JAFFREY, N.H. (AP) – A Nashua man has been indicted on a charge of trying to extort $65,000 from Jaffrey by claiming falsely that he represented the NAACP and demanding restitution for civil rights violations during the arrest of a black man.

If he did not get the money, he threatened to call a news conference, Police Chief Martin Dunn said.

Christopher King, 40, is charged with felony attempted extortion. King acted on his own in seeking compensation for what he described as civil rights violations in the 2003 arrest of Willie Toney, Dunn and the NAACP’s Nashua chapter said Tuesday.

King improperly used NAACP letterhead to send his demand letter, and also failed to advise the NAACP that his law license had been revoked in Ohio for previous misconduct, the Nashua chapter’s vice president said.

“We got duped,” said Melanie Levesque, the chapter’s vice president.

King volunteered as the head of the chapter’s legal redress effort, and the position called for him only to refer people to lawyers, not to act as an attorney, Levesque said.

But King denied that he requested payment without NAACP knowledge. He claims he sent the Nashua and Boston NAACP chapters copies of his correspondence to Dunn, and discussed at chapter meetings his actions on behalf of Toney.

The NAACP does not have a Boston chapter, but has branches in Worcester and Brockton, Mass. King also denies that he presented himself as an attorney to Jaffrey police and said he never hid the fact that his law license had been suspended for a year by the Ohio Supreme Court.

“They threw me under the bus,” King said of NAACP officials. “They had complete knowledge, and every single letter.”

In 2003, Jaffrey police arrested Toney after two undercover officers spotted him entering and leaving a closed auto parts store, Dunn said. Police officers chased Toney and arrested him for loitering, a charge the district court dropped, Dunn said.

King alleges the officers drew their guns on Toney and strip-searched him without probable cause because he is black. Toney’s companion, who is white, did not receive the same scrutiny, King said.

Dunn said he took King’s allegations seriously and investigated them thoroughly, but found no basis for them.

“There was no touching, no racial comments,” Dunn said. Had Toney’s white friend acted in the same suspicious manner as Toney, he would have been arrested, Dunn said.

Dunn also found that Toney never alleged mistreatment until King contacted the town 18 months later, and that King had told Toney he wanted 15 percent of the $65,000.

The NAACP does not litigate or threaten to sue any party, Levesque said.

“He’s very energetic and was eager to make the chapter work. That’s why we brought him on board,” Levesque said. “It seemed he was going to do wonderful things with his experience with law, but (a legal aide) also (needs) to follow the guidelines of the NAACP and not put our chapter at risk.”

The Nashua chapter had no knowledge of King’s intervention on Toney’s behalf, and when the NAACP finally contacted Toney, Toney said King had sought him out, Levesque said.

As soon as the Nashua chapter learned of King’s communication with Jaffrey police, King was relieved of his duties, she said.

King was suspended from the bar in 2001, but the suspension was not imposed so long as he met certain conditions, said Doris Roach, a clerk at the Ohio Supreme Court. However, he did not meet those conditions and was suspended in 2002. He is not licensed to practice law in New Hampshire, Dunn said.

King has said in a federal lawsuit against a former employer that his Ohio suspension involved civil rights cases.

King said he will sue Jaffrey Police and the NAACP. “There are a number of people who love to hate me, and I’m not scared of anyone,” King said.

AP-ES-06-22-05 1421EDT