Personnel Appeals Board Update

 We were scheduled to resume the PAB hearings virtually last night after nearly a year's delay due to COVID concerns, with another hearing scheduled for tonight. Unfortunately one of the panel members didn't show or wasn't aware of the hearing and it was cancelled. Tonight's hearing was also cancelled due to some miscommunication about scheduling that we thought had been ironed out. It's very disappointing and ridiculous that this process has been unnecessarily dragged out this long while our members have patiently waited. 

Even the Mayor chimed in during the hearing to voice her displeasure with all of the delays. But we'd like to point out that this process could have and should have been wrapped up over a year ago had the Town not insisted on pursuing their gag orders to block the people involved from publicly speaking about what actually happened with the test scores. Or they could've just not done what they did that caused our members to file appeals in the first place. Of course we can't disclose what happened here due to said order, but needless to say people don't usually pursue gag orders to cover up totally legitimate behavior, so read into that what you will.

So this process drags on further, we have new dates scheduled though the end of next month now. Remember this test was initially given back in the Spring of 2019. The Town has been unable to fill these Sergeant vacancies since then, and in fact more vacancies have opened as more Sergeants have since retired. I can't imagine how many tens of thousands of dollars (or more) the Town has spent paying overtime to existing Sergeants to fill in for the vacancies that should have been filled by these candidates over the last 2 years. Nor can I calculate how much income the candidates have lost out on due to the actions of the Town in this matter. Hopefully someone can do that math and find a way to make these members whole.

Racial Disparity In How EHPD Internal Affairs Cases Are Handled

Since I've been involved in the Union Executive Board I've noticed trends in how Chief Scott Sansom's Administration has handled disciplinary matters in our Department. Some trends are easier to spot than others. In one case that you may have heard of there was a dispute between two of our members and a contractor, Paramount Construction who was doing work for MDC in our Town. The dispute stemmed from the fact that when the contractor hired for the job in the morning they had said they were going to pay whichever Officer was hired from a certain time in the morning. But by the end of the job a different foreman was on site who refused to pay the Officer who worked the job the hours that the morning foreman had said they would before the Officer was hired. The Officer who worked the job called his Supervisor who had spoken to the morning foreman and there was a verbal disagreement. Ultimately the Officer's overtime slip was signed buy the Contractor, but the Officer decided he was not going to submit the slip to payroll for payment because he knew there was some disagreement over it and he didn't want to cause a problem, meaning he effectively worked the job for free, he was never paid. The Supervisor in this case did not work the job and never claimed or demanded, or attempted to collect any payment for himself.

Disputes over hours worked are not out of the ordinary here at EHPD, we can cite several examples of similar complaints. However in this particular case the Department took the extraordinary step of putting the employees involved on Administrative leave and initiating a criminal investigation. This investigation took nearly 2 months of going back and forth between the Department and the State's Attorney's Office while they tried to figure out what they could charge these Officers with until they finally settled on Attempt to Commit Larceny 2nd, despite the fact that neither one ever attempted to collect any payment. We don't know the specific details of the allegations because the Department has refused to show the warrant to the Officers or their attorneys at the direction of Chief Sansom.

Contrast what happened in this case to what happened in a similar case just a few months earlier at EHPD. The case number for this is PSB 2020-18. In that case one of our members filled out an overtime slip for one and a half hours that the employee was found to have not actually worked, except in this case the employee actually submitted the overtime slip and attempted to get paid for the unworked hours. During the course of the IA Investigation it was also found that this employee had left work early and come into work late several times without prior authorization. In this case however there was no criminal investigation, nobody was put on Administrative leave, and there were no warrants completed, and the State's Attorney's Office was never even consulted or made aware of it. In fact despite the IA complaint being sustained and the allegations being more serious than they were in the other case we discussed, the only discipline issued in PSB 2020-18 was Verbal Supervisory Counseling, they were basically told "hey don't do that again."

