Memphis Housing and Community Development Director Robert Lipscomb was relieved of duty Sunday evening because of a criminal complaint alleging he had improper sexual relations with a minor, reports the Commercial Appeal. The story quotes city chief administrative officer Jack Sammons said.
The young man in his mid-20s (who now lives in Seattle) came forward with the allegations involving a relationship when he was 16, prompting an MPD investigation headed by Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong himself, Sammons said.
Armstrong and a pair of investigators returned from Seattle and, after a meeting with Mayor A C Wharton and attorneys Sunday, Lipscomb was called to City Hall and relieved of duty pending the results of an investigation.
“These allegations are extremely disturbing,” Wharton said in a statement issued by his office late Sunday night. “To ensure that we leave no stone unturned, in addition to referring this matter to the District Attorney General’s Office, we will also seek legal counsel as to if any other state or federal agencies should be involved in this investigation.”
The person making the complaint told police he received numerous wire transfers of cash from Lipscomb, allegedly to buy his silence, according to a source. He said some of those payments via Western Union were for $50, others for hundreds of dollars, the source said.
Lipscomb, a Booker T. Washington High and LeMoyne-Owen College graduate, took the helm of the city’s Housing and Community Development Division in 1992. He was away from city government for a brief time in the late 1990s, but his work led to major overhauls of the city’s public housing projects, and his involvement has been critical to many of the city’s major redevelopment works of the past two decades.