A former top executive with the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners claims in a lawsuit that she was discriminated against because of her gender and that “a clique” of commissioners “sabotaged” her attempts to resolve a backlog of hundreds of citizen complaints against cops.
The lawsuit filed in Wayne County Circuit Court on Wednesday alleges Melanie White was unlawfully fired from her job as executive manager after she was tasked with eliminating a “massive citizen complaint backlog.”
The suit, which names the city of Detroit and former Board of Police Commissioners Chairman Bryan Ferguson, claims she was subjected to “a campaign of vitriol, verbal bullying, harassment, character assassination, unequal treatment and violations.”
According to the lawsuit, Ferguson and other commissioners sabotaged her efforts to close the backlog “to justify her suspension and later termination.”
Ferguson later resigned in July 2023 after he was arrested for allegedly getting a blow job from a sex worker in his truck on the city’s northwest side.
Despite reporting the sabotage to Mayor Mike Duggan, he did nothing to address a work stoppage by employees who disliked White, the lawsuit states.
White’s attorney Carl Edwards says Ferguson was clearly biased against women and treated White unfairly because of her gender.
“It’s tragic,” White’s attorney Carl Edwards tells Metro Times. “A woman with 20 years of experience with a sterling record of work performance lost her job because of a man who is a serial sex harasser who favors men over women. It’s an awful case.”
White also helped several women coworkers file gender discrimination complaints because they were paid “substantially” less than their male counterparts.
At that point, White had a target on her back, Edwards says.
White took a mental health leave of absence from January to March 2023 “because of severe bullying, harassment, hatred, retaliation and discrimination” by Ferguson, the lawsuit states. During her absence, Ferguson ordered her belongings to be removed from her office and sent to a storage room, according to the lawsuit.
Several days after she returned to work, White says Ferguson suspended her and escorted her from her workplace with the help of a “fully armed” cop.
Less than a week later, a top city attorney notified Ferguson that the suspension was improper and violated board policies and procedures. The attorney ordered Ferguson to reinstate White, but he refused, the suit alleges.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, citizen complaints began to pile up because of a significant reduction in staff.
Under pressure from the public, Duggan held a meeting in January 2022 with White, police Chief James White, and several commissioners to eliminate the backlog, which had “skyrocketed,” the suit states. Duggan’s staff developed a software to monitor the progress of the work.
In another meeting with the mayor in October 2022, White complained that some police commissioners and staff members were obstructing progress on the backlog. Since the software allowed city officials to monitor the work, Duggan’s administration should have been able to identify the saboteurs, according to the suit.
“They didn’t have to rely on anything Melanie White said,” Edwards says. “They had direct eyes on it. That’s what makes this case so egregious. The program was being sabotaged, and they took no action. To me, it’s baffling.”
To demonstrate that White was a good employee, the lawsuit points out that the board’s three previous chairs described her as “excellent” and “outstanding.” In October 2022, Chief White called her “an amazing professional.”
But when Ferguson became chairman in July 2022, White’s “job performance was consistently and unfairly criticized,” the suit states.
Duggan’s office declined to comment. Metro Times couldn’t reach Ferguson for comment.
