WILLIAMS memo under investigation

When a Tulsa city councilor accused a police officer of racism, the department investigated and ruled the charge was unfounded. Now it's checking into how details of the incident were made public,

Wednesday, June 13th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

When a Tulsa city councilor accused a police officer of racism, the department investigated and ruled the charge was unfounded. Now it's checking into how details of the incident were made public, against department policy.

KOTV's Emory Bryan has more on the story. KOTV has a copy of an internal police memo about an incident at the home of Councilor Joe Williams. Reports such as this are not public records, but this one was leaked to the media, and now the Chief of Police wants to know how. Councilor Joe Williams hasn't changed his mind about racism in the Tulsa Police Department. "That's my opinion about what I felt goes on in our police department. Chief Palmer can have all the unfounded he wants, but he cannot unfound what I feel. But he believes the departments' investigation was misdirected. This should never have been a probe about whether or not there was racism in the thing because I called them racists, it should have been a probe about an incident between me and some officers."

Councilor Williams made the racism charges in a 911 call. The department sent detectives out to investigate the charges, and concluded they were unfounded. Now internal affairs will look into the source of a memo leaked to the media that detailed the case. Councilor Williams says even though it was leaked, he couldn't get a copy. "The memo that was leaked, I tried to get a copy and couldn't get it. The memo that was leaked, I asked the police chief and mayor and asked if they determined who leaked the memo and they said there was so much attention on my investigation they hadn't had a chance to look into that."

KOTV has a copy of the memo in question that was given to the News on Six the morning of the incident. It was written by an officer to the chief of police, and now the Chief wants to know how this internal memo made its way outside the department.