The city of Belle Meade, which seems to skip from one controversy to the next, now has to contend with a charge of discrimination after firing one of its more notorious police officers. Dismissed for speeding and improper use of a police car, Officer Alexander Binkley is claiming that a female officer would have been treated far less severely for a similar offense.
Back in September of 1998, Binkley became the laughingstock of the city when he was nearly nabbed in a citizen’s arrest. Don Harris, a local math teacher, pulled Binkley over for driving faster than 90 mph. Savoring his 15 minutes of fame, Harris correctly noted that he was simply exercising his civic right to make a civilian arrest. But although he realized the dream of any driver who has ever traveled through Belle Meade, Harris was ticketed for his vigilance, and Binkley was promptly cleared of any wrongdoing. Harris says the police department never even phoned him to talk about what happened.
In fact, Vince Perry, the city’s longtime police chief, was so impressed with Binkley’s work as an officer that he successfully recommended him for a promotion to corporal this past December. To this day, the chief thinks very highly of the fired officer.
”The man was dependable. The man was loyal,“ Perry says. ”He was always here when he was supposed to be. He did his job when he was supposed to.“
But now Binkley is out of a job after yet another citizen—this one a little higher up on the Metro food chain—accused him of speeding. On Sunday, Jan. 30, Criminal Court Judge Seth Norman spotted a Belle Meade patrol car speeding through the red light at the intersection of Hillsboro Road and Overhill Drive. Norman, who was preparing to cross that intersection, says the patrol car, which didn’t have its siren on, was traveling down Hillsboro Road at around 50 mph and posed an obvious hazard to other motorists.
”There was a car in front of me, and he went when the light turned green,“ Norman remembers. ”He had to slam on his brakes in order not to get hit.“
No less than one day later, an outraged Norman dispatched a pointed letter to Belle Meade Mayor Peggy Warner. ”Your officer was operating his automobile in total disregard for the lives and safety of others,“ the judge huffed. ”He had no emergency equipment in operation at the time.“
After a brief investigation, the city identified Binkley as the driver of the errant patrol car. Within a week of the judge’s letter, Beth Reardon, the city manager, fired the three-year veteran of the force, citing him not just for speeding but for driving his patrol car while working an off-duty job.
In a memo to the police chief, Binkley acknowledged that he was driving down Hillsboro Road that Sunday after directing traffic at a church. ”Although I am not God, nor a robot, I’m a human who makes mistakes daily. I could have made a mistake,“ his memo said.
Binkley didn’t return repeated phone calls from the Scene. In an interview with the Green Hills News, he said he wasn’t afforded due process and that the city’s three commissioners violated the state’s Open Meetings Act by discussing the decision to fire him over the phone. He also said his dismissal was especially unfair considering that he had never been disciplined before.
Chief Perry, who didn’t take the first accusation against Binkley all that seriously, wrote the officer a job recommendation three weeks after the city fired him. Recently, Binkley boldly applied for a job opening with none other than the Belle Meade Police Department. He was rejected.
”We told him it would not be appropriate for him to apply being that he was just terminated,“ Belle Meade City Attorney Vance Berry says.
After his dismissal, Binkley filed a charge of discrimination with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It could take months to investigate.
Berry won’t comment on the specifics of the charge, except to say that the city will fully cooperate with the EEOC’s inquiry.
Don Harris, the teacher who tried to arrest Binkley, took no joy in the officer’s dismissal. ”I hate to see anybody get fired,“ he says. ”But I guess you can only abuse your job so much before it catches up with you.“
Nearly a year and a half later, Harris still vividly remembers his encounter with the now-fired officer. He says he was driving around 60 mph on Briley Parkway near County Hospital Road on his way to referee a prep football game when a Belle Meade patrol car sped by him ”like a bullet.“ Having just received a ticket in Belle Meade the week before, an indignant Harris followed the patrol car, which he says was speeding at up to 95 mph. He flashed his lights and waved, and the officer pulled over.
”He said, ‘Are you with Metro?’ and I said, ‘Yes,’ “ recalls Harris, who teaches at McGavock High School. ”When I said, ‘Yes,’ he thought I was with Metro Police. Then he asked me if I was a cop, and I said, ‘No, I’m a math teacher.’ That’s when he jumped out and said, ‘You’re under arrest for impersonating a police officer.’ He was pretty mad. He had his girlfriend with him, and he was a little embarrassed.“
Binkley, who was miles out of his jurisdiction, called Metro officers to the scene. But they didn’t seem to take the situation as seriously as Binkley would have liked.
”This one cop told me, ‘You’ve got the biggest balls I’ve ever seen,’ “ says Harris, ”and I said, ‘Well, you have to admit this is funny,’ and he agreed.“
Perhaps as a courtesy to Belle Meade, the officers did nothing to Binkley and wrote Harris a ticket for speeding. The ticket was later dismissed, and Harris, until then an anonymous public school teacher, was a hero.
”My students loved it,“ he says. ”The thing I tried to get across to them was that the police are our friends, and you shouldn’t be afraid to approach any of them. I thought this would be a great story to tell your friends, that I pulled over a police officer.“ Binkley might find that story a bit more painful.
