Ex-Henderson officer says anti-Muslim discrimination drove him to retire

Darrell Wade was a Muslim long before he became a police officer, having accepted the faith as a teenager.

So the veteran Henderson officer didn’t expect much reaction a few years ago when he started wearing a kufi — a traditionally Muslim cap also worn by members of other religions — whenever he wasn’t in uniform.

His youngest daughter, then in college, had just accepted Islam. That inspired Wade, as he recalled, to “rededicate myself to my faith.”

It never occurred to him to announce the change. It was a small, personal choice.

Some in the Henderson Police Department, where Wade served as president of the officers union, came to see it differently.

In an email to the union vice president in early October, a former partner of Wade’s wrote that concern was growing among officers about Wade’s “display of his religion” while representing the union in public.

“As police, we tend to look closely at display of this particular religious affiliation, and it is not sitting well with members,” the officer wrote.

Driving the car as his wife read him the forwarded email, Wade couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was 2014, he thought, and this was the United States of America.

He filed a complaint of religious discrimination with the city, which later said it had investigated and found “insufficient evidence” any city policy had been violated.

After months of torment, Wade retired in late January.

Now 57, he had planned to work until age 60 but said he felt driven to leave. He started taking his saved-up sick leave, but said the city soon pushed him to either retire or take an unpaid medical leave — the latter of which ends after 12 weeks.

And with the city investigation dead-ended, Wade had no way to know how many officers shared his former partner’s attitude. A handful, or many more?

He didn’t know whom he could trust.

“I can’t work with people that have a religious discriminatory attitude,” Wade said last week. “If they’re doing that to one of their own, what are they doing to the citizens we’re trying to serve and protect?”

Before his former partner’s message, there had been smaller complaints that seemed petty to Wade at the time. In retrospect, they fit a pattern.

Officers had complained after Wade sent out a save-the-date email for last year’s union “holiday banquet.” That was the name that had been used for years, Wade said.

But because the prior union president had called the 2013 gathering a “Christmas” event, people were upset. Wade said he didn’t consciously change the name back, but people drew their own conclusions.

In the later email, which Wade shared, his former partner wrote that it could be “political suicide” if the public saw Wade’s Facebook page, which features a photo of him in his kufi and an Islamic name, Hafiz Salaam, in parentheses after Darrell Wade.

Wade was stunned by what he saw as a betrayal by someone he had trusted.

“My whole world has been torn upside down,” he said in an interview at his Hender­son home beside his wife of 10 years, Gail Evans-Wade.

Wade has filed a complaint against the city and the union with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Nevada Equal Rights Commission. A mediation session is scheduled for April.

If federal and state officials decline to pursue the case, Wade could file a lawsuit himself. He doesn’t want his job back — he’s done — but he could seek damages.

A Police Department spokeswoman, Michelle French, said no one could comment on Wade’s case because it’s a “personnel issue.” Officer Ken Kerby, the new president of the police union, didn’t return repeated requests for comment.

Now Wade, still dealing with the shock, is adjusting uncomfortably to an unplanned early retirement.

“It’s just been a real nightmare,” he said.

PATROL BOY

Wade has worn uniforms nearly all his life.

As a kid in Newark, N.J., he was a “patrol boy,” helping other students cross the street, from fifth to eighth grade. His last year, he was the patrol boy captain.

“I always wanted to do something that I could make a difference,” he said.

After attending Howard University, Wade joined the Air Force, where he spent nine years as a security officer, including time at Nellis Air Force Base.

Later, he worked in Louisiana protecting the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve before heading back west to the Nevada Test Site, as it was then called.

Amid downsizing, a former co-worker called and suggested Wade join him in the Police Department in the growing city of Henderson. Wade took the test in 1998.

When he graduated from the academy, he was 40 — the oldest one in his class.

His age and experience, he thinks, explain why it wasn’t long before people from the union approached Wade about being secretary.

He was elected secretary of the the Henderson Police Officers’ Association in 2002 and became president in 2005 when the prior leader left. He served in the role for more than three years, winning an election along the way, before returning to the secretary post.

