"I go into that meeting thinking, it's over and she's gonna say, 'So sorry you had to go through this,'" Page recalls.
Instead, Johnson informed her that an administrative investigation was about to commence and told her she was giving her the "opportunity to resign." Page says she replied, "absolutely not," and asked Johnson what she was being accused of now. "She told me I'd know what the investigation was over."
Mark Graham
Mark Graham
Robin Page, seen here in a municipal courtroom, says the Dallas Police Department's fruitless corruption investigation of her was so agonizing, the emotional fallout remains.
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Two weeks later, that investigation was complete. Without allowing Page to address the specifics, Johnson presented her a letter with a list of dates on which she either arrived to the S.A.F.E. team offices an hour or so late or left early. Page would be reassigned to prosecution -- the entry-level job she had left in 1993.
"I got the feeling that now that I was marked, somebody was going to find something wrong with me," says Page. One way or another she was going to be blamed for the S.A.F.E. team's screwups. "I got that impression. But I wasn't in charge of anyone at S.A.F.E. I tried to tell them what to do, but they preferred to operate their way."
The worst thing was that once Page was allowed back into her office to obtain her personal calendar and one from the special ordinance court, she could readily explain why she wasn't in the S.A.F.E. team offices. She was working in court, or meeting with other prosecutors preparing cases, on the vast majority of those days, the calendar records show.
Page says the S.A.F.E. team time log -- which itself is highly unusual because the police were not responsible for keeping her time -- was accepted as gospel by Johnson. Never mind that the source was the same unit that had just tried to send her to prison with fictitious allegations of felony crimes. In the last city attorney's office performance evaluation Page had seen, in October 1998, her attendance and work dedication were evaluated as "good," and her overall evaluation between "good" and "excellent."
Page hired David Miller as her lawyer and asked Johnson to examine her attendance evidence. Grudgingly, Johnson gathered up the calendars -- and hasn't gotten back to her in about three months, Page says. "All I wanted was my legal liaison job back," she says. "Instead, they put me back in an entry-level job. Anyone knows once you have gotten out of prosecution and are put back in, your career with the city attorney's office is over. This tastes like, smells like, feels like punishment to me."
Around the city attorney's office, she says, she remains under some sort of cloud and gets the impression that, in the city at large, her name has not been cleared. "Based on my experience as a prosecutor, 'cleared of criminal wrongdoing' means 'We know you're guilty; we just can't prove it.'"
She says the lingering effects on her reputation have already hurt her in the job market and seriously handicapped her aspiration to one day become a judge.
With all that, Page's story is about to enter a new chapter: the lawsuit phase. In September, Miller wrote the city attorney's office a "demand letter," saying her case had "striking similarities" to another Dallas police case, dating back to 1989, in which Willard Rollins demoted two narcotics detectives after they complained he imperiled their lives. That case ended up with the city paying more than $1 million in damages.
In the Page matter, he wrote, the police were faced with "a public relations quandary of explaining to an inquiring media why numerous cases against rather notorious slumlords had to be dismissed...The police department targeted Ms. Page as their scapegoat." What ensued, he said, was a systematic attempt to ruin Page's reputation and career.
These days, Page is back at work in the municipal courthouse, bringing speeders and owners of unmowed lawns to justice. And once again she's working side by side with Dallas cops.
When Page is asked whether she trusts them, her reply has the ring of real life. "I don't think the problems are with the department as a whole, just certain members," she says. "I go to court with officers every day, and we have a great rapport. Some are hilarious. They'll say, 'Here comes the money launderer. Hide your money!' or 'Can you put me on your payroll?' When they're serious they say, 'Go get a piece of them.' You know, for all the little underdogs who have been unjustly accused or punished, they're saying, 'Get a piece for me.'"
