The legal battle between the former White Cloud police chief, Dan Evans, and the city he once served has escalated to the federal courts. On December 30, Evans filed a lawsuit alleging wrongful termination in retaliation for his complaints about potential safety hazards in the city, according to FOX 17. The complaints in question, raised on September 26 and 27, involved concerns over the city's water pump and the lack of safety features near the city's dam, which he believed posed a significant risk of injury to the public.
Evans, who started with the agency in 2006 and was appointed police chief at the end of 2016, has been left unemployed. In the suit, he claims the city's actions have jeopardized his ability to find work in his field and resulted in his professional reputation being "destroyed," as told by his attorney Katherine Smith Kennedy, as per FOX 17, despite allegations Evans was rated as "superior" during his time as the head of the department, his firing took place without notice and mirrored the timelines of safety issue complaints filed by him, which paints a picture of a cause-and-effect scenario.
Allegations have also surfaced that City Manager April Storms wrote a letter to Evans that contained untrue statements and that after being written up for another situation, which his lawyer described as "completely and entirely without merit," he was terminated, as reported by WZZM 13. Moreover, a potential Open Meetings Act violation has been suggested, due to the lack of council input in Evans's firing, adding another layer to the lawsuit's claims.
The city, meanwhile, remains tight-lipped on the matter, with an attorney for the City of White Cloud, Mark C. Miller, offering a brief statement asserting the city's intent to "vigorously defend the allegations" and to address the matter within the legal process rather than the media, as mentioned in the information from FOX 17. Additional insight into the events leading up to the firing is expected to be sought by community members who are planning to attend the upcoming city council meeting, to bring up the litigation during the public comment period according to WOOD-TV.
