During its meeting Tuesday, the Selma City Council announced that Robert Green, who previously led the Selma Police Department (SPD) and was a candidate for Dallas County Probate Judge, would serve as Interim Chief of the department for 90 days.

Green is slated to hold the post until a new chief can be found, which can’t take place until outgoing SPD Chief Spencer Collier’s retirement becomes official at the end of July.

Green stated that he has not yet formally accepted the position and plans to give the council a definitive answer Monday.

“I was very reluctant initially,” Green said. “But I want to be able to help out here. I believe in organization, structure and accountability.”

Green said stepping into the Interim Chief position shouldn’t pose any problem, as many of the procedures are the same as they were during his last stint with the local department, aside from finding a new secretary.

But between his tenure as Chief of the SPD and his campaign for Dallas County Probate Judge, Green served as chief of the Northport Police Department (NPD) from 2006 until his retirement in 2012, which came under a cloud of controversy.

Green’s bona fides as a law enforcement officer are unquestionable – a graduate of Dallas County High School, Green earned a bachelor’s degree in biology before earning a master’s degree in justice and public safety; from there, he attended Jones Law School and graduated from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) National Academy in Virginia.

Green was appointed Assistant Chief of the SPD in 1992 and promoted to Chief 10 years later, a post he held for four years before taking the job in Northport.

Green said that his first three years in Northport were “dynamic” – he was able to create a strategic plan for the department and received accolades from the community for his work – but his last three and a half years were “rocky,” a fact he attributes to a change in administration at city hall.

In 2009, Green filed a racial discrimination complaint against the City of Northport with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) – the complaint was dismissed in April 2011 and two months later Green filed a federal suit against the city for racial discrimination, adding that he was being forced to work in a hostile environment in retaliation for the EEOC complaint, according to multiple reports from The Tuscaloosa News.

That lawsuit was thrown out in April 2014 when a judge decided that there was not enough evidence to back up Green’s assertions.

In October 2015, Green filed another lawsuit against the city claiming that an operation study of the NPD, commissioned by the Northport City Council and conducted by CWH Research in 2012, was an act of retaliation for his lawsuit the previous year.

However, city leaders claimed that the study was commissioned in response to a myriad of complaints from police officers regarding Green’s management style and the work environment he created at the department, The Tuscaloosa News reported, despite Green’s assertion that city leaders had threatened to make the findings public if he refused to withdraw his earlier suit.

The results of the study were damning, concluding that Green used threats, coercion and punishments as “power tools of intimidation” that led to high turnover and low morale within the department.

According to the study, there was a 61 percent turnover rate in the department since Green took control of it in 2006, double the rate in the six-year period prior to his tenure.

Further, the study concluded that roughly 61 percent of officers feared retaliation for voicing concerns in the department, more than 50 percent believed that favored employees were given special treatment and nearly 80 percent stated that the department had no clear message on goals or values.

Additionally, more than 50 percent of officers said they would not recommend the department as a place to work and roughly 40 percent stated that they were depressed about their job; nearly 90 percent said that not everyone follows the chain of command and more than 20 percent reported harassment by co-workers or supervisors.

Green was placed on administrative leave while the study was being conducted and had filed for retirement when the results were made public in July 2012, according to a report from The Tuscaloosa News.

Green’s 2015 lawsuit alleging that the study was commissioned in retaliation for previous lawsuits was dismissed in March 2018 after a federal judge ruled that the city did not discriminate or retaliate against him.

“Despite the ups and downs of my last three and a half years, I feel like I did an outstanding job in Northport,” Green said.

Selma City Council President Corey Bowie declined to comment on Green’s tenure in Northport.