Former NAACP chapter president Rachel Dolezal violated ethics rules while serving on the city of Spokane, Washington’s volunteer police oversight commission, city leaders said Wednesday.
Dolezal and two other commission members were being investigated as part of a city probe into a whistle-blower complaint that said commission members publicly named residents who had made complaints against police officers.
The investigation found that the three members, including Dolezal, did indeed publicly name the residents, in violation of a confidentiality agreement.
The investigation began on May 4 and the findings were released at noon Wednesday.
“We are deeply disturbed by the facts contained in the report of findings from the independent investigator,” Spokane Mayor David Condon and Council President Ben Stuckart said in a joint statement posted on the city’s website. “The conduct is unacceptable and falls far short of the community’s expectations of volunteers who sit on City boards and commissions.”
The statement went on to say, “The eight findings in the report admonish the conduct of chair Rachel Dolezal and commissioners Kevin Berkompas and Adrian Dominguez. It has been forwarded to the City Council for review and determination of any action.”
Berkompas and Dominguez’s terms end in 2017, while Dolezal’s term expires on Sept. 15, 2016.
The Spokane City Council will meet Thursday to discuss the findings and re-evaluate Dolezal’s position on the commission.
Dolezal resigned as Spokane chapter president of the NAACP on Monday, amid accusations that she’s been pretending to be African-American despite the fact that her Montana birth certificate identifies her as Caucasion.
In interviews since her resignation, Dolezal maintained that she identifies as black, despite the claims of her parents and pictures from her past showing her with lighter skin and blonde hair.
“Well, I definitely am not white. Nothing about being white describes who I am. So, what’s the word for it?” Dolezal said in an interview Tuesday with Savannah Guthrie for NBC News. “The closest thing that I can come to is if — if you’re black or white, I’m black. I’m more black than I am white.”