by Stephen Gutowski of The Reload has a story today of how David Chipman derailed a promising black ATF Special Agent’s career with a false accusation of cheating in a promotion assessment. Chipman’s accusation required a two-year investigation into the matter which effectively took this Special Agent out of contention for further promotions even though the agent in question was eventually cleared.
“I couldn’t believe it when it happened,” the agent told The Reload. “But when I read about his other comments, in my mind, I was like ‘that motherf*****.’ That’s what happened. He said, ‘Hey, a lot of African Americans qualified to be promoted on this certification list; they must have been cheating.’ And then he had to go and find one. I happened to be that one.”
He said he believes Chipman’s allegation after the in-person test was motivated by race.
“I believe it had to have been a bias,” the agent, who spent more than 25 years at the agency, said. “My answers were just ‘too good.’ And my thought is he just said, ‘this black guy could not have answered this well if he wasn’t cheating.’”
The agent said he was cleared by a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation, but not before his career took a hit. He said the protracted investigation effectively paused the promising career he’d built.
“I was cleared as I should have been,” the agent said. “But it was very painful because it was two years out of my life where my career was sidelined for something like that. And it caused me a lot of stress and my family a lot of stress. And it kind of disenchanted me with the idea of management.”
In the in-person assessment, the Special Agent was given a scenario and asked how he would handle it. In this particular case, unbeknownst to Chipman the scenario was something this agent had been doing as part of team for a number of years. The agent did well on it which led Chipman to make his false accusation of cheating.
Read the whole story which has been corroborated by another ATF agent.
