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Tempe cop claims discrimination over Hispanic ethnicity
May 26, 2007
By NICK MARTIN
TRIBUNE
Two weeks before he filmed a television scene that ignited a racial uproar, a Tempe police sergeant complained that he himself was the victim of racial discrimination.
Sgt. Chuck Schoville, a 25-year veteran of the force, came under scrutiny late last year when he appeared on a city TV show telling two black men they could rap their way out of a littering ticket. The scene made national headlines and prompted an investigation by the city after local minority leaders spoke out about it.
Publication info
This story originally ran May 26, 2007 in the East Valley Tribune in Arizona.
After the fact
After the story ran, Tempe asked another police agency to investigate their officer's claims of bias. That investigation determined the officer had lied. He soon resigned.
But a document obtained on Friday shows the incident was a U-turn for Schoville, whose earlier complaint had caused the city to look into allegations that others in the department had discriminated against him.
Schoville was identified in past Tribune stories as white. He told the New York Times in December he is ethnically Hispanic.
He sent the lengthy document to supervisors after learning he would be moved off the department's gang unit.
In it, Schoville said he felt the transfer was because he'd had disputes with then-assistant chief Dave Lind, who directed the move with the approval of then-Chief Ralph Tranter.
"I believe that this decision is also based upon my status as a racial minority," Schoville wrote in the Aug. 3, 2006 complaint.
But allegations of discrimination are just a small part of Schoville's 39-page document.
The rest essentially is a tell-all account of problems he saw in the police department, including disputed investigations, run-ins with fellow officers and a belief that minority victims were often overlooked by Tempe police.
Schoville, who is now back in the gang unit, declined to talk about the complaint on Friday.
Chief Tom Ryff also declined comment, as did Lind and Tranter.
Since December, the city has refused to give the Tribune a copy of the complaint, saying that releasing it "would have a chilling effect on employees coming forward with workplace concerns."
On Friday, the Tribune obtained a copy from a source within the city who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.
The complaint offers a rare look into the inner workings of the Tempe force.
Schoville led the department's gang unit for years, working with the East Valley Gang Task Force and regional and national organizations.
But last August, his supervisors wanted him to help with criminal investigations.
It was the tail end of a summer when the Valley was gripped with fear of two sets of serial killers, one of which struck in Tempe.
In addition, the city had its own problems with a rising number of robberies.
To deal with this, the police department decided to temporarily move officers from other units into the investigation division to ease the division's workload.
One of those chosen was Schoville.
But he didn't want to transfer, arguing that he best served the city in his role on the gang unit, a position for which he had been highly trained and was deeply involved in several major cases, he wrote.
"It will result in a significant detriment to the activities and investigations of the gang unit and to the safety and well-being of the citizens of Tempe," he wrote.
Schoville complained the department didn't respond to minority victims the way it did when the victims were white.
In one instance, he cited a 2000 murder investigation, which the gang unit was pulled off.
He felt the case should have been pursued further. But it wasn't because the victim was black, he wrote. It signified "a prevalent attitude toward minority-victim crimes."
In another, he said crimes in the Victory Acres neighborhood near Loop 101 and Apache Boulevard, which is largely populated by minorities, "almost never received the same level of police attention as those occurring elsewhere in the city."
There were other reasons why he didn't want to go to investigations too, he wrote.
Schoville's wife was a detective in the division and he felt it would be a conflict. He also said he was afraid because certain comments from Lind made him believe the move could be permanent.
In the end, he took a temporary job behind the wheel of a patrol car, a move that he wrote was a demotion. It was as a patrol sergeant that Schoville filmed the StreetBeat video, which became national news.
Schoville never cited any direct evidence of personal discrimination against him, other than the attempt to reassign him.
In a response to Schoville's complaint dated Aug. 10, 2006, Tranter called the move the "best alternative when we are faced with responding to and investigating an increasing number of violent robberies and a serial homicide."
Tranter has since stepped down, but remains on the department payroll as a consultant.
In the response, he assured Schoville that any move would be temporary and that he found "absolutely no hint of vindictiveness or consideration of your race."
Those findings were later reiterated in an inquiry by the city auditor into the complaint. It found "absolutely no evidence" of discrimination on anyone's part, City Manager Will Manley said on Friday.