September Meeting

We will be holding our regular monthly meeting on Tuesday the 29th at 0830 in the usual spot. We should have a pretty packed agenda to try and fill everyone in on what's been going on since we last met.

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? 😆

Informative Links Regarding the Anti-Police Bill

Thanks to everyone who attended the meeting we held, please pass on the information you got to everyone who wasn't able to attend. Here are a few links you might find useful.

Bill analysis by Senate Republicans

Bill analysis by House OLR

House Voter Roll

Senate Voter Roll

Text of Bill 72 pages

If you read all 72 pages of the bill that's 72 more than most of the people who voted on it.

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.

Anti-Police Bill Working It's Way Through Legislature

Many of our members have reached out to us over the last few days asking about the Anti-Police bill that was approved by the State House of Representatives the other day. People have asked what we're doing related to it, what they can do, and how or if, they should be doing their jobs, so we'll briefly try to respond here directly and honestly.

First and foremost, this bill is not yet law. It has only been approved by the House, it must still go to the Senate where they can approve or reject it as is, or they can pass it with provisions added or removed and then send their version back to the House for approval. Once a final version is passed it goes to the Governor for approval or veto. While I assume some version of this bill will pass, we're not going to offer any guidance or make any decisions until we see what the actual final language that gets passed is and what it means for us. Unfortunately the Legislature seems to be fast walking this bill without giving it the debate it deserves so they can go on vacation sooner. You can click this link to read the text of the bill and see how each Legislator voted.

As for what we've been doing, our attorney has been in contact with the Legislature on behalf of us and other Police Unions he represents, check your work email for more information. Additionally our Union Vice President wrote letters to several State Representatives on our behalf. Unfortunately there's not much more that we can do. As a labor Union, the only thing of value we have to offer to politicians are endorsements and campaign contributions, and right now the Democrats who are pushing this bill see us as the enemy and want nothing to do with our endorsements or our money. In fact they'd probably prefer we endorsed their opponents so they can show the mob driving them how anti-Police they are. So we just don't have much, if any political sway in this situation.

As for what you can do, you can click this link to find your State Legislators for your home district and East Hartford and write them an email or call their office to express your feelings on this bill. My only advice is if you're contacting a Democrat, it's probably best not to identify yourself as a Police Officer and rather present yourself as a concerned citizen, otherwise they may write you off immediately.

We don't have a crystal ball to look into to tell you what effect of the final bill will be until it's passed and we have time to analyze it. But if it goes through in it's current form it's highly destructive to our profession and we'll probably never be able to hire a qualified person again unless our salary is doubled. But for the time being, keep your cool, go to work, and let's see what happens. But just to be safe if you have 15 or more years on and you're still on the street you should probably take a look at your numbers and start thinking about heading for the exit IF we get the worst case scenario. Similarly if you have less than 5-7 years on you may want to start seriously looking at what your out-of-state options are if you wish to continue in Law Enforcement. We're not sounding the alarm just yet, and I'm hopeful the Senate will fix this mess of a bill before it passes, but I think people should start having these discussions with your families now so you have a plan if you need to go that route.

We'll post further updates on this as needed.

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 Contract Extension Passed

Back in January our Contract Negotiating Committee opened negotiations with the Town on a successor agreement to our Labor Contract expiring June 30th, 2020. We held several productive meetings with the Town's committee and had put together a few tentative agreements. Unfortunately when the meeting size restrictions went into effect it became extremely difficult for us to hold further meetings. We tried waiting it out for a bit but eventually it became clear that it would be an excessively long time before we could hold a meeting, and should arbitration be required with the delays and backlog at the Labor Board, we wouldn't have a settled contract for quite some time.

As a result our committee proposed to the Town's committee a one year extension to our current contract with no changes other than a 2% general wage increase, which should serve to keep us in line with inflation. Our membership ratified the extension and the Town's committee agreed to the deal and brought it to the Town Council with their recommendation of passage. Today the Town Council passed the extension.

