ZEBULON - Members of a Hispanic church near Zebulon have dropped a formal complaint filed with the American Civil Liberties Union against the town's police department.

And the ACLU's legal director has apologized to the police chief for making claims she now says were incorrect.

The ACLU, along with the North Carolina Justice Center and the Southern Coalition of Social Justice, contacted the Zebulon Police Department in April 2010 saying members of Iglesia de Dios "Catedral de Jésus" had complained about harassment in association with license checkpoints set up on Arendell Avenue near the church.

Pastor Angelo Cabrera said a female member of his congregation, who was concerned about treatment of area Hispanics by local police, initially contacted the ACLU.

Cabrera and ACLU legal director Katy Parker talked a few times, and he answered her inquiries but expressed ambivalence about the ACLU's involvement last week: "We are the church. We don't want to get into some kind of argument or fight," Cabrera said.

Last April - nearly a year after making the initial complaint - Parker contacted police Chief Tim Hayworth about her investigation. The letter included an apology.

"Specifically," she wrote, "our investigation revealed that (1) the checkpoints were farther away from the church than had been reported to us; and (2) contrary to what had been reported to us, neither you nor any ZPD officers entered the church sanctuary uninvited and interrupted the church service."

Complaint aired,

not apology

Parker also wrote in her letter this spring that she usually contacts attorneys to verify allegations before sending public records requests, and "it is also typically my practice to make contact before speaking with the media. I should have done so in this situation, and I apologize for my failure to contact your office before sending you the letter and speaking to the media last spring," she wrote to Hayworth.

Though Parker made her claims public by issuing a press release following the initial allegations, she did not send a copy of the most recent letter to the Eastern Wake News because it "had been so long, a year later or so" since she made the initial announcement about the investigation. "I did not know if it was newsworthy," she said.

Despite the apologies to Hayworth, Parker said she remains concerned about police agencies that regularly carry out checkpoints in the same area, as the Zebulon police do along Arendell Avenue on the southern edge of town.

Parker said in her 2011 letter to Hayworth that she continues to have concerns about driver's license checkpoints administered by the Zebulon police in that "to the extent that these checkpoints are being placed over and over again in the same location, they may also violate North Carolina state law."

State law requires that "agencies shall avoid placing checkpoints repeatedly in the same location or proximity."

Cabrera stated that while he respects the police and the laws of the state and this country, state and federal regulations make it difficult for some of his church members to travel.

"I understand the police ... are doing their job," he said. But he said he has issues, for example, with police giving a person who has no driver's license a ticket for the same offense over and over again.

Claims fret police

Hayworth said the 2010 claims against his department came as a surprise to him. "The police department, I believe, has always had a good relationship with the Hispanic community," he said.

Before the ACLU complaint was aired, Hayworth said, grievances against the department were "very rare."

The police chief said his main problem with the ACLU complaint was that it was made public with "nothing to confirm or corroborate it. They were out on the side of the road on TV talking about 'rogue police tactics' and making quotes to the paper," he said.

His officers, Hayworth said, were upset as well.

"It's a dangerous job. My officers have been assaulted, spit on, their cars abused and vandalized. It's a tough job, and then to have reputable organizations like the ACLU take a shot at us publicly - my officers took it personal."

The investigation has resulted in some changes in how the department operates checkpoints. Officers now enter traffic checkpoint details - including information about race and citations issued - on two different databases: one maintained by Zebulon police; the other by the State Bureau of Investigation.

That information has always been required for DWI checkpoints, he said, but Zebulon officers keep more detailed records for license checkpoints, too.

"It's not required, but it's a small step in us being more transparent," Hayworth said.

Sitting with his wife in the church office, Angelo Cabrera said he hasn't seen evidence of any traffic checkpoints on Arendell Avenue this year. "Maybe they have planned a checkpoint, I haven't seen one," he said.

In his last conversation with Parker, Cabrera said he told her, "I am not going to proceed with this case. I don't wanna be in court, because we just raised our views just to make the understanding of what is going on."