Why is there such a disparity in how these two parallel cases were handled? The only difference we can see is that the two Officers who got criminally investigated are both African American, while the Officer who was given verbal counseling is White. This raises another question though, which course of action was the appropriate one? Did the White Officer get the standard treatment for this type of offense while the Black Officers got screwed over, or was the treatment they got the standard procedure while the White Officer was "hooked up?" Historically when we look back at other people who've been investigated at EHPD for similar offenses, they all seemed to have gotten treatment similar to what the White Officer got in PSB 2020-18, which implies that the Black Officers are being treated especially harsh.

We can go back a few years and find several other examples of White employees being written up and investigated by IA for the same exact allegations of inaccurate overtime slips, and not a single one of them was put on Administrative leave, or criminally investigated.

Our Internal Affairs division is headed up by Deputy Chief Chris Davis formerly of Manchester Police, and most of the investigations including these two, are conducted by Lt. Joe Ficacelli, the disgraced former Hartford Police recruit who was fired from that Agency. Are they the ones influencing the disparity between how these cases are handled with their recommendations? Or does the responsibility ultimately fall at the feet of Chief Scott Sansom who has the final say over what discipline will be issued after a case is completed?

We saw this pattern again in another IA case last year where an African American member was being investigated for a routine citizen complaint stemming from a traffic stop by Deputy Chief Chris Davis, but DC Davis missed the contractual timeline to complete the investigation (180 days). This issue had happened not long before with a White Officer, and in that case Chief Sansom was obligated to close the investigation due to them going over the timeline. However when the same exact issue occurred with the Black employee a short time later, Chief Sansom stated that "the timelines don't matter," and proceeded to issue discipline to the employee anyway in violation of our collective bargaining agreement. That matter is currently under appeal at the Labor Board, but it's another prime, contemporaneous example of Chief Sansom and Internal Affairs handling disciplinary matters for African American employees more harshly than they do for White employees, even to the point of breaking the contractual rules to exact punishment.

Unfortunately we've also seen this trend in other areas of the Department. A few months ago Chief Sansom decided to shake up the Traffic Unit. He removed an African American Officer from the Traffic unit, and when that Officer asked why he was being removed and if it was due to his job performance he was told that it was just because he had been in the unit for a long time and they wanted to give other employees a chance at that position. However at the same time the Black Officer was removed from the Traffic Unit, Chief Sansom allowed a White Officer who has been in Traffic nearly twice as long to remain in the unit. So is there one timeline for "too long" for Black Officers and another separate, longer timeline for White Officers?

We see it once again in the case of another African American Officer who was terminated years ago inappropriately, and eventually had his termination overturned by the Labor Board. When he was re-hired several years later he signed an agreement with the Administration stating that they would do everything in their power to help him get re-certified as a Police Officer. Recently when this Officer had his hearing before the Board, the only thing they required from Chief Sansom was a letter stating that he endorsed the employee being re-certified. Chief Sansom refused to write the letter or make any recommendation on the Officer's behalf in violation of the agreement he signed, that issue is now the subject of a lawsuit.

Chief Sansom's Administration has previously been the subject of multiple lawsuits by his employees for discriminating on the basis of disability and gender, one of which is pending, and the other was resolved via a settlement. So it's not surprising that we're now seeing a pattern of potential racial discrimination as well.

As a Labor Union we demand equal treatment for all of our members, regardless of race, gender, or any other reason. The fact that our Administration appears to be giving preferential treatment to certain employees over others is deeply troubling, especially when it appears to be based on race.

Who's Next?

Does anyone have a friend at the FBI or SDNY??? Wonder if they'd be interested in our Sergeant's test situation.

On a completely unrelated side note, has anyone heard from former HR Director Santiago Malave since his sudden departure just as the shit was starting to hit the fan? 😆

Flip-flop - Sergeant's Test Debacle Update

We've been busy lately and haven't been able to update promptly so apologies there, but last Monday we finally had a hearing for the Sergeant's Test grievance at the Labor Board. The hearing was held virtually via Zoom, this was our first time having a remote hearing and we have some bugs to iron out for the future hearings but I think we've got a grasp on it. It definitely doesn't work nearly as well as in person hearings though.