This extension will get us to January when we will have to re-open negotiations, hopefully by then we will be able to hold in person meetings without restriction and we can pick up where we left off. For this reason we will probably keep the same committee so we won't have to start from scratch.

Thanks to the Town Negotiations Committee and the Town Council for helping get this agreement done.

Starting back up soon?

We just got word the other day that the Labor Board will be aiming for July 15th to begin hearing cases virtually. We have five pending cases right now, some of the more intensive ones like the Sergeant's test will probably be more difficult for us to effectively present remotely but the other side will have all the same challenges we do. This isn't our optimal solution as we'd much prefer in person hearings, but we're being told those may not begin until the fall, so this is our best chance to get things rolling again in a reasonable time frame. We don't have any dates yet, and I'm sure there are a lot of people waiting in line, but we'll update those involved once we know.

Our usual meeting spot is opening back up, but I assume they want to keep the capacity down for now so we're going to hold off until September to start having regular meetings again. If there's anything going on that needs our attention please reach out to anyone on the executive board.

More Delays

We just got word today that the Labor Board is cancelling hearings scheduled for July and is now scheduling into August. This means our hearing for the Sergeant's test grievance that was scheduled for July 2nd will be postponed to a later date.

Additionally we haven't heard anything about rescheduling the Personnel Appeals Board hearings yet so we don't have a timetable for that resuming yet.

Vote Results

Vote passed 80 yes to 1 no. Thanks to all for participating.

Union Vote Coming Up

Reminder to anyone who isn't aware, there's a vote coming up on June 16th, see your email for details. Show up in the break room from 0630 to 1630 to vote or contact Secretary Napolitano for an absentee ballot.

May Update

Quick update here, nothing much has changed since we last posted. All hearings at the Labor Board are still on hold, as well as the Personnel Appeals Board. We do have a July date scheduled at the Labor Board for the Sergeant's Test grievance that hasn't been cancelled yet so we're hopeful we will actually get a hearing on that date.

Our contract negotiating meetings were also cancelled, but we may be getting those going again towards the end of this month.

We're not going to hold a monthly meeting for May due to current gathering restrictions and also there just isn't much to update everyone on. We don't normally hold meetings over the summer but we're going to try to have one in June to make up for the last few we missed and hopefully we will have some new info to pass on by then. Check back here for dates.

As always if you have any concerns, feel free to give one of us a call. Stay safe and look out for each other.

Update to the Last Post

Just wanted to update that it's been a week since our last post on here and EHPD is still diligently checking employee's temperatures with a known faulty thermometer. I just personally finished my work week and never checked in above an indicated 93 degrees, and one day even came in as low as 89 degrees. So unfortunately the Administration's game of pretending they're looking out for us continues.

Security Theater

A few weeks ago Chief Sansom put together a "COVID-19 task force" that meets several times a week to come up with ways to help safeguard our employees. At first a few productive and helpful things came out of these meetings such as getting disinfectant wipes in the cruisers, closing the lobby to the public, answering minor calls over the phone and limiting unnecessary contact between squads as we wrote here in an earlier post. However like most of these types of efforts go, after the initial batch of helpful ideas came out the pressure was still on them to come up with new ideas. So they started delving deeper to justify their existence with new, less helpful ideas.

When we first met with this task force the first thing we noticed was that of the six people on it, three Deputy Chiefs and three Lieutenants, not a single one of them is directly involved with the Patrol Division. Patrol are of course the only ones actually on the front lines out dealing with potentially sick people in the public. So it just seems like common sense to bring someone into these meetings who's actually involved day to day and has some perspective on what those employees are going through and need. But instead Chief Sansom picked six people who all work upstairs far removed from the street, this seems like an odd choice to us.

