Summary of Jan 8th PAB Hearing

Thanks again to everyone who came and sat in on the hearing last night. Unfortunately it got off to a rocky start with confusion over the start time so we didn't get started until around 1730, and once we did there were a few Administrative motions by board members. Based on the language of the motions and the support from two of the three Board members, it seems to me as though the majority of the Board agrees with the Appellant's position that the Town should be open and transparent with test results to get this rather simple issue cleared up instead of muddying the waters with deception and unnecessary secrecy.

Once we got the hearing started Attorney McEleney began by submitting all the documents he was going to be referring to in his case to the Board as exhibits. The Town's attorney Meredith Diette objected and insisted that the entire 58 page FOI packet the Town gave me months ago including the letters to the examiners and candidates be entered as 58 separate exhibits instead of as one whole document. So we all sat there while all 58 pages were individually numbered and entered. This set the tone for the rest of the hearing with Attorney Diette objecting to almost every document submitted by the appellants after that, including one that was just a chart listing all the candidates and their grades, and relevant emails between the candidates and HR Director Malave.

Both Attorneys then gave their opening statements with Attorney McEleney using his time to simply lay out the facts of the case and reasons for the appeals as we've laid out on here previously. Attorney Diette then gave her statement which continued the Town's theme of "nothing wrong happened but we're not going to prove it you, and you need to stop asking." During her statement however she repeatedly stressed that the one candidate with the perfect score and 28 point gap to second place was female, bringing it up over and over again with a strong verbal emphasis. It was obvious to everyone there that Attorney Diette was trying to make the implication that this appeal was only happening because the appellants had some sort of sexist bias and not because everyone else who took the test either failed or just barely passed with a minimum score. Not only is her implication unfounded and offensive to our members, but it seems pretty stupid to accuse your client's employees of sexism against a coworker while your client is actively being sued by that same coworker for sexism in the workplace. I'm no lawyer but that seems like a pretty bad legal strategy to me. Chief Sansom complains about morale being low among the ranks, why not try telling your lawyer not to make completely unfounded implications of illegal behavior by your employees in a public hearing as a morale booster?

In fact when the first appellant, began his testimony the first thing he did was call out Attorney Diette on her offensive comments to which she had no response. He then went on to detail his extensive preparation for the tests, the test questions and his feelings on them, his discussions with other candidates and employees about his answers and his lack of understanding of his score. He also described how after the scores were released, he was mislead by Human Resources.

The Officer explained that he went to HR and asked Suzan Kyeremateng how he could view his test results to help understand his score and she told him he would have to wait 15 days after the posting to look at them, but he would be able to. A short time later he learned that in order to file a PAB appeal he only had 14 days, so had he taken Suzan's advice he would have missed the window to file an appeal. Either she isn't familiar with the processes of the Department she works in, or she intentionally mislead the Officer to prevent him from filing an appeal. After realizing this he emailed HR Director Malave and asked how he could view his test results, Malave responded that he would have to file an FOI request, but implied that after that he'd be able to see them. Several days after filing the FOI Malave responded that it was denied and refused to show him anything. This whole exchange was captured via email, when a copy of the email was submitted as an exhibit Attorney Diette objected and was able to keep it from being seen by the Board members. Fortunately during a blunder later during cross examination she accidentally opened the door to the email and it was allowed to be submitted to the Board.

This seems like a recurring theme with HR where we never can quite tell if they're simply incompetent, or if they know exactly what they're doing and are just lying. Either way our members should take it as a warning for future interactions with them that you cant believe anything they tell you. You're going to have to look things up for yourself.

We had a scheduled stop time of 2000, and during her cross examination of the first Officer Attorney Diette seemed to be asking a number of repetitive or irrelevant questions while repeatedly looking at the clock. It seemed to me and others watching that she was simply trying to waste time  and run down the clock to prevent Attorney McEleney from calling another witness that day, and she succeeded in running just past 2000. Fortunately for us, the PAB, perhaps noticing Attorney Diette's tactic, allowed McEleney to call one more witness before adjourning.

Attorney McEleney called one of our members who took the Detective's exam in 2018. That member detailed how she questioned her oral board score and requested of Mr. Malave that she be allowed to view her score sheets. Mr. Malave not only allowed her to see the sheets, but he didn't request that she file an FOI or take any other additional steps. It was a completely different exchange to the one Officers had with this test. Of course this exchange was also captured in an email chain which Attorney McEleney tried to give to the Board members but Attorney Diette again objected to it.

The hearing was adjourned after that. The next hearing will be in two weeks on Jan 22nd at 1700, unless they change it to 1730. We expect that the Appellants will proceed with the rest of their witnesses on that date.