Chicago suburb calls for "defamatory" language to be removed from dismissed police chief's lawsuit

CHICAGO (CBS) -- The Village of Flossmoor and Village Manager Bridget Wachtel said in a legal filing Monday that some of the language in a lawsuit filed by dismissed police Chief Jerel Jones was "scandalous" and "defamatory."

A week ago Thursday, Flossmoor Mayor Michelle Nelson said the village was "parting ways" with Jones. Last week Jones – the south suburban village's first Black police chief – filed a federal civil rights lawsuit.

Nelson said the village "parted ways" with Jones because of his performance, but Jones' lawsuit accuses the village of a pattern of racially discriminatory behavior – with a focus on Wachtel.

In a legal filing in the case Monday, the village and Wachtel accused Jones' lawsuit of presenting "a deeply personal and defamatory evisceration of Ms. Wachtel that shockingly labeled her as a racist implementor of a 'Master/Slave' relationship."

The filing added given that a news conference was held to announce the filing of Jones' lawsuit and to direct the news media to it, the intention was to "publicly skewer Wachtel as an unabashed racist, as part of a transparent, insidious and ill-conceived scheme to use this Court's processes and its associated litigation privilege as a shield for their libelous and defamatory campaign."

Wachtel's filing focused on several specific choices of words in Jones' lawsuit.

Among them was a claim that "Wachtel imposed a master slave dynamic between her and Jerel and, if he did not fit himself into that expected dynamic, he could not be Police Chief." Another claimed that "Wachtel's behavior is race discrimination in an insidious form, to wit, the emasculation and evisceration of any form of Blackness out of Jerel and insistence that he reconstitute as White. Then, and only, then, as White-Black Police Chief will he meet Wachtel's demands and succeed."

A third claimed, "'[C]ommon sense' to Jerel in running a Police Department was to use a Police Department form, but Jerel's Black version of 'common sense' was not up to muster with Wachtel's White version of 'common sense.'"

A fourth accused Watchel of having a "hypercritical fixation on [Jones'] speech and manner of communication," for which the lawsuit is explained by how "fundamentally, it involves a White-Black power dynamic of an embedded White Administrator not liking how the Black man is talking."

A fifth said Watchel's memoranda toward Jones were "personally derogatory," and continued: "Jerel states that Wachtel treated him in this fashion because she does not like that he is Black, does not like that a Black man takes initiatives, does not like that a Black man might speak differently or use different speech patterns and tones than her view of how a Black man should speak, and wants to continue to remind the Black man that he is subservient to the White power structure imposed and enforced by Wachtel."

The filing by the village and Wachtel noted that these allegations were necessary for a "short and plain statement of the claim" as required in a federal lawsuit.

"To the contrary, in a transparent attempt to drum up political, media and community ire, they were advanced solely and specifically as part of a defamatory scheme, accompanied by a lengthy press conference, that obscenely and scandalously labeled Ms. Wachtel as a racist implementor of a 'Master/Slave' relationship who purportedly attempted to emasculate and eviscerate any form of Mr. Jones's 'Blackness,' and 'insiste[d] that [Mr. Jones] reconstitute as White,' not to mention describing events in a 'Black version' and 'White version,'" the filing said.

The filing asked for a court order to strike from the lawsuit several paragraphs that contained what the village and Wachtel called defamatory language – so as to "prevent the further publication of said impertinent and scandalous accusations."

At the news conference last week, attorneys argued that Jones was set up to fail, and called his termination "act of race discrimination and retaliation."

"Folks, this is race-based animus through and through," attorney Cass Casper of the Disparti Law Group said last week. "This is a Black department head and not meeting up to the expectations of a white administration because he's Black."

According to the lawsuit, in October, Jones complained to Nelson about "disparate treatment" from Wachtel, claiming "he was being treated more severely and held to a higher standard of performance" than the village's White and Hispanic department heads.

"Village Manager Wachtel was engaging him in overbearing scrutiny, micromanagement, baseless criticism, personally attacking criticisms, and generally holding him to a standard of performance that would be unachievable by anyone," the lawsuit states.

Jones said the critiques came in a series of performance reviews issued by Wachtel. One criticism was about the way Jones spoke.

"You do not speak plainly or answer questions directly," a quoted portion of the review read in the lawsuit filed last week. Casper said in the news conference that this was not "bona fide criticism," but a white administration complaining about how Black Chief Jones talks."

The lawsuit claims Wacthel responded to Jones' complaints "with a campaign of retaliation culminating in his termination."

The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of compensatory damages, including back pay and benefits for Jones.