Baltimore Police Sgt. Robert Smith says the threat against him was direct: Drop your lawsuit against the department or face false rape charges.

“I know it’s retaliatory,” Smith said Monday in an interview with The Examiner. “I was betrayed. I was thrown under the bus.”

Now, Smith’s lawyer, Clarke Ahlers, is contacting the Baltimore City Council, the city’s inspector general and the Maryland Attorney General’s Office of Civil Rights to file complaints about the police department’s lawyers for what he claims are illegal actions.

Smith is suing the city for $1.5 million in a defamation suit allowed to proceed to trial by Maryland’s highest court.

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On Feb. 20, Karen Hornig, the city police department’s chief legal counsel, wrote a letter to Ahlers saying the department wanted to see Smith, who is on administrative duty, “return to the streets” in exchange for Smith dropping his suit.

After Smith refused, the department charged him administratively Feb. 27 with helping former officer Jemini Jones sexually assault a teenage girl. Jones was acquitted of the rape charge.

Records from the trial and an official duty roster show Smith, a supervisor in the Southwest District Flex Squad, was on vacation during the alleged incident.

“This is payback for not dropping the civil suit,” Ahlers said. “If he’s a rapist, do you let him back on the force? It’s literally unbelievable. This is obviously a sham. It is the grossest abuse of power I have ever seen. It is corruption.”

Sterling Clifford, spokesman for the Baltimore Police Department and Mayor Sheila Dixon, said they could not comment on the matter.

In internal police documents reviewed by The Examiner, internal affairs investigators stated Smith, a 13-year veteran of the force, was on vacation and not a suspect in the alleged rape.

“Nobody ever accuses Sergeant Smith of this,” Ahlers said. “There’s not even a dispute over facts.”

Margaret Burns, spokeswoman for the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office, also confirmed Smith had nothing to do with the rape allegations against Jones.

“He was never implicated in any way,” Burns said.

The Vanguard Justice Society, the organization that represents the city’s black police officers, said the administrative charges against Smith were troubling.

“That is ludicrous,” said Robert Smith, attorney for the Vanguard.

The department is threatening to fire Smith after an administrative hearing in August, Ahlers said.

lbroadwater@baltimoreexaminer.com

sjanis@baltimoreexaminer.com