CHRO Complaint Filed Against EHPOA

As many have heard since it went public, last Friday our Union and the Town of East Hartford were served with a CHRO complaint from one of our members, Investigator Courtney Desilet claiming gender discrimination. We've passed the complaint on to our counsel so I'm not going to get into the nuance, but I will address the main basic issues that came up.

The main allegation is that the Union filed our grievance challenging the results of the Sergeant's oral board simply because the top placed candidate who received a perfect score is a female. Anyone who has read our previous posts here about that matter knows our actual reasons for filing the grievance which we've explained in great detail on this blog, and they have nothing to do with the gender of any of the candidates. She also alleges that we have asserted she engaged in misconduct. Again I would refer you to any of our previous posts, we have never accused anyone other than HR Director Malave of misconduct and/or (severe) incompetence. We have been very careful about this because we still don't know what happened, and wont know until we get the documents related to the test which we are still seeking. We would not throw accusations at our own members without solid evidence that they had done something wrong.

The complaint further alleges that the Union and Town are conspiring to deny this individual a promotion that she feels she is entitled to, because of her gender. I've personally been to every meeting between the Union and Town on this matter and I can tell you we haven't been able to agree on a single thing nevermind coming together to form a conspiracy. Also this individual hasn't been singled out to be denied a promotion. Every single candidate on the list has been denied a promotion, male and female, and they will continue to be denied promotion until the grievance and personnel appeals are completed which is how the process is supposed to play out. The last point I'd like to make on this allegation is that nobody is entitled to a promotion based solely on their test scores, the Chief still reserves the right to pass someone over on the list for promotion if he sees fit, and previous Chiefs have done just that. So there is no guarantee this individual would've been promoted had there been no grievance or personnel appeals filed anyway.

There is also a charge that the Union has refused to show the complainant documents related to our grievance, and that we've kept her in the dark on it's status. This individual has never once approached me or any other Union Officer and asked to see our files. If she had she would've been shown everything as the documents we have are all in the public record, meaning that even if we did refuse, she could have simply FOIed them from the Town. As to not keeping her informed, again I'd point to this blog where I have worked to keep everyone up to date on the latest goings on regarding that issue. Additionally we have discussed the matter multiple times at Union meetings where it was listed on the agenda beforehand, and the minutes posted on the Union bulletin board afterward. These meetings are open to all members including the complainant. I don't think there's anyone in our Department who doesn't know what's going on with this process thanks to our efforts to keep them up to date and be transparent. Therefore these claims are completely false.

Her complaint then delves into numerous alleged personal issues she has had with several members of the Department. She and her attorney somehow are trying to project liability for their alleged actions (the truth of which should also be called into question.) onto the Union as an organization simply because they are members. The Union is not responsible for the actions of each individual member as our bylaws give us no methods or authority to discipline or otherwise Police our membership's behavior. That authority rests solely with the Police Department Administration and the Union is statutorily required to provide a defense.

It should be noted that many of her accusations against members in her complaint were copy and pasted from a complaint she previously filed with Internal Affairs. As far as I know that complaint was investigated and was not sustained because it lacked credibility. Curiously she omitted the parts of her IA complaint from her CHRO where she accused other female employees of harassing her because that didn't fit the new narrative of gender discrimination.

It's my opinion that this complaint lacks any credibility or substantiated evidence of discrimination by the Union, or the Town for that matter. The complaint contains several statements that are clearly and demonstrably false and I am looking forward to having this matter adjudicated in a courtroom setting under oath where I am confident we will prevail.