As you may remember, back in November of 2019 before we began the hearings the Town challenged the arbitrability of the grievance and the Union won the decision unanimously, you can read about that here. This means the entire 3 member panel, including the Town's advocate, agreed that the matter could legally be arbitrated and a binding decision issued, and we then proceeded to have hearings until the shut down happened.

During the shut down the Town filed a motion to reconsider the arbitrability back in June, the panel did not even respond to their motion at that time as the matter had already been decided in November and we'd already begun hearings. When we commenced the virtual hearing on August 17th, the Town again asked the panel to reconsider the arbitrability based on the same exact argument the panel had rejected back in November and June, but this time with a new twist. This time the Town threatened to appeal the panel's decision to Superior Court regardless of the outcome of the hearing. Faced with the prospect of being dragged into Court and possibly having their decision overturned, the panel quickly called for a private caucus. 15 minutes later they returned and stated that they had now unanimously decided that their previous unanimous decision to grant arbitrability was actually incorrect, and they were now declaring that the matter cannot be arbitrated, even though we had already held hearings, submitted evidence and heard witness testimony. So they effectively dismissed the case without a decision.

We were all left shocked since we believe this situation is unprecedented for a panel to overrule themselves halfway through a case. Either they weren't confident in their decision, or they just didn't want the hassle of being sucked into a Court battle and decided that a little bit of corruption on a promotional exam is acceptable if it means they can skip a Court date. The whole situation is a joke and really shakes our confidence in the integrity of the Labor Board. We've lost cases there before, and we can accept that as long as we're given a well reasoned, thoughtful decision, even if we disagree with it. But this was nothing more a punt plan a simple, they just didn't want to deal with the hassle so they sent us on our way. We hope this doesn't set a precedent for future cases where either side can just threaten to inconvenience the panel so much that they toss the case just to avoid dealing with it.

This isn't a huge setback however, the Labor Board was always just a secondary venue for this case. The primary focus is still assisting the members who have appeals of the test before the Personnel Appeals Board. However we still haven't heard anything about when, or how the PAB hearings will resume. So the process will still remain on hold until those hearings conclude and we get a decision there.

Despite last week's outcome, the Labor Board process did have significant value since it helped us get all of the test documents made available to all of the candidates so they could see what really happened. Getting those documents out there served to strengthen the resolve to get answers and a better process that's less prone to corruption in the future.

We'll update further when we know more.

EHPD Glocks Not Shooting Straight

Over the last few months since our last Department wide firearms training session in the fall of 2019, word has gotten out that a large number of the Gen 4 Glock 17 models that our Officers are currently carrying have a serious flaw. The flaw is that when the trigger is pulled the bullets don't go where the gun is pointing, instead they tend to go a bit to the left. From what we've learned the problem seems to get worse with more use, and a quick internet search shows that this has been a known issue with these guns for at least the last 10 years and Glock still hasn't fixed it. Our firearms staff has run this issue up their chain of command and has been in touch with representatives at Glock and the only solutions they have offered is to tell them to instruct our members to compensate by aiming to the right of the target, and moving the sights on some of the guns so far to one side that they're hanging off the slide. They also suggested that our Officers just don't know how to shoot Glocks and were simply holding the guns wrong.

This isn't the first time we've had issues with Glocks, when I first started working here we had the older Gen 3 Glock 22 that we had to get rid of because the firing pins were falling out of the guns. Granted these guns were older and had a decent number of rounds through them before they started falling apart, but it's still not what you expect from a brand that markets it's guns as having "unsurpassed reliability." When we were going to replace those guns our Department considered the then new Gen 4 Glocks. But during testing they noticed several of the guns had jamming and lock back issues which Glock at first denied, but later admitted to and instructed our armorers to use a dremel tool to modify the guns to make them work, voiding the warranty in the process. Due to that issue, our Department instead went with the Smith & Wesson M&P 45, which we carrier for several years.

The Smiths ended up having defective magazine springs shortly after we got them, but unlike Glock, Smith admitted to the problem and replaced the defective magazine springs free of charge like you'd expect from any reputable company. So when we switched back to Glock a few years ago I was personally surprised that we were doing business again with a company that we had several quality issues with in the past.

