The Harford County Sheriff’s Office of Professional Standards has determined a lawyer’s accusation of racial bias against a deputy last month was “unfounded” after an investigation.

“The facts show us this complaint is completely without merit,” Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said during a Tuesday news conference. “The deputy did nothing wrong.”

Lawyers for Rashad James, however, said their client is “very disappointed by the outcome of the investigation.”

“Both we and he continue to believe he was treated differently because of the color of his skin,” James’ attorney Andrew Freeman said at a news conference after Gahler announcement. “We do continue to believe they owe Mr. James an apology.”

James, a Maryland Legal Aid attorney, was in Harford County District Court on March 6 when he said a deputy mistook him for his client, who faced an arrest warrant. Both he and his client are black.

James filed a complaint last month alleging the deputy detained and questioned him for about 10 minutes on the basis of his race, an incident the Baltimore law firm representing him, Brown Goldstein Levy, called “lawyering while black.”

Michael E. Davey, an attorney for the Harford Deputy Sheriff’s Union, said the incident occurred when James approached the assistant state’s attorney and didn’t clearly identify himself as a lawyer.

The prosecutor knew the defendant had an open arrest warrant and alerted the deputy, a 36-year veteran, that the defendant was in the courtroom, Davey said. When the case was called, James identified himself as an attorney.

The assistant state’s attorney indicated her confusion over the lawyer’s identity to the deputy at that point and the deputy had a conversation with James first in the courtroom lobby before asking him to come into an interview room, Davey said.

James did not have a business card or a Maryland State Bar Association Courthouse Identification badge, and presented the deputy with a North Carolina driver’s license, Davey said. Eventually, the deputy verified that James was an attorney.

The entire incident lasted about five minutes, Davey said.

Freeman said the entire interaction should have ended when James presented his driver’s license with his name, age and identifying features, which are significantly different from his client’s.

“He and we continue to believe, but for the color of his skin, the deputy sheriff would have looked at his driver’s license, looked at him and seen Mr. James was who he said and not his client and that should have ended it,” Freeman said. “And that had he been a white man rather than a black man that would have happened.”

James isn’t seeking to have the deputy fired, nor is he trying to get money because of the incident. Instead he sought an investigation and to have the incident recorded in the officer’s personnel file.

“We continue to believe they owe him an apology and while we’re disappointed in the Harford County Sheriff’s Office response, we continue to think of this as a learning opportunity,” Freeman said.

The incident should be used for training for all deputy sheriffs throughout the agency about racial bias and implicit bias, he said.

Gahler said the deputy is “troubled greatly” by the accusation.

“It’s disturbing to him after 36 years and has never had a personnel complaint, this has devastated him,” he said. “It’s taken an emotional strain on him to be accused of such a thing.”

Michael Montalvo, president of the Harford Deputy Sheriffs Union, said James and his lawyers owe the deputy an apology.

“It’s clear Mr. James was treated fairly and reasonably,” Montalvo said. “The only explicit bias here is against law enforcement. The real victim here is our deputy.”

Zilpha Smith, president of the NAACP’s Harford branch, was among several community activists invited by the sheriff to the news conference to hear the results of the investigation.

“I am satisfied with the findings,” Smith said. “I’m OK with what had taken place and what the sheriff had found, that it was an unfounded incident, that it did not prove any racial profiling by the Sheriff’s Office.”

Rev. Baron Young, pastor of St. James AME Church in Havre de Grace, said he appreciated the seriousness with which Gahler investigated the complaint.

“The ongoing relationships being nurtured, to me, point to something to be hopeful for,” Young said.