2 sue Wake sheriff, saying he retaliated after they reported friend's anti-gay comments

RALEIGH -- Two former Wake County deputies have sued Sheriff Gerald Baker in federal court, alleging he fired them in retaliation for reporting his friend’s racist and homophobic comments.

The deputies, Steven Williamson and Alvis Speight, say they lost their jobs one month after Baker’s election in 2018 because they told supervisors about Lt. Teddy Patrick’s behavior during a training session one year earlier.

During that training, the suit said, Patrick “told the deputies present that he ‘didn’t believe in being gay,’ did not like ‘gay people,” and made statements that were derogatory toward homosexuals,” the suit said. Patrick outed one deputy at the session for being gay, adding “words to the effect of that if a man came to his home dressed as a woman, he would not permit that man to enter his home.”

Patrick, who is Black, also said, “if white people keep killing themselves, we Black people will be the majority, instead of the minority” and told deputies present he felt uncomfortable around Muslims on airplanes, according to the lawsuit.

Read more: https://www.heraldsun.com/news/local/article250491049.html
(Durham Herald Sun)