We did some testing with my gun, which was one of the defective ones a few months ago. My gun was shot from a fixed position on a bench from about 5 to 7 yards. This gun only had about 300-400 rounds through it at the time as I'd never shot it outside of a Department sponsored training session. You can see on the photo below the top red dot was the target we were shooting at and the entire grouping is 1 to 2 inches to the left. This isn't a huge deviation, but this is also a relatively close range, as you get farther away the shot will be farther and farther off target. I've also been informed that members who have put a lot more rounds through their guns are seeing much larger deviations since the problem seems to get worse with use.

The lower red dot in the photo is a brand new gun right out of the box shot in the exact same way by the same person. As you can see that gun is dead on target, the shooter even managed to put multiple rounds through the same hole. This pretty much blows their excuse of our Officers holding the guns wrong right out of the water.

This problem isn't limited to us or just to Police, if you do a Google search you'll find a plethora of posts on gun forums from private owners complaining of the same issue with these guns.

As I stated earlier, we've known about this issue for a few months but we've kept quiet on it because I wanted to give Glock and our Administration time to remedy the problem. But it seems at this point that there is no remedy coming, Glock has no interest in making it right and our Administration has no interested in forcing their hand or replacing the guns. As of right now these guns are still on the street being carried by our Officers. If one of our members were to be involved in a shooting tonight where something or someone gets hit that wasn't supposed to and the Department was aware that the guns weren't shooting straight and did nothing about it, who's going to take the fall? My members have guns with sights cocked to the side and are being told to aim to the right of what they want to hit, this is completely unsafe and unacceptable and should've never been allowed to happen.

Chief Sansom and DC Hawkins have been aware of this issue for months and could have used their leverage as a members of the State and National Chiefs of Police Associations to pressure Glock into making the situation right. Or brought the issue before Town Council to get funding to replace the guns with something else that works. Instead they've done nothing and left the defective guns in our holsters. Our Officers deserve to have a weapon that's reliable and works properly, we've been failed in this case by both the manufacturer and our own Administration.

In Policing, most of us will never have to fire our weapons outside of training throughout our entire careers. But when we do it's because we're in a high stress situation and lives are on the line. Shooting in these circumstances is instinctual, it needs to be point and shoot, we can't be worrying about trying to aim to the right or any other bullshit "fixes" to compensate for defective equipment.

I'm not personally a big "gun guy," I'm not a fan of one brand over another, so I don't care what we change to. But I'm calling on our Chief to dump Glock and their defective guns and find us something else that's reliable, easy to use, and most importantly, hits what we're aiming at. Also consider whether or not it's backed up by a company who stands behind their products and takes responsibility for it's errors. It isn't just our safety on the line here, but also that of the citizens we're sworn to protect. Let's avoid a needless tragedy and get this problem fixed NOW.

EHPOA Wins Limited Release of Sergeant's Oral Board Documents in Superior Court

As most of you are aware we have been fighting with the Town over viewing the documents related to the contested Sergeant's test for 7 or 8 months now in multiple venues. The Union has consistently argued that if we were allowed to see the documents and everything appeared legitimate as the Town claims it is, then this issue would go away and we could move forward with promotions. Instead the Town has fought us tooth and nail and spent tens, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep these supposedly benign documents hidden from anyone's view despite past practice of transparency. In the meantime the custodian of the documents suddenly put in for retirement which has further raised suspicion that maybe they're not so benign after all.

One of the venues we've been fighting in is Superior Court where we filed a motion to release the documents for use the Personnel Appeals Board hearings. Last week when the attorneys went before the judge there was no question on his part that the candidates should be allowed to see these documents and use them in their appeals. But he wanted to come up with some sort of protective order over the documents to satisfy the Town's desire to keep them shrouded in secrecy. Yesterday we received the judge's decision on the matter which is as follows;

The Union's attorney, President, Vice President, and the three appealing candidates will be allowed to view all documents related to the test unredacted.

The seven non-appealing candidates will be allowed to view all documents pertaining only to their own individual tests unredacted.

Witnesses and outside experts may view only the content of the documents pertinent to their testimony.

