Turner Dodges Council Censure
In voting against censure, Dulin said it didn’t make sense for the council “to be jumping to the conclusion of guilt” concerning any of the harassment allegations, noting that there had never been a formal complaint filed against Turner.
“There’s been no proof, no trail,” Dulin said. “We shouldn’t be acting like judge and jury.”
Cooksey agreed, arguing that the city’s investigation into the original harassment complaint offered no conclusive proof.
Turner, as he has repeatedly, Monday night again denied any wrongdoing.
“Under no circumstances did this ever happen,” Turner said of an allegation from a city staffer that he had grabbed at her sweater during a meeting that took place last December in Mitchell’s office. The same employee also told investigators that Mitchell had subsequently called her and said that Turner’s actions had been inappropriate. Mitchell, by contrast, told investigators he couldn’t recall Turner and the employee even being together in his office at the same time, much less Turner grabbing her sweater. Mitchell also told investigators he never called the female employee to scold Turner’s behavior.
The December incident was apparently what prompted Foxx to send an e-mail to councilmembers in March, warning them not to sexually harass staff. Foxx has previously said he sent the e-mail after City Manager Curt Walton informed him that Turner and the female employee who had lodged the complaint against him would both be attending a National League of Cities conference in Washington, D.C. Councilmembers, in fact, received the e-mail warning from the mayor when many of them were at the conference.
On Monday night, Turner said he was never notified of the allegations until last month and found it “disturbing” that the mayor and manager would let a city employee travel to the same conference that a councilmember she had accused of sexual harassment would be attending.
The female employee’s behavior during that trip, Turner suggested, didn’t jibe with concerns that he had previously acted in an inappropriate manner toward her. Turner said they shared a cab ride during the trip, stayed at the same hotel, and that at one point she had asked if he would like to join her and others for an early-morning workout. Turner said he declined the offer because he didn’t like getting up at 5:00 in the morning.
The city’s investigation, which was conducted by attorney Valecia McDowell at a reported cost of $35,000, also suggested that Turner in 1982 had been “involuntarily terminated” from the Charlotte Police Academy. A female cadet told investigators that Turner had made sexually inappropriate comments and physically threatened her.
Turner denied ever making the comments. On Monday, he offered his account of the physical threat, saying that the female cadet had twice stepped on his foot and asked, “What are you going to do about it?” Turner said.
“I said, ‘Don’t do it again,’” Turner said. “And that turns into I threatened her.”
Turner also refuted a complaint from another city employee, who told investigators that Turner had made a sexually inappropriate comment to her during a 2006 conference in Reno as they passed a hotel store displaying pornographic magazines. Monday night, Turner denied the allegation and claimed to have proof that the hotel in question didn’t even sell pornographic magazines.
The investigation also reported that two other female staffers had previously complained of Turner making inappropriate remarks. But in both cases, the employees declined to tell investigators what Turner had allegedly said.
“How am I expected to respond to something,” Turner said Monday night in his defense, “when they didn’t even say what I was supposed to have said?”
Rohit Desai, one of Turner’s west Charlotte neighbors since 1998, was at Monday’s meeting to offer support for his district representative.
“Warren has always been a stand-up guy,” Desai said in an interview after the council voted to not censure Turner. “Nobody I’ve talked to has seen anything in these allegations to change that opinion of him. It was a hatchet job.”
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