STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. \u2014 A chief investigator at New York City\u2019s Probation Department was allegedly fired from her job after she blew the whistle on her boss\u2019s affair with an employee.<\/p>\n
Ebony Huntley filed a \u201cfiled a wrongful termination lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court on Thursday laying out the accusations against Department of Probation Commissioner Sharun Goodwin, who was appointed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani in late January,\u201d according to Politico.<\/a><\/p>\n Huntley alleges that she received an anonymous complaint from a worker in the department that Goodwin was in a \u201cprior intimate relationship\u201d with Wayne McKenzie, a member of the department\u2019s general counsel.<\/p>\n McKenzie joined the general counsel after Goodwin was appointed to the Department of Probation.<\/p>\n In an interview with Politico<\/a>, Huntley said the worker was concerned that Goodwin and McKenzie\u2019s alleged affair \u201cmay present a conflict of interest and impact impartial decision-making.\u201d<\/p>\n The complaint made by the staffer also expressed concerns about Human Resources Director Zenia Melendez. Melendez is \u201caccused of having a history of \u2018verbal and physical violence\u2019 against staff,\u201d Politico reported.<\/a><\/p>\n Huntley passed along the complaint to the Department of Investigation.<\/p>\n Discussing the report with Probation Department attorney Brandon Smith, Smith allegedly told her that he would alert McKenzie of the report mentioning his name.<\/p>\n \u201cHuntley says she told Smith he shouldn\u2019t do that, given McKenzie was named in the complaint, but Smith allegedly replied: \u2018This is not like the old days where you don\u2019t share information,\u2019\u201d Politico wrote.<\/a><\/p>\n A day after her submission to the Investigation Department, Huntley said she was invited to a meeting led by McKenzie. He discussed the report with her, according to Politico, before allegedly saying, \u201cI cannot have a person like Ebony working for me. Effective immediately, you are terminated\u2026 you can\u2019t work for me. I am disappointed in you, Ebony. I thought you had more integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n Her termination was signed by Melendez.<\/p>\n Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s comment on the matter was the following: \u201cI\u2019m not going to be weighing in on any ongoing investigation. However, New Yorkers should rest assured that there is an investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n He assured reporters that \u201cany allegation of misconduct incredibly seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n Read the original article on silive.com<\/a>. Add silive.com<\/a> as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. \u2014 A chief investigator at New York City\u2019s Probation Department was allegedly fired from her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11982,77846,4327,9,56,63,65,64,4369,77847,77848,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-195043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-brandon-smith","9":"tag-ebony-huntley","10":"tag-manhattan-supreme-court","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-ny","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-nyc-headlines","15":"tag-nyc-news","16":"tag-politico","17":"tag-sharun-goodwin","18":"tag-wayne-mckenzie","19":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}