Former Roanoke Rapids police Chief Bobby Martin was negligent in his participation in an administrative investigation that played a part in his termination by the city manager last year, a response filed in Halifax County Superior Court on behalf of the company that conducted the probe said.
The response on behalf of Richardson and Davis Investigative Consulting Group and Richardson Davis & Forest Investigative Group to a lawsuit initiated by Martin was filed this morning.
Martin claims in the complaint that his termination by City Manager Kelly Traynham was malicious and corrupt and that it was motivated by personal desire to protect a department head, protect her advantageous political connections with the department head and other local politicians to retaliate against him for following legitimate and valid actions.
The city last week denied all allegations in Martin’s lawsuit.
“Martin, as chief of the RRPD, was part of an administrative investigation into his department,” the response filed by Camilla F. DeBoard of the Greensboro-based Bovis Kyle Burch & Medlin law firm says. “As an interviewee and chief of the department, Martin had certain requirements to comply with investigations and provide truthful and full information to R&D.”
R&D was retained by the city to conduct an administrative investigation and a host of other individuals besides Martin were interviewed, the response says.
In participating in the investigation, the response says Martin was negligent for the following reasons:
He failed to accurately report statements and actions made by him in his employment as police chief
He failed to fully answer interview questions
He failed to provide additional information and witnesses with regard to the specific topics known to him that would be investigated
He failed to use reasonable care, and was careless and negligent in other respects to be proven at trial
In seeking the court’s dismissal of the lawsuit, the response says that Martin “has failed to obtain effective service of process over the defendants” and that it be dismissed “for lack of jurisdiction over the persons, insufficiency of process and insufficiency of service process.”
Says the response: “The plaintiff has failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted and the defendants move … that said action against them be dismissed with prejudice.”
Other than to charge that Martin was negligent in the R&D response does not get into the details of its report which was used in part to terminate the chief and his captain, Jamie Hardy.
In the conclusion of the response, the company asks that court find in favor of the defendant, that Martin recovers nothing from the defendant, that the matter be tried by a jury, that the costs of the lawsuit be taxed against Martin, and that “the court grant all other and further relief as the court may deem just and proper.”
