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Mobile Police Commander Kevin Levy's lawyer Chris Callahan about receiveinga termination letter - Mobile Mornings - Thursday 7-25-24
News. Sports. Weather from Dr. Bill Williams. Traffic info from Kane. And one of the Gulf Coast's most familiar voices. It's Mobile Mornings with Dan Brennan and Dalton R. Wig. Good to have you along. Dan and Dalton, if I'm talking 106-5, it is nearly seven minutes after eight o'clock on Mobile Mornings. As we've got a lot of things to dive into, got a lot of national news are obviously piled on top of each other. And a lot of local news too, Dalton. Yeah, we sure do. And joining us in studio this morning. Glad to have him in. Chris Callahan, who we had you in a few months ago, but it's good to see you again. Good to see you. And you are representing the former commander at Gulf Coast Technology Center, Kevin Levy, right? Yes, sir. Commander Levy hired Hernandez at the associate's law firm and I'm his attorney. And this week, I'd say the long-awaited report was more like a 45-day wait from Athanas. And the law firm chosen by the Mobile City Council to basically, well, to be special counsel and look into the allegations, some of the allegations made by former Mobile Police Chief Paul Prine. And that Athanas report came out earlier this week. And by the following day, Commander Levy had been relieved of his duties by that afternoon, basically, because of what that report stated. And I know you've already made some comment on this in other media places. You said that Commander Levy is being used as a scapegoat here. Well, that's correct. He would not go along to get along at any time. Well, you saw it with Chief Prine. Anytime people don't go along to get along with what the city administration wants them to do, then they get rid of them. They find a reason or make up a reason to get rid of them. At the good core of this, Dalton, I think seems to be, if I may, Athanas and that group, Athanas and the attorney here in Mobile that works for the city, there was at the core that you pointed at that relationship. And characterize that, if you would. Well, very early on in the investigation, well, let me back up. Commander Levy contacted Hernandez and Associates Law Firm for representation because he had been given notice that he had to testify in yet a fourth investigation regarding a valid contract. And so he contacted our law firm and he said, "Look," he said, "the city has hired a guy named Fred Helmsing Jr. to represent not only the city as an entity, but the mayor, the chief of staff, barber, the Rob Blasky, the public safety director, and Commander Levy, the commander of the Gulf Coast Technology Center, he said, "I just feel like that's a conflict of interest because how can you represent an entity plus four of its other parties? It doesn't make sense." And it doesn't make sense. It is a conflict of interest, in my opinion. And so Commander Levy hired me and I agreed to represent him and immediately sent a notice of representation or a letter of representation to Mr. Athanas and let Mr. Helmsing know as well that because we felt like this was a conflict of interest, that he had his own counsel and they went ballistic. I mean, they went nuts, but that's okay. We handle it. Yeah. And this report, so the contract that you were referring to earlier, and such a big part of this story, it's not all the story, but communication between Mobile Police Department under the leadership of Chief Prime and the Gulf Coast Technology Center and who's in charge of what? And the mayor and Lasky both said they were just trying to get, figure out why communication was lacking between those two portions of the city government. But Lasky apparently asks Levy to give him some more insight into Operation Echo Stop and whether it's working or not properly the way the city wanted to see it work. And so how does 3-2-1-Z insights come into this and talk a bit about this contract that they bring up here where they said there were three different forms of the contract. The first was basically right around $180,000 contract to 3-2-1-Z insights. And then by the second contract that had been halved and then another change in the third contract, can you kind of explain your view on all that? Well, let's kind of back up so we have a little bit better understanding of that. So any time the city's negotiating a contract with any entity, they might go back and forth. The first contract was a contract, like you said, I believe it was for $180,000, but it was a three-year contract. And then when Mr. Levy submitted it for approval, I mean, he has formed contracts the city gives him, he sends them out, they're pre-filled, then he's kind of just a conduit to give it back to the city. He was told, hey, we don't do three-year contracts anymore, we just stopped doing those, so start over. So they started over and had a