All parties allowed to view the documents will have to sign a confidentiality agreement to not disclose the information contained in the documents to anyone not listed in the above paragraphs. They must also agree to only use this information for the PAB hearings and may not use them for any other hearing without going through this court process again. Additionally once the hearings are over we must return the documents to the Town for destruction, never to be seen again.

The last main point, which was a point of contention between the Union and the Town, is that when these documents are being discussed in the normally public PAB hearings, the hearing will be made private with only those given access to the documents allowed to be in the room. The Union has pushed for these hearings to remain open to the public and members of the Department because we believe the only cure for corruption in Government is transparency, without it nobody can be assured that the process is fair. The Town unfortunately doesn't share this belief and made a big push to close the hearings to the public and the judge ultimately sided with them.

There's been a lot of speculation over the last few months about what these documents will show, fueled by the Town's irrational grabbing at straws to hide them, and now we'll finally have the answer. Whether they reveal corruption or nothing at all really doesn't matter at this point, the damage has been done. The employees here at EHPD have lost all faith in our Town's HR Department to conduct a competent, impartial, and transparent exam and promotional process. Whenever a new HR Director is finally appointed they're going to have a real challenge on their hands to rebuild trust and fix the complete mess Santiago Malave has made of the Department.

We are also still arguing for the release of these documents through an MPP for use during the grievance process since this order only allows us to use them in the PAB hearing. we have a hearing scheduled for that at the labor board later in the month.

The next PAB Hearing is Scheduled for Wednesday January 22nd from 1700-1900. We have a fixed end time due to another group using the room after us. This hearing will still be open to the public as we will not be using the documents at that hearing since we may not have them yet and/or will not have had time to fully review them, so members are still free to come and show their support.

HR Director Santiago Malave Out? UPDATED

One of our members noticed today that the job of Human Resources Director had been posted a week ago on the Town's website, you can find the posting at this link. Though we haven't seen any confirmation, we can only assume this means current HR Director Santiago Malave, who's at the center of the current Sergeant test scandal, and previously the Fire Department promotional exam scandal, is on his way out.

The timing of his departure is intriguing since we're less than a week a way from a hearing in Superior Court where we will argue for the forced release of the evaluator notes and score sheets from the Sergeant's exam that he's been fighting tooth and nail to keep hidden. Of course he could be leaving for any number of reasons, perhaps he's jumping ship before the documents come out and reveal something he or his subordinates did, or the Mayor could be forcing him out, or maybe he just found a better job elsewhere that'll pay him more than the $105,622 salary East Hartford gives him.

Either way Mr. Malave's potential departure is a great thing for our Union and every other Town Union. Aside from his botching of multiple promotional exams, he has acted as nothing more than a rubber stamp for the Chief's decisions during the grievance process where he's supposed to be a neutral arbiter. During my involvement with the Union since 2014 Mr. Malave has never once sided with our Union in any of his Step 2 grievance decisions, instead agreeing with the Chief every time. We've appealed almost all of his rulings to the Labor Board which has overturned Malave's decisions one hundred percent of the time. That's right, every single decision he's ruled on that we've appealed has been overturned. This includes one ruling where he told me to my face after the hearing that he agreed with the Union's position, but then issued his ruling in favor of the Town because I assume he was afraid to go against the Chief of Police.

Mr. Malave's refusal to grant a fair and impartial hearing has wasted hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars of both taxpayer and Union funds by forcing us to take grievances before the Labor Board that could have easily been resolved at the HR level had he done his job properly. We can only hope that whoever replaces him will do the job correctly and give the Unions a fair hearing when we go before him or her so we're not constantly running over to Wethersfield. It would be a huge plus if they know how to run a promotional exam without getting dragged to Court too.

UPDATE: We're hearing Malave is out mid-January before the decision from Superior Court should come down. The line we're hearing from the Admin/Town Hall is that this departure has been planned for at least a year. Of course this makes no sense at all, if you know a critical Department head is on his way out for a year, why would you wait until one month before his departure to post for his job? Don't you think they'd want ample time for qualified candidates to apply, and be interviewed and vetted before the spot goes vacant rather than doing it at the last minute? File that one under "not buying it."