In the summer of 2023 the APD broke their own rules to cover up a car crash involving then-police chief David Zack. Current police chief Mike Lamb helped him do it

Above: The single photo showing a scratch and denting along the side of then-APD Chief David Zack’s unmarked police car, part of an ‘internal investigation’ that violated even the department’s own rules to cover up his unexplained car crash

On the afternoon of June 21, 2023 David Zack, then the chief of the Asheville Police Department, crashed his unmarked cop car near Turnpike Road in Mills River.

On paper, any crash involving the head of the APD was supposed to spur an extensive investigation. The State Highway Patrol was to take over examining the crash. There’d be multiple photos from the scene. The car and anything else damaged would be extensively investigated, witnesses interviewed and a report filed with the state DMV.

Indeed the APD’s own rules, signed by Zack himself, required this.

But that summer day, none of that happened. Indeed, nothing about the crash of Zack’s blue 2020 Ford Police Interceptor was reported until over two days later, on June 23, when then-Capt. Mike Lamb (now the police chief) filed a report about the incident, repeating a story from Zack that a construction company’s equipment had struck the side of his vehicle as he drove by. Within a week Lamb would be promoted to deputy chief.

When city officials outside the APD asked for more information, then-Deputy chief James Baumstark, Zack’s direct subordinate, claimed that “Chief did not realize he actually hit anything until the next morning when he saw damage.”

But repair reports contradict this account of a forgettable graze. City hall shelled out $2,108 in public money for almost 27 hours of body and refinishing work to repair damage from the crash, which left a deep scratch and denting along the passenger side of Zack’s cop car.

The real story, told in documents buried in reports of damage to city-owned vehicles — obtained by the Blade through a public records request — is instead something far less innocent, if all too familiar. The police chief and his higher-ups acted as a law unto themselves, burying an incident that would reflect badly upon them during a time of public outrage and ensuring it wasn’t seriously investigated.

It shows, in short, a cover-up.

Some of those who played a key role in this, including Zack and Baumstark, are no longer at the APD. But others are at its very highest ranks.

‘Not reportable’

The second Zack’s car crashed into anything it should, according to the APD’s own rules, have triggered a specific set of protocols.

“Any department employee involved in a motor vehicle crash while operating a department vehicle, regardless of duty status, injury or amount of damage, must immediately report the accident to an on-duty patrol supervisor,” the department’s policy on motor vehicle collisions reads.

“An on-duty sworn supervisor will respond to the scene of all departmental motor vehicle collisions to ensure a thorough crash investigation is initiated, including a complete motor vehicle crash report, eyewitness interviews, photographs, measurements and any additional collection of evidence.”

But what about if the crash involves the APD chief? Are his own subordinates supposed to investigate their boss?

In that case, “if no personnel of equal or higher grade is available to conduct the investigation the North Carolina State Highway Patrol (NCSHP) will be contacted and requested to investigate the crash.” The on-duty supervisor is, as soon as the crash is reported, supposed to do this if no one else has.

This did not happen.

Failure to do this has, in the past, been considered serious enough to end careers. Back in 2013, then-APD Chief William Anderson hesitated to call in the highway patrol to investigate a drunken car crash involving his son. He later tried to put his hand on the scales by ordering the watch commander who’d initially responded to the crash to meet with him during an ongoing SBI investigation. This was enough to spur calls, including from within the department, for his resignation.

But Anderson, the APD’s first Black chief, was also the target of multiple other factions within the department due to feuds over power and, in some cases, simple racism. Police departments, after all, have no shortage of their own infighting.

In Zack’s case the APD didn’t even file the required report with the DMV, possibly because it would have spurred further scrutiny.

Zack would have known about this policy because he signed it on March 30, 2021.

What happened instead was no less than at least three police commanders acting to sweep an unexplained car crash involving the head of the APD under the rug.

On June 23, 2023 Lamb filed an internal incident report claiming that the accident involved the following:

“As Chief Zack was driving out of his neighborhood he encountered a construction crew doing electrical work at the entrance to Mills River Crossing. A flagger motioned for the Chief to drive ahead which he did. At the same time, an auger mechanism was swung into the travel lane causing damage to the passenger side of the vehicle. The damage was a long scratch on both the front and rear doors.”

This account is entirely based on what Zack claimed, well over a day after the crash. On June 23 Lamb passed his report to Capt. Sean Aardema of the APD’s Office of Professional Standards, with a note to “please review and forward to [Deputy chief James] Baumstark.”

