An FBI Agent, Guards, and an Investigation

Take one former FBI agent. Add dozens of security guards. Put them together in a badly ventilated room in Holyoke Center (with another lawyer, who wasn't originally invited), and you've got a massive investigation of the Harvard Police Department's security unit.

Having been asked by President Neil L. Rudenstine to take a "second look" at charges of discrimination in the department, General Counsel Margaret H. Marshall hired former federal agent James A. Ring to interview guards. Ring now works at Marshall's former employer, the law firm of Choate, Hall & Stewart.

The charges have been denied by police and University officials, including Police Chief Paul E. Johnson and Manager of Operations for Security Robert J. Dowling.

Ring began the interviews in January by working from a prepared list of questions in an unmarked first floor superintendents' office in Cronkhite Graduate Center. But the queries soon changed tenor and tone.

And venue. In Holyoke Center 732, Ring's interviews with guards who had made charges of discrimination public stretched for three and four hours. Some guards had to come back for a second day of questioning.

The interviewing raised almost as many questions as it was intended to answer. An attorney from Choate, Hall & Stewart showed up, unannounced, to accompany Ring to some of the more serious interviews. Guards said Ring told them when they arrived that they could have an attorney present, too, but Marshall hadn't mentioned that in her original letter inviting them.

Two guards claimed the interviews were being taped and said they saw tape recorders in the room, but both Ring and Marshall flatly denied it. Some former security employees, who believe they have important information for the investigation, say Ring gave them a hard time about setting up interviews.

Two former security supervisors, both of whom are Black, were not contacted as part of the probe of alleged discrimination, which included allegations that some mistreatment of security guards was racially motivated.

Ring finished his interviews more than a month ago, but Marshall says she's continuing with the investigation and won't say when--or if--she will release the results. The guards who have made public charges, and put their jobs at risk, say they will not wait too long to see their grievances addressed. Six already have lawyers, although no suits have yet been filed.

"As a guard, I think truth and justice are important," says guard Stephen G. McCombe, a union steward who has charged his superiors with engaging in a "pattern of retaliation."

A previous "investigation" into the security department (undertaken last spring under the supervision of then-General Counsel Daniel Steiner '54) was discredited after guards said they were never interviewed. The present investigation appears more thorough, but it's worth remembering that even after previous probes found no wrongdoing, the complaints of discrimination persisted.