couple of minor changes from then the first one-year contract to the second, I guess. But let's talk about what 3-2-1-Z is. Okay, so 3-2-1-Z insights is a company that was hired to help the Gulf Coast Technology Center lab, the Technology Lab, get its own accreditation, right? They were going to do peer reviews of the lab, come in, pull different cases, look at them, do peer reviews, make sure that everything was as it should be so that the lab could have its own accreditation for the cases to be valid, correct? That's right. And so when that will switch gears to Operation Echo Stop, Operation Echo Stop was, it was a three-year test plan of how can we reduce the number of shootings immobile? And one way they were going to do that is to increase the number of times that people would call the police if they heard a gunshot, right? And very soon, I'll have Commander Levy come on here and explain that to you. He can explain it much better than I can. That'd be great, yeah. And he's happy to talk with you all about that. But the three-year plan was to kind of implement, evaluate, and then at the end of the three years, Commander Levy was supposed to write a white paper report on the results. And it's nothing more than, you know, these are the facts, these are the statistics. And that's what he did. Now, because he wanted to make sure that the tone was right, he didn't want to try to accuse anybody of any wrongdoing, he just wanted to put the facts of the stats in there. He said, well, who do we have that can review this paper, right? Who can peer review my paper that he wrote? And so he called up 3-2-1-Z and said, hey, I know you aren't being paid to do this, it was no part of their contract, but would you peer review this paper for me? Check it for grammar and tone. And that's all they did. And they didn't get paid for it, but they said, yeah, we'll help you out, you know. But anyway, but that's not really the story here. The story is, is that when somebody doesn't do as they're told to go along with whatever the city administration wants them to do, and they can't be controlled, and they're going to do the right thing no matter what, then the city's going to make up something and get rid of them. This is no different. And there's such an analogy here. If you look, if you remember, when, when Chief Barber leaked the Joanne Dallas autopsy report of the media, and he wanted Prime to back him up about a month before the grand jury investigation, and Prime said, whoa, I may be committing a crime there. I'm not going to do that. That's when everything started to fall apart for him. At least that's what I've heard him speak about on the radio. Right. And he said as much again yesterday. Yeah. And I didn't hear his interview yesterday. I just heard him talk about it before, but in the same sense, uh, Lasky Rob Lasky through Jimmy Barber came to Kevin Levy and said, Hey, we want you to put together a PowerPoint to that will discredit Chief Prime. This is when, when Chief Prime was still the chief. And Lasky said, uh, I'm not going to do that. Levy said that. Yeah. Levy said, look, I listen, he said, listen, boss, I'm not going to do that. And, uh, and so then it got to the point that Rob Lasky said, look, I'm getting pressure from above. It's, I'm not asking you, I'm telling you, it's a direct order. You're going to be in subordinate. If you don't put together this presentation to discredit Chief Prime, because we're trying to get rid of him. And he said, I'm not going to do it. My morals won't let me do it. Let me tell you something. Kevin Levy is one of the most honest people that I have ever met. In fact, something that, that I haven't told anybody yet, that this will be a first on y'all show is Jimmy Barber gave Kevin Levy a whistleblower letter to try to induce him to say, Hey, you can say whatever you want to about Chief Prime. But then when Kevin Levy goes to give his testimony and he starts talking about the pressure, he was getting from the administration to discredit Chief Prime, they were like, Whoa, that's not why we gave you that whistleblower letter. You know? And so then they started to attack him. Anytime you don't go along to get along, they're going to make something up. They're going to, they're going to make you look bad. And I mean, you had, you had Bill of Thane us up in front of the city council the other day saying, Well, we believe that what Kevin Levy did was a crime. We, we've referred it to the district attorney's office. Why got word from the district attorney's office yesterday that they've looked at it, they've found no crime and they're not pursuing anything. And that's one of the questions I was going to ask you is, is Commander Levy worried at all about any criminal charges as in that report, they said that altering government documents would be a class they missed. I mean, you said this has already been looked into it has. He did