All three were Zack’s subordinates. All of them, under the department’s own rules, were supposed to call for an independent investigation as soon as they became aware of the crash. None did. Within a week Lamb would be promoted to deputy police chief.

The internal investigation that took place was minimal, to put it mildly. A single attached photo, taken from a distance (an officer’s reflection can be seen) shows a long scratch with denting around it and some scuffing at the bottom of the passenger doors. While no close-up photos or deeper investigation were conducted, later repair documents show that the damage was enough to require over 17 hours of bodywork to the vehicle and nine more in painting and refinishing, costing $2,108.33 on the public’s dime.

On June 27 Aardema, also taking Zack’s story at face value, forwarded Lamb’s report to city hall’s APD Property Damage Notification Group, composed of both police officers and civilian officials.
Keep in mind, by this point it was nearly a week since the crash. Aardema was literally the commander in charge of making sure the APD’s own rules, such as they are, were followed. If no one else had, he was supposed to insist that the highway patrol conduct its own investigation. He did not.

Ophelia Greck, a liability claims administrator, replied to Aardema’s email, asking “is there a police report or collision report? Do we have any information about the construction company? Any contact with the Construction Company that would be familiar with this incident? Employee names that were involved?”

Instead of answering these questions, Lamb forwarded back a message from Baumstark:

“It was a sub for power company putting in pole. Chief did not realize he actually hit anything until the next morning when he saw damage.

The crew and truck were long gone by time he realized damage. No collision report as out of jurisdiction, not reportable and by time of detection no scene, witness to interview or identity of owner of auger for anyone in county to take report.”

This was untrue on multiple fronts. In North Carolina “non-reportable” crashes involve less than $1,000 in damage and Zack’s was well over twice that. Also, remember all crashes involving police officers were supposed to be reported immediately regardless “of amount of damage.”

The policy even notes that “non-reportable” crashes still require the APD to file a notice with the DMV, which they also never did.

As for the supposed lack of jurisdiction, the highway patrol’s is the entire state.

Baumstark, it must be noted, had a record of blatant lying. After the APD cracked down on demonstrations against their murder of Jerry Williams in 2016, he lied that a verbal confrontation between a protester and a truck driver took place in the morning instead of in the evening (despite a sunset being clearly visible in videos displayed by the APD) to more closely associate it with civil disobedience taking place in the police department lobby.

He was also not just Zack’s direct subordinate, but by that summer had been retained by the police chief despite considerable pressure over the previous years for him to resign or be fired. In late 2021 Baumstark was named in a federal lawsuit, from a survivor, credibly alleging that he covered up for a rape trafficking ring during his time as a police commander in Fairfax, Va. The lawsuit was eventually defeated on a technicality that didn’t clear him of involvement with the trafficking ring.

Lamb also had a record of openly lying in his role as a police commander. In winter 2021 he was the first one to threaten those at the Aston Park Build with false felony littering charges for having art and supplies in a public park. Early in 2022 he claimed, using several outright deceptive readings of crime statistics, that homeless camps were responsible for rape and domestic abuse. This was clearly false at the time and extensively debunked later.

Despite Lamb’s actions after Zack’s car crash breaking the department’s own rules and Baumstark’s excuses about the lack of investigation and reporting being highly dubious on their face, that was apparently enough for Greck. Neither she or any of the other civilian staffers in charge of monitoring the APD’s claims pressed the police commanders further.

The only other inquiry that took place was that of an unnamed staffer who conducted what can only be termed an incredibly lax investigation for a potential recovery claim. Their activity log is part of the documents obtained by the Blade. They repeatedly called Mills River Crossing, the housing development where equipment had supposedly damaged Zack’s car, to see “if they know who was working near this location on 6/21.”

This too is somewhat strange because this log notes that APD commanders “believe it was a subcontractor for the power company installing a utility pole,” but the recovery investigator never contacted the power company.

So the unexplained car crash was, like so much else, swept under the rug. We will probably never know exactly what happened.

Notably, the records of several other cases involving APD vehicles provide a marked contrast.

Earlier that year, on May 2, 2023, reports show that a driver sideswiped a stopped patrol vehicle, causing “minor damage that may just need some paint touch up” according to the case’s activity log.

In that case 19 photos of the accident scene were taken and officer Deborah Vertefeuille provided several more of the damage to the vehicle. Despite the incredibly minor impact (workers at the city’s vehicle pool later discovered the scuff marks wiped off and no repairs were needed) the APD filed a five page report with the DMV detailing the crash.

