The first Black police chief of a small Chicago suburb has filed a federal discrimination lawsuit after being fired one year into the job due to concerns that came up his first performance review.
Jerel Jones, who took the helm of the Flossmoor Police Department in March 2023, filed the civil action March 11 after he was terminated earlier in the month, claiming the Cook County village engaged in a pattern of racism to get rid of him.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages to cover what Jones should have been paid, including his salary and benefits.
Flossmoor Mayor Michelle Nelson announced Jones’ firing on March 7, saying the city was “parting ways” with Jones, however, she did not provide specific reasons for his removal, emphasizing that the matter concerning Jones was “strictly about performance.”
Hundreds of residents packed city hall last week to voice support for Jones when word of his potential dismissal due to job friction became public.
In a statement, Nelson indicated that after 12 months, Jones had failed to perform satisfactorily in the position.
“When a leader of a critical department is not meeting expectations, the ripple effect can adversely impact the entire department, and the organization, and even the community,” Nelson wrote.
Attorneys for Jones contested the handling of his dismissal, alleging that he was deliberately set up for failure, while blasting the firing as an “act of race discrimination and retaliation.”
“Folks, this is race-based animus through and through,” attorney Cass Casper of the Disparti Law Group said, according to CBS News. “This is a Black department head and not meeting up to the expectations of a white administration because he’s Black.”
At a news conference with his attorneys on Monday, Jones said that when he took the job last March, there was nothing in his contract about any specific length of employment, while noting that he was the only Black department head in Flossmoor at the time.
The legal action, whIch names the Village of Flossmoor and Village Manager Bridget Wachtel as defendants, claims Jones went to Nelson in October and complained that Wachtel was micromanaging his every move, and trying to hold him “to a higher standard of performance” than his white and Hispanic counterparts in other city departments.
“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.
Soon, Jones’ complaints made it back to Wachtel, who responded “with a campaign of retaliation culminating in his termination,” according to Jones’ attorney.
“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,” the complaint continues.
Defense attorneys redacted a significant portion of the performance reviews to avoid releasing sensitive information about ongoing investigations and policing strategies.
Jones said he often faced needless criticism in his performance evaluation from Wachtel, which reportedly focused on the way he talked.
“You do not speak plainly or answer questions directly,” Wachtel states in an excerpt from one of the performance reviews cited in the lawsuit.
Casper suggested that Wachtel’s statement in this particular instance constituted racial discrimination.
“This is a white administration complaining about how Black Chief Jones talks,” Casper said. “There’s no bona fide criticism that he said anything inappropriate here. This entire criticism from Village Manager Wachtel is about the manner in which the chief talks.”
Notably, Jones and his legal team stated that they would withdraw the lawsuit if the village issued an apology.
“Bring him back as police chief. Remove him from the campaign of hyper-critical, race-based criticism that he endured, and give him a fair chance to be police chief – free from that double standard,” Casper said.
Before arriving in Flossmoor, Jones had a long career with Macomb, Illinois, Police Department.