Here are some of the measures the Union presented that were shot down; as we previously wrote about on here we proposed that employees who had a potential exposure or fell ill be given Administrative leave and/or covered under Worker's Compensation instead of being forced to use their own accrued time off, which the Chief refused. Fortunately for us President Trump and Congress stepped up with legislation to help give us some extra time off specifically for Coronavirus related issues as of April 1st. While we're really glad the Federal Government is helping us out, it's still disappointing to know that our own Chief and Mayor refused to do anything to help us without being forced to by the Feds. Of course even with the Feds forcing their hand the Town still had to take a swipe at our Union by telling people that if you did use any of that Federally guaranteed time off they would count it against your earned days. They just can't help themselves when they see an opportunity to screw over their employees.

Another idea we brought to the Chief was to allow anyone in a public facing position who falls into a defined high risk group due to medical condition or age, to have the option of voluntarily going on Administrative Duty temporarily so they can work in house and potentially reduce their risk of exposure. As far as we know this was never put into effect, probably because it would incur overtime costs, though probably not much as I don't think we have too many people who fall into these risk groups.

One of the task force's ideas that got put into motion last week is the checking of temperatures at the beginning of your shift and sending people home if they have a fever. This is ineffective for a few reasons, the most obvious one being that the thermometer they bought for doing this task is wildly inaccurate. Most of our employees are being checked in with temperatures in the high 80's and low 90's, some as low as 83 degrees. Of course if that was anyone's actual body temperature they'd be dead of hypothermia long before the virus got them. Knowing how the Town of East Hartford works I wouldn't be surprised if they just walked across the street to Dollar Tree and picked this piece of junk out of the clearance bin with the 3 for $5 DVDs so we can save money to buy more laptops for non-essential employees to work from home.

It's also been well documented and well known at this point in the pandemic that a person can carry and spread the virus without having a fever and many people are in fact completely asymptomatic. And even when you do show symptoms you may not have a fever until you're several days in, so a fever is hardly the defining symptom. Checking temperatures makes sense at a store or other public facility where you have unknown people walking in and out, but in a workplace with the same small group of people every day it really accomplishes nothing other than annoying your employees and creating an atmosphere of distrust. This is especially true when you're doing it with a broken thermometer that gives laughably inaccurate readings. Most people can feel when they have a fever and our members are trustworthy enough that they wouldn't come to work knowingly sick and put their co-workers and their families at risk.

The task force has also gone so far as to put up occupancy limit signs in certain rooms in the building like the report writing room, gym, and Watch Commander's office and putting obscure tape markings on the floor. We understand what the intent is with this but the reality is we're all sharing cars, touching the same door handles, railings, car books, keyboards, keys, paperwork, phones. And then once we're out on the street we're going to calls together in cramped apartments and stairwells, sometimes we even roll around on the ground with suspects together. Close contact and cross contamination between employees is inevitable in our line of work. Trying to put these restrictions in place inside the building just creates an awkward work environment and puts more stress on people during an already stressful time.

Of course none of this is about being effective or actually accomplishing anything. It's security theater meant to make it look like something is being done, similar to what the TSA does at airports. In the case of the TSA they at least accomplish the goal of creating an intimidating process that acts as a deterrent. But viruses don't get intimidated or deterred, you either have it or you don't. We think the better approach is to trust your employees and work with them instead of treating them like suspects or idiots. We hope the task force will consider next time they come up with an idea, how effective will it actually be and realize that sometimes you've done all you can for the time being and can take your foot off the accelerator. Don't just do things because you feel like you need to do something or because someone else is doing it.

Overall we think all of our members are doing a great job handling this situation so far with common sense and caution while still doing effective Police work. Hopefully we'll all be through this soon and back to our regular routines.

EHPOA Fundraiser on Hold

We've asked our fundraising company to suspend their phone and mail operations on our behalf for the time being with so many people out of work. We invite anyone who wants to help us out to instead donate new, unused PPE (Masks, gloves, gowns, face shields etc...) if you have any extra that you can part with. You can bring it to the Police Station, the lobby is currently closed to the Public but if you call the non emergency line (860-528-4401) they can have someone meet you in the parking lot. Thank you.