Jury sides with 2 former East St. Louis officials

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — Federal jurors awarded $41,000 in damages to two former East St. Louis officials who claimed they were fired in retaliation for publicly questioning whether top administrators of the largely black city were discriminatory against white applicants for the police force.

Jurors in Benton deliberated about four hours before ruling Wednesday in favor of former police and fire commissioners Della Murphy and Wyatt Frazer, who filed a four-count lawsuit in 2009 against the city, the mayor and the city manager at the time.

Frazer and Murphy, who were fired in 2007, sought $10,000 each in punitive damages and $5,500 to $20,000 apiece in compensatory damages. But jurors awarded $15,000 apiece in punitive damages and $5,500 each in compensation, with cash-strapped East St. Louis also on the hook for the unspecified tab for attorney fees for Frazer and Murphy.

Neither plaintiff sought reinstatement to their former positions, their attorney said.

“They don’t want anything to do with those people,” Tom Kennedy added Thursday. “But they wanted their reputations restored, which I think this verdict will do.”

Other claims in the lawsuit, including that Frazer’s constitutional free-speech rights were violated and that both Frazier and Murphy were wrongly denied their $250 monthly stipend for serving on the city’s Board of Fire and Police Commissioners, either were thrown out by the judge or rejected by jurors.

Murphy and Frazer claimed Mayor Alvin Parks didn’t hire Ronald Grimming — an East St. Louis native and former top Illinois State Police commander who once headed the Florida State Highway Patrol — as the police chief of the 30,000-resident city in 2007 because Grimming is white.

Grimming, who Murphy and Frazer advocated for the job, “offered to come back to East St. Louis out of retirement to help these people, and they didn’t give him the time of day,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy said Parks told his clients “the city was not ready to hire a white police chief.” Parks countered that the Board of Fire and Police Commissioners had not put together a hiring or promotion list for nearly two years, and that was the reason that Frazer and Murphy were removed from the board.

Parks, who denied allegations that race played any role in Grimming not getting the job, called Wednesday’s verdict disappointing.

“I deeply resent the insinuation that they were fired because they blew the whistle on racial discrimination,” Parks told the Belleville News-Democrat. “I have never discriminated against anyone on the basis of race, sex or age.”

Grimming was not a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

The candidate chosen at the time was Michael Baxton Sr., a black man who had been an investigator in nearby Centreville and police chief in tiny Brooklyn, a village of fewer than 700 residents. Baxton, who the lawsuit claimed was less qualified than Grimming, resigned as chief in 2009 after facing scrutiny over his handling of the department’s unsolved slayings and hiring practices.

John Gilbert, an attorney for the city, said the city was weighing whether to appeal.

“I can’t say why the jury ruled the way it did. But it’s the system, and we trust the system,” Gilbert said.

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Information from: Belleville News-Democrat, http://www.bnd.com