit.Powers says in the lawsuit that she passed mandated firearms tests on Dec. 27, 2010 – after Town Manager Seth Lawless granted her permission to train with an outside firearms instructor. By that time, Powers had already been reassigned.Powers also says Brown treated her differently than other officers. In the lawsuit, she cites one instance in which Brown required her to perform two fire burning exercises although town policies only required her to perform one. Powers also says Brown once made an inappropriate comment about her homosexual lifestyle, and that Chief Jason Godwin once asked her if she thought she was “too old to be answering these traffic calls.”Knightdale declined to comment on the lawsuit. Gay declined to comment further, and Powers didn’t return phone calls.
Source: Eastern Wake News
Source: Eastern Wake News