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Jury Rules For Mocksville Officers; Awards $4.1 Million

A jury has ruled in favor of three former Mocksville police officers in their lawsuit against the police department. The officers maintained they were fired from their jobs for raising concerns about how the department was run.

The jury awarded a total of $4.1 million in damages to the officers, Major Ken Hunter, Lt. Rick Donathan and Detective Jerry Medlin.

The Winston-Salem Journal reports all three were fired on the same day in December of 2011.

The lawsuit claimed the police chief and town manager fired them because they reported allegations of corruption in the department to state officials.

The suit was brought against Mocksville Police Chief Robert Cook, Town Manager Christine Bralley and the town of Mocksville.

Cook and Bralley insisted that the officers were fired because of poor job performance.

The verdict came at the end of an eight-day trial in U.S. District Court in Winston-Salem.

Neal Charnoff joined 88.5 WFDD as Morning Edition host in 2014. Raised in the Catskill region of upstate New York, he graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1983. Armed with a liberal arts degree, Neal was fully equipped to be a waiter. So he prolonged his arrested development bouncing around New York and L.A. until discovering that people enjoyed listening to his voice on the radio. After a few years doing overnight shifts at a local rock station, Neal spent most of his career at Vermont Public Radio. He began as host of a nightly jazz program, where he was proud to interview many of his idols, including Dave Brubeck and Sonny Rollins. Neal graduated to the news department, where he was the local host for NPR's All Things Considered for 14 years. In addition to news interviews and features, he originated and produced the Weekly Conversation On The Arts, as well as VPR Backstage, which profiled theater productions around the state. He contributed several stories to NPR, including coverage of a devastating ice storm. Neal now sees the value of that liberal arts degree, and approaches life with the knowledge that all subjects and all art forms are connected to each other. Neal and his wife Judy are enjoying exploring North Carolina and points south. They would both be happy to never experience a Vermont winter again.

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