Two top officials in the city of Spokane have called for Rachel Dolezal to resign immediately from the eastern Washington city’s volunteer police ombudsman commission.



Dolezal stepped down this week as president of the local chapter of the NAACP after her family said she was a white woman who had been posing as black.

The Spokane mayor, David Condon, and the city council president, Ben Stuckart, said on Wednesday that Dolezal and two others should remove themselves from the five-member commission after an independent investigation found they had acted improperly and violated government rules.

The report said the evidence and interviews confirmed workplace harassment allegations and “a pattern of misconduct” by Dolezal, the chairwoman and commissioners Kevin Berkompas and Adrian Dominguez.

The city hired lawyers in May to investigate whistleblower and workplace harassment complaints.

Dolezal resigned her NAACP post this week after her parents accused her of posing as black despite her Czech, German and Swedish ancestry. She faces a swirl of allegations about other statements.

On Wednesday an independent investigation by the city of Spokane concluded that she acted improperly and violated government rules while leading the city’s volunteer police ombudsman commission.

More than a decade ago Howard University lawyers questioned whether Dolezal had tried to pose as African-American when she applied for admission to the historically black college in Washington DC. Dolezal had accused the university of denying her a teaching position because she was white.

Dolezal’s lawsuit against Howard never reached trial; a court said she failed to prove her claims and ordered her to pay the university’s legal costs.

Rachel Dolezal: I don’t think I am a con artist Guardian

Dolezal has described her family as “transracial” in the past. Asked by NBC’s Matt Lauer this week if she was an “an African-American woman,” Dolezal said: “I identify as black.”

Civil rights leaders in Spokane are openly worrying about the damage done to their efforts to move the region beyond a troubled racial past.

“I think it is a setback,” said Virla Spencer, 36, who is black. “It’s sad we have to focus so much on this when there is so much more work to do.”

Dolezal, who lives in Coeur d’Alene, resigned on Monday as president of the Spokane branch of the NAACP. Her biography was removed from the website of Eastern Washington University, where she was as a part-time African studies instructor, and she was fired as a freelance newspaper columnist.