Police chief fired over an investigation Cottage City told the State did not exist

On August 27, 2026, Justly Prudent filed a First Amended Complaint in the Circuit Court of Maryland for Prince George's County on behalf of Anthony L. Ayers, Sr., a certified Maryland law enforcement officer whose career spans more than three decades. Ayers lost his position as Chief of Police for the Town of Brentwood over an investigation that his former employer, the Town of Cottage City, had already told the State of Maryland did not exist.

The story begins at a town meeting. In December 2024, Ayers was Cottage City's Chief of Police. He attended a public meeting of the Town Commission and spoke as a resident rather than as a department head. Town employees had seen their hours cut during the holiday season and some had been let go, and Ayers criticized how a senior Cottage City official was managing them. According to the complaint, that official approached him as soon as the meeting ended to express frustration with what he had said. Before that night, Ayers had faced no investigation, no discipline, and no heightened scrutiny in his role.

What followed came quickly. The amended complaint alleges that in January 2025 Ayers was suspended for three days without pay, and that the official who imposed the suspension identified Ayers's remarks at the December meeting as the reason for it. In February, Ayers was placed on a performance improvement plan. In March, he was suspended again, this time for ten days without pay, and the same official asked the Cottage City Commission to fire him. The Commission declined. By April, the complaint alleges, the accumulated discipline and the conditions under which he was required to work had taken a toll on Ayers's health, and he concluded that retiring was better than staying.

Ayers's exit was negotiated in writing. In late June 2025, Cottage City and Ayers signed a Separation Agreement and General Release that did two things. It limited what Cottage City could tell a government agency or any other third party about why Ayers left to "his dates of employment and positions held," and it declared him "separated in good standing or otherwise retired" from the Cottage City Police Department. On June 26, 2025, Cottage City put the same thing in writing to the State. It filed a Notice of Personnel Action with the Maryland Police and Correctional Training Commissions recording Ayers's departure as a retirement, marking the condition of his separation as "General (separated in good standing)," and leaving blank the boxes for an administrative investigation, a criminal investigation, or a charge.

Ayers went back to work. On September 2, 2025, the Town of Brentwood appointed him its Chief of Police, subject to a probationary period.

Three months later it was over. On December 4, 2025—one day after Brentwood received a certified letter from Cottage City addressed to its Mayor—Brentwood terminated Ayers by letter. Among the grounds it recited was "[r]eceipt and verification of information not disclosed during the human resources background and reference checks upon your hire due to a pending investigation conducted by your previous employer." Beneath that heading, the letter attributed four accusations to that same source: that Ayers forged a document, that he failed to supervise an officer making threats against another employee, that he was involved in threats against others, and that he took part in circulating inappropriate photographs. The complaint alleges that every one of those accusations is false, and that no Cottage City investigation of Ayers was pending when he separated—because Cottage City had certified precisely that to the State five months earlier.

Ayers asked for a chance to answer. He requested a hearing before Brentwood's Mayor and Council to present evidence and witnesses on each accusation. On December 15, 2025, Brentwood refused, on the ground that probationary employees are not eligible for its appeal process. The December 4th letter remains in his personnel file. In Maryland, a law enforcement agency will not consider an applicant who does not authorize the release of his personnel file from every prior department, and Ayers has applied to municipal police departments and county offices across Prince George's County and beyond. He has not received an offer, and he has not worked in law enforcement since.

He also tried to find out where the accusations came from. Beginning in December 2025, Ayers filed requests under the Maryland Public Information Act with Brentwood seeking the records behind the accusations, the communications between the two towns about him, and the records behind the termination decision. Brentwood answered that it holds no additional records on any of it, and later told him that information about one of the accusations would not be released without a court order. Ayers has taken the dispute to the Maryland Public Information Act Compliance Board, where it is docketed as PIACB No. 26-124, and to the state's Public Access Ombudsman, which reported in May 2026 that Brentwood did not intend to produce more.

The amended complaint brings five claims. It alleges that Cottage City broke the separation agreement by telling Brentwood that an investigation was pending and by passing along accusations that the agreement barred it from disclosing. It alleges that Cottage City retaliated against Ayers for speech protected by Article 40 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights, which guarantees every citizen the right to speak on all subjects. It alleges that the senior Cottage City official who supervised him, sued in his individual capacity, interfered with Ayers's employment relationship with Brentwood by communicating false information about him to Brentwood officials. It alleges that Brentwood violated the Maryland Public Information Act by withholding records Ayers is entitled to inspect. And it alleges that Brentwood denied him due process under Article 24 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights by recording career-ending accusations of dishonesty in the letter that fired him and then refusing him any opportunity to clear his name.

Ayers seeks compensatory damages exceeding $75,000, punitive damages against the individual defendant, statutory damages under the Public Information Act, a court order requiring Brentwood to produce the withheld records and to give him a hearing, and orders correcting the record of his separation as maintained by both towns and reported to the state commission. He has demanded a jury trial.

Ayers filed the three underlying actions himself, without a lawyer, in May 2026. The court consolidated them by order dated August 10, 2026, designating Case No. C-16-CV-26-002988 as the lead case alongside Case Nos. C-16-CV-26-002989 and C-16-CV-26-002990. The First Amended Complaint that Justly Prudent filed on August 27, 2026 supersedes all three.

"A separation agreement is a contract, not a courtesy," said Jordan D. Howlette, Managing Attorney of Justly Prudent. "Cottage City told the State of Maryland in writing that Anthony Ayers retired in good standing with no investigation pending. Five months later, another town fired him because it heard the opposite from his previous employer. Both of those things cannot be true, and a thirty-year career should not end on the one nobody will put on paper."

The case is Anthony L. Ayers, Sr. v. Town of Brentwood, Maryland, et al. (Case No. C-16-CV-26-002988), filed in the Circuit Court of Maryland for Prince George's County.