not alter any government documents. He didn't alter anything. And the, the DA's we got word from the DA's office yesterday that they don't see any that they don't think he did anything wrong. And they're not going to be pursuing any charges a week and a half ago. The attorney general of the, of the state of Alabama said he didn't do anything wrong. I mean, you know, how, how do you have three reports, the Burr form and report, the office of professional responsibilities and the attorney general's office all say, Kevin Levy did everything right. And then suddenly an investigation that had a predetermined outcome because they don't, they didn't like that he wouldn't do what they wanted to to go along to get along. And this reeks of collusion and corruption, this investigation, we're talking with Chris Callahan, uh, representing Commander Levy, formerly of the Gulf Coast Tech Center as of this week. He was like, go from that position. I want to talk, well, I'd love to talk all day about the Gulf Coast Tech Center, but these meetings and the subpoenas. So remember, there was this big fight about whether the special counsel would be allowed to subpoena certain city employees. And that was just wild, I guess, prying got a subpoena to appear. They said that was some kind of a trial subpoena or something like that. He didn't really have to show up, but he showed up anyway, uh, so much after the fact where it's kind of under hard to understand exactly how all this worked out. But Levy testified for five hours before he was subpoenaed. Again, is that kind of how that worked with him? Well, he was never subpoenaed. What happened was, is he voluntarily came in, uh, and, and gave, uh, he was told he would have to give no more than four and a half hours worth the testimony. He gave five hours with the testimony and, uh, answered every question that they had answered them honestly with integrity. Uh, it was clear after that after, right after his interview, I called Ricardo Woods and I said, Ricardo, the outcome of this has already been predetermined. I can tell by the way that, that the interview was conducted. He's no, no, no, no, no. We don't, we don't have a way to influence this. Yes, you do. Fred Helmsing sits in on every single interview. I wasn't allowed to sit in on any other interviews, but Fred Helmsing, the lifelong fishing buddy friend of Bela Thanes was allowed to sit in on everyone and represent the city and the mayor and the chief of staff and, and public safety director Lasky. Uh, and, and apparently Curtis Graves, you know, that, that came in later. Um, and they wanted, they wanted Levy, but, but again, Levy parted from him. He said, I don't, I don't, I'm not going along with y'all scheme. Chris, one more time before we go to break here, remind us when Levy reached out to you at what point in all this. Did he kind of feel like, uh, oh, I'm in, I'm in shark infested waters here. Uh, when he found out that the attorney, the city had given him also represented Jimmy Barber, Sandy Stemps in the city and Rob Lasky. Okay. So you, again, you weren't in any of these meetings, uh, the way that Helmsing was and I wasn't allowed to be. No, and, uh, you know, if prime had any representation at these meetings, it'll have no idea. Have it taught the chief prime. Wow. Um, come back. Are you able to stick around with us for a few more minutes? All right. We're talking with Chris Callahan, uh, and we'll continue this conversation right here on mobile mornings after the break. By the way, stay tuned this hour. Your chance to win tickets to see sticks and forener at the war. That's a August 16th show. We'll give you a chance to win a pair of tickets coming up. Old guys with long hair. Can't beat it. It is, uh, eight to 20 with Danny Dalton. Chris Callahan in studio. He's the attorney for Kevin Levy, the former head of the Gold Coast Technology Center, a place and an entity that I said to you when you walked in here, that place mystifies me. And you said, yeah, it mystifies me too. That's correct. And one thing about it too is, um, this disconnect between the Gold Coast Technology Center and MPD. Is it always been that way? I don't think it's always been that way, especially in, in really this goes right to the heart of what we've been talking about. So when, when the Gold Coast Technology Center, which is really a, an information gathering intelligence gathering agency that's a collaboration between the feds, state police, local police, um, and, and, and that's good in a way because it, it really allows people to share information and solve crimes, cross, cross borders when there's counties or cities or states or even federal. Um, but it is, it's like a, like an intelligence agency on steroids, I would call it. But when it first started, it was under the, the command and control of the chief of police. Then Jimmy Barbara, right. Barbara was a chief of police when it