He worked patrol and did traffic enforcement, including as a motorcycle officer, and was a technical accident investigator and accident reconstructionist.

As union president, Wade said, he always tried to protect the process that protected officers accused of wrongdoing.

In June 2014, he became president again when there was a vacancy. In Henderson, the union president has that role full time and doesn’t do police work. And the president usually doesn’t wear a uniform.

Colleagues had long known of Wade’s religion. He rearranged his schedule as he fasted during Ramadan, and he had worn the kufi when not in uniform for a few years.

“It was no big deal,” he said. “No one ever said anything to me. No one looked at me differently.”

Or so he thought.

‘PART OF THE JOB’

In his second stint as union president, Wade wanted to get people to think of the association not just as a bargaining group but as part of the community.

In 2006, the union had started a public charity, the HPOA Charitable Foundation. In 2014, it hired a PR firm to boost its image.

The union sought media coverage of events and spread photos on its website and social media. Wade was the face of the union, so he would be there, on camera.

The charity sponsored a teen for a Marine Corps leadership program called Devil Pups, and Wade had his photo taken with the boy.

Officers protected crosswalks on their own time — “Cross with a Cop” — and Wade was on TV talking about it. That initiative earned a City Council proclamation.

It never occurred to Wade that any of this would be controversial. As he put it: “This is all part of the job.”

But in early October, on the first day of Wade’s sudden trip to Illinois after his wife’s mother had a stroke, the emails started.

First were two complaining about the “holiday banquet.” Wade said he wrote them off as “ignorant” until the next day, Oct. 9. That’s when the vice president called to brace him for the email from Wade’s former partner.

“I felt like somebody had punched me in my stomach,” Wade said.

His first day back at work, he went to the human resources office and filed a complaint of discrimination. He started taking sick leave. He couldn’t sleep and called a crisis line one night.

Wade met with the HR director and later the city manager and was told it would be investigated. Then suddenly, he said, there was a call from an assistant city manager ordering him to go back to work the next day.

He had a doctor’s note saying he shouldn’t be at work. The city soon sent him Family and Medical Leave Act and later medical retirement paperwork.

Wade had no thought of making his complaint public — he just wanted it addressed. But in late November came word that the city investigation was closed.

Reluctantly, Wade filled out the FMLA paperwork, knowing the leave would last just 12 weeks. With time running out, he worried the city would try to fire him, so he retired. He won’t get his full pension because he didn’t get 20 years in.

Asked whether he’s gotten support from former colleagues, Wade just shook his head. One officer who lives nearby has expressed support, Gail said, but that’s it.

When time came in October for union election nominations, no one named Wade for any office.

“So I became — what do you call it? — persona non grata,” he said.

It makes him feel like he’s done something wrong, a bitter pill for someone who always has tried to follow the rules.

Wade still thinks “80 percent” of Henderson’s officers are great people. But he worries about the rest.

“If you can’t get past your personal biases,” he said, “then you shouldn’t be a police officer.”

A NEW FUTURE

Wade and his wife bought their house at the end of 2011. It’s too big for the two of them, but they planned to retire there, make it the place their four kids and their grandkids could gather.

In November, they put the house on the market. They plan to move away as soon as it sells and start over in another state.

Wade said he has felt like a prisoner in his home. He knows people might think him oversensitive. But he can’t shake the feeling that he doesn’t know who’s out there. So he mostly stays home.

“I’m a pretty strong person, I thought, until this happened,” he said.

During an interview, he started wiping his eyes and stepped away briefly to compose himself.

“It’s hard seeing him like this,” Gail said, watching him.

She described how the ordeal has affected her husband. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. A doctor prescribed anti­depressants, sleeping pills and nausea medications, telling him to continue counseling.

Wade always had been a “people person,” Gail said, a Mason and a Shriner active in the community. Then he withdrew, feeling unsafe in public and not wanting his problems to be a cloud over others.

Talking about it is like reliving it. But Wade said he feels an obligation.

“If I don’t speak out (about this),” he said, “what can I complain about?”

Contact Eric Hartley at ehartley@reviewjournal.com or 702-550-9229. Find him on Twitter: @ethartley.