Officer Monica Blake
The Metro Council is set to consider a $150,000 settlement with Metro police Officer Monica Blake over her claims that she faced retaliation from superiors after accusing a fellow officer of rape, as well as discrimination because of her gender and race.
Blake, a black officer who started working for the Metro Nashville Police Department in 2005, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in October against Metro and MNPD Commander Janet Pardue (who is married to Metro Councilmember Doug Pardue).
In the suit, Blake alleges that Pardue and others at MNPD retaliated against her for accusing Officer Julian Pirtle of strangling and raping her while he was drunk in May 2016. The two had been romantically involved off and on for several years, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says Pardue had indicated that she was prepared to testify as a negative character witness against Blake and that "on January 5, 2018, in part due to the representations that Pardue was prepared to testify against Officer Blake, the District Attorney’s Office dropped the rape charge against Pirtle and let him enter a 'best interest' plea to judicial diversion on the Aggravated Assault."
"The plea bargain kept Pirtle off the sex offender registry, and would allow him to expunge his record if he completed 3 years of probation successfully," the suit says.
Blake's complaint also claims she and other black officers faced harsher disciplinary actions for minor infractions than white officers, and that the department infringed on her First Amendment rights by allowing for an increasingly hostile environment after she publicly supported the Community Oversight Now campaign.
A legal analysis of the settlement proposal prepared by the Metro Legal Department focuses on Metro's liability as it relates to the claim that MNPD retaliated against Blake for her public speech.
Public employers are limited in restricting the free speech liberties their employees enjoy as private citizens. A public employee’s right to speak is not without limits, but speech is generally protected when the employee speaks as a private citizen about matters of public concern, and the employee’s interest in the speech outweighs the employer’s interest in the efficiency of the public services it provides. Here, Ms. Blake’s social media posts expressed personal employment concerns and grievances, but also included statements about the Community Oversight Board -- a matter of public concern. Generally, if an employee engages in protected activity (speech) and adverse employment action is taken by his or her employer motivated by that activity, the employer can be found guilty of retaliation.
Blake would resign from the department as part of the settlement agreement. With the settlement still pending the council's approval, Blake's attorney, Kyle Mothershead, declined to comment.
We asked Metro Legal why the analysis didn't address the claim that Blake faced retaliation for accusing her fellow officer of sexual assault. Melissa Roberge, a lawyer with the department who worked on the case, sent over this statement:
The complaint was over 200 paragraphs long and included a laundry list of allegations. In the legal department’s view, her claims of retaliation for reporting a fellow officer, and other claims of discrimination generally, were the most defensible and lacked merit. Ms. Blake’s First Amendment claims, and the likelihood that those claims would make it to trial, led the legal department to recommend this settlement from a risk management perspective.
