Placed on “Non-disciplinary administrative leave with pay” for six weeks prior to retirement
Graham’s personnel department has made a sudden about-face in its disclosures the city’s former assistant police chief, who had been conspicuously absent from the police department for more than a month before his retirement less than two weeks ago.
According to the latest information from the city’s H.R. department, assistant chief Rodney King had been on paid “non-disciplinary” leave for roughly six weeks before he tendered his retirement at the end of August.
In an email last week, Lorrie Andrews, the city’s personnel director, acknowledged that the 60-year-old King, who joined the city’s police department on August 25, 2014, “was placed on non-disciplinary administrative leave with pay effective July 21, 2025.”
“There was no disciplinary action, demotion, or disciplinary suspension taken regarding this employee,” Andrews went on to add in an email she dispatched to The Alamance News last Wednesday. “Mr. King retired from City employment effective August 31, 2025.”
King’s salary, according to Andrews, was $104,895.06 a year at the time of his retirement.
This account of King’s employment status stands in stark contrast to Andrews’ previous disclosures about the assistant police chief, whose whereabouts had been the subject of some speculation before his retirement.
Under North Carolina’s Public Records Law, any subdivision of state or local government must release certain details about their employees upon request from the public. Among these required disclosures are a staff member’s age, dates of employment, title, and salary as well as the date and nature of the most recent change in his or her employment status.
On July 29, The Alamance News requested all of the available details about King after it received word that the assistant chief had been benched by the city. This apparent change in King’s status coincided with a one-month advance in the retirement of the city’s former police chief Kristy Baker, who ultimately gave up her post on August 1 rather than September 1 as she had originally announced to Graham’s city council. To further deepen the mystery, the city proceeded to appoint Chris Smith, a retired assistant police chief from Burlington, to serve as Graham’s interim police chief notwithstanding King’s official role as Baker’s second-in-command.
In response to the newspaper’s initial inquiry about King, Andrews insisted that the latest change in King’s status had been a “cost of living adjustment” in his pay that took place on July 13 of this year. A day later, Andrews assured the newspaper that King’s status was “active” after a reporter asked her point blank whether the assistant chief was “on some form of suspension or leave.”
The newspaper’s lingering suspicion that Andrews was holding back information prompted a follow-up request from its publisher to the city’s top-ranking administrator.
On August 28, Tom Boney, Jr., the editor and publisher of The Alamance News, wrote to city manager Megan Garner about the personnel director’s earlier disclosures.
“I have reason to believe that the recent response, via your Human Resources Director, was not in fact, fully responsive, or accurate, with regard to our request for information about Assistant Police Chief Rodney King,” he went on to assert. “Thus, perhaps it might be better to formalize our request.”
Boney went on to cite the relevant portions of the N.C. Public Records Law as well as various court cases that established the newspaper’s right to full, up-to-date information on King’s employment status.
Boney renewed his request to Garner on Wednesday, September 3 when his letter from August 28 had yet to bear fruit. It was in response to this pointed reminder that Andrews passed along the information recounted above.
Andrews’ subsequent admission that King had been on administrative leave all along comes amid some formal recognition of the assistant police chief’s retirement from the city’s employ.
Among the items that came before Graham’s city council during on Tuesday was a procedural request to declare King’s badge and departmental sidearm as surplus property so that he can hang on to these items as keepsakes. The council went on to give a unanimous nod to this request, which allows King to purchase this professional regalia for the nominal fee of $1, as part of a “consent agenda” of presumably routine or non-controversial items that its members adopted en bloc.
