Todd Bensman

DALLAS FIRE DEPARTMENT "POOP SHEET" INFLAMES PASSIONS, SPARKS INVESTIGATIONS AND LAWSUIT

Jun 7, 2005 9:00 pm US/Central
By Todd Bensman
The Investigators
CBS-11 News

Since she was sworn in as Dallas? first female firefighter in 1977, Sherrie C. Wilson has attracted her share of press attention putting out flames. But lately, Wilson finds herself putting out flames of a very different sort - as a publisher of a gossip sheet she distributes to area firehouses.

Wilson and her privately published news mailer, The Fire and Rescue Poop Newsletter, are tangled in a nasty feud with her bosses over her stories and poems targeting one of the department?s deputy chiefs. What began as a Poop Newsletter story about the deputy chief last November has spread like a five-alarm fire into internal affairs investigations, a defamation lawsuit and a tussle over the identities of Wilson?s confidential sources.

?This is a family disagreement that has gotten outside of the family. Things like this, the easiest way to handle it is in-house,? said department spokesman Lt. Joe Lavender. ?At some point what we really need is some sort of healing between the two and to find a way for everyone to forgive and forget.?

In April, Deputy Chief Michael Price filed a lawsuit against Wilson, claiming her newsletters defamed him with false allegations that he cheated the city out of travel expense money, engaged in public drunkenness while traveling on city business, and stole goods and services from a vendor at the Texas State Fair. Wilson said she based her reports on interviews with multiple anonymous sources who heard Chief Price openly boast of his own behavior at an out-of-town conference.

Price declined to comment on the advice of his attorney. But his lawsuit describes Wilson?s newsletter allegations as ?entirely false because the plaintiff was never accused, charged or investigated in any way in connection with the claims or charges?To the contrary, the plaintiff has maintained an exemplary reputation throughout his career within the Dallas Fire Department, one that continues to this date.?

Wilson predicted she would prevail in the lawsuit because the reporting was truthful and accurately quoted those who heard Chief Price publicly detail his behavior and spending habits.

Wilson said she decided to publish stories and poems based on the sources because top fire department brass did not appear interested in investigating the rumors of alleged misconduct.

?If it were one of us, the lower ranking people, they would have gone in for quick and swift consequences,? Wilson said. ?But as a high ranking official it seemed like it was being ignored. We can either wait or let the public find out about it or we can do something ourselves to make ourselves better, and reporting it was one way that we saw we could do that.?

The controversy began in November 2004 with the publication of a story and poem about an unnamed deputy chief who had returned from a conference boasting to colleagues of various kinds of misconduct and misfeasance. Not long after Wilson published the material, she became the subject of an internal affairs investigation for allegedly using a city fax machine to distribute some of the newsletters.

That investigation remains open, and fire department officials declined to release it. Wilson says the allegation is frivolous and was used as a pretext to suppress her reporting.

?They would like to shut down the poop sheet. They don?t like the poop sheet,? Wilson said.

She has responded by filing her own internal complaint against Chief Price, accusing him of ?conduct unbecoming an officer." .

Wilson also stepped up her commentary about the ongoing investigations, at ti mes taunting and insulting top fire department officials in newsletters distributed by email or by hand at firehouses. In his lawsuit, Price contends that the ongoing ridicule and false, anonymously-sourced rumors have caused him ?shame, embarrassment, humiliation, pain and mental anguish.?

One poem that Chief Price included as an exhibit in the lawsuit and entitled ?Deputy Roars? taunts:

?Boo Hoo, Boo hoo
I?m gonna sue.
Dish it out but cannot take it.
We all know ?you know who.?
If I had nothing to defend
Then, this story would surely end.
The only way they know it?s me
Is this story is very true you see
Through someone else?s eyes
I no longer look the prize
Boo Hoo, Boo Hoo
I am now exposed to you
Boo Hoo Boo Hoo
Who could I be?

In his lawsuit, Chief Price states, ?Despite this awareness and despite her having been notified of the plaintiff?s knowledge and displeasure with her statements, the defendant continued to intentionally publish additional statements accusing the plaintiff of criminal acts and other acts of dishonesty. At all times the defendant knew that the statements she was making were false and that they would inflict severe emotional and financial damage.?

But Wilson holds her ground, claiming First Amendment protection and at times speaking a language familiar to working journalists.

?This is a public issue with a public official, and it?s something that should be out there in open debate in the public,? she said.

Wilson also said she will fight to protect her sources after coming under pressure to divulge their names. Chief Price?s lawsuit demands that she name her sources so that they can be named as co-defendants who helped Wilson defame him.

?I?m not going to give up my sources, period. I?ve given them my word and my word is just that.?

Mike Raiff, a media law attorney with the Dallas firm Vinson & Elkins who is not associated with the controversy, said defamation is a growing problem with th e Internet-driven rise of citizen publishers who lack the professional training of full-time reporters.

?Some people think, ?First Amendment, I have the right to say anything and write anything about anybody,? and that?s not true,? Raiff said. ?Under the First Amendment no one has the right to lie about people or make false statements of fact about people.?

But Raiff said reporting the truth is the ultimate defense against defamation.

Chief Price?s lawsuit claims malice and lies proliferate Wilson?s newsletters and that she should be forced to pay a financial price.

?The fact that the defendant continued to defame the plaintiff clearly demonstrates that the statements were made for the purposes of personal revenge and/or spite and intimidation.?