Later incidents involving the unmarked police car Zack damaged, designated as 20659 in city records, also played out very differently. On April 24, 2024, after Zack had left the department, Sgt. Jonathan Morgan reported that he bumped the same vehicle into a shelf in his garage. He sent in several on the scene photos detailing the minor scrape to the front of the car from multiple angles, later forwarded by Lt. James Boyce to city hall’s risk assessors.

On the morning of June 2, 2024 Morgan was backing out of a space in the city’s fleet parking lot and bumped into a parked water department truck, damaging one of his tail lights. According to city records, the crash took place at 10:10 a.m. Once again multiple photos were taken on the scene and Boyce reported the incident to city hall’s crash notification group at 3:14 p.m. that same afternoon.

All this isn’t to imply the APD policy is some kind of gold standard. While these and other reports show crashes involving lower-ranking officers subjected to far more scrutiny than Zack’s, its disciplinary provisions were clearly written to give police the benefit of the doubt. Under the point system it uses, an APD officer could technically kill someone due to not paying attention and receive, at the chief’s discretion, nothing more than a written warning and an 8-hour suspension.

Similar realities apply to outside investigations. While the highway patrol are certainly less under local police commanders’ control than Zack’s own subordinates, cops from different agencies let each other off the hook all the time.

It is telling then even that utterly minimal outside scrutiny and investigation were, for the police chief and the department commanders who helped him cover up the crash, too much.

‘Knowing your decisions will not be scrutinized’

Some context is important here. Zack was, by the time of the crash, not a particularly popular figure with the wider public. He began his tenure by ordering the widespread teargassing and arrests of anti-racist demonstrators during the summer of 2020, including the infamous destruction of a medic station that made international news. The response was thousands of comments from enraged locals to city council, many demanding his resignation.

City officials kept him in power anyway, as he personally directed a racist propaganda campaign falsely blaming Black neighborhoods for gun violence and ramped up a draconian crackdown on the homeless. He oversaw the infamous Christmas night crackdown (including the arrest of two Blade journalists for recording it) along with false felony littering charges and multi-year park bans against protesters.

Even city hall’s own solid waste manager would later say that Zack and other APD higher-ups were lying and “clearly these folks weren’t littering.” The charges were finally dropped last year.

A survey of officers in September 2020 noted that they defined “knowing your decisions will not be scrutinized” as a top priority. Throughout his time in power Zack embodied that.

The park bans, conducted in secret with no due process, resulted in a major ACLU lawsuit. Over the course of 2024 a series of “special operations” mostly aimed at rounding up the poor and homeless for incredibly minor ordinance violations spurred both more public outcry and the threat of further legal action. For good measure Zack also publicly feuded with the district attorney, the sheriff, judges and a city council member.

A few months after the APD’s cover-up of his car crash, on Nov. 2, his then-wife Clarissa Hyatt-Zack was arrested for driving drunk down Hendersonville Road and slamming her truck into another vehicle.

Nonetheless, despite pressure from multiple fronts, it seemed like Zack might remain in office for some time to come. But in early December a rapid series of shifts changed that. On the morning of Dec. 12 Zack told the Asheville Watchdog he might stay on. A few hours later he was announcing his retirement to the department but with a “transition” period.

Within 48 hours that changed to his immediate departure.

Baumstark had already retired in August of that year. But others who helped cover up Zack’s car crash have only seen their careers grow. The months afterwards saw a rapid rise through the ranks for Lamb, who was a captain when he started spearheading the cover-up on June 23, a deputy chief by the end of the month and police chief shortly after Zack’s departure at the end of the year.

On May 10, 2024 Lamb promoted Aardema to deputy chief of operations, the most powerful position in the department outside his own.

It is not surprising that the same police force that crushed protests, fabricated charges and threatened locals for trying to get water in the aftermath of Helene would also cover up the police chief’s car crash. Indeed, it fits that pattern perfectly, even if it’s notable for the sheer level of half-baked lies and petty corruption.

Over the coming months Asheville city officials will begin their annual barrage of propaganda for why the already-bloated budget of the APD still requires millions more, even while the needs of locals are so dire. So it is worth remembering exactly what kind of corrupt clique the public’s cash will be going to.

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Blade editor David Forbes is an Asheville journalist with nearly 20 years’ experience. She writes about history, life and, of course, fighting city hall. They live in downtown, where they drink too much tea and scheme for anarchy.

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