started. When, when Barbara became the public safety director, the, uh, on the org charts or whatever, the, the command and control of it, then went with Barbara stayed with him. We're going to his position in the city. So it left the, the police department per se, but it was still within public safety. Right. But then when, when chief of staff, Barbara became the mayor's chief of staff, it, it followed him. The org charts followed him to where he's still in control. I mean, I mean, Kevin Levy had to meet with Jimmy Barbara once a week this whole time to talk about the intelligence to, you know, but it got farther and farther away from the police department. So it's very easy to see how there would then become a disconnect. Now did the mobile police have access to it? Absolutely. They had over 10 officers that were assigned to the Gulf Coast Technology Center, uh, you know, just about at all times that had access to it that worked with it that even, even the second in command there was a mobile police officer. Uh, so, uh, you know, they had access to it. But as far as where did the control line, the control has always lined with Jimmy Barbara from the time he was the police chief to the public safety director, then as chief of staff, uh, commander Levy still had to report to him. Uh, let's talk about kind of the crux of this. And I know we touched on it earlier, but, uh, from that report that was put out this week, and then I believe the reasoning, uh, given by the city for Levy's firing this, this contract with three two ones, the insights. And I have so many questions about the, the Baker couple here. Um, and the way they answered some of the questions in that report, uh, confounded me, but so Levy said it sounds to me like he's saying there was more correspondence between him and Johnny Baker with three two ones, the insights regarding this contract, which is what a Thanos and the special counsel in this report said was an altering of government records, but he said that paper trail can't be, it wasn't able to be found by the city who was looking into these emails and then they talk to the bakers and they act like they just delete everything as soon as they're done talking with someone. So they have, they have no records that show they received that second contract. Uh, what are your thoughts on that specific portion of the report was, was that Levy feel like he was kind of railroaded here in a, in a power struggle? He was absolutely railroad in the power struggle, but, but asked to, you know, how all that took place. I'll let you ask him. I'll bring him in and let, let him talk to y'all and talk to your listeners. Um, but it was, it was made, there was a predetermined outcome to this investigation from the start is, you know, I had told Ricardo Wood's that and then I called Ricardo, uh, right after the report came out and I said, I told you so and he was just silent. He's I'm sorry, Chris. I got nothing to say. You know, um, you know, on our first conversation, he even told me, look, Chris, Levy's done nothing wrong. I've looked into this. Everybody's looked into this. He's done nothing wrong. He doesn't have anything to worry about. We gave him the whistleblower letter. We, you know, he's good, but, uh, but he wouldn't go along and get along. What happens next? What's up next? Well, like I say, uh, Commander Levy has filed a notice acclaim with the city. He did it after his first testimony and then they started retaliating against him. They, they wanted him to come back and testify some more and he said, look, or I sent a letter to bill of thing to saying, uh, you know, we're in the middle of negotiations with the city, uh, on behalf of Mr. Levy based on our notice of claim that we filed, which is basically a notice of intent to sue, uh, the city and, and we're not going to talk about about anything else. He gave, he cooperated fully. That's when they went to city council and got city council to authorize a subpoena for Mr. Levy. And, and, you know, he would have complied with any subpoena God. They didn't have to give a subpoena, but that's when Mayor Stimson, a primary witness, who supposedly his attorney didn't have a conflict of interest and was also supposed, supposed to represent Kevin Levy, sent Kevin Levy a letter and said, if you don't testify, we will fire you. If you don't testify further, we will fire you. So he testified again under the rest. Chris, thanks for coming in. And, um, we look forward to Mr. Levy visiting us as well. All right. Don't forget if you need representation Hernandez and associates law firm. I'll be commercial in there. I see what's going on. Thank you, Chris. Uh, coming back more mobile mornings after the break. Uh, how about we give a, a pair of tickets away, caller number four, two, five, one, three, four, three, oh, one, oh six, six, and four, and at the wharf, August 16th, caller number four, those tickets are yours.