The dust is settled but the City still doesn’t understand Right from Wrong ..

It is time to end my silence after many weeks of hoping that the management of the City of Portsmouth would “do the right thing”. They have not, yesterday I was told by the new Chief of Police William Corvello that he was recommending I be reinstated to my previous position as a Police Officer. Ah but the caveat.. of course there is a caveat. I must agree to accept punishment (less severe, but still punishment) involving the incidents that were involved in my termination. Well one of them I could stomach in the name of compromise but not the other. I will never take a “plea” or accept punishment for something I didn’t do even if it gets me my job back. As I have said in the past sometimes it’s harder to do the right thing and stand up for ones own morals and ethics.

You can read the letter I received from Chief Corvello by clicking this link Chief Corvello Written Grievance Response. Now before I go any further I want to say a few things about the last several weeks. First, yesterday was my fourth meeting with Chief Corvello. He is impressive, intelligent and I firmly believe he is the second major change that has taken place since Kenneth Chandler became City Manager (the first being Ed Longs resignation) that was positive change for the department. He strikes me as a fair person that is genuinely interested in fixing the problems within the department. I know from my contacts that he has already started to do that. He has already fixed a number of injustices that former Chief Ed Long committed while he was Chief. I like Chief Corvello, have nothing bad to say about my interactions with him. I talked to a lot of people prior to meeting him, did quite a bit of research and could find no one that had anything bad or negative to say about the guy. That’s quite a feat after spending 40+years in law enforcement. Given his unfamiliarity with the issues I raised during the meeting yesterday I suspect that the written grievance response was generated by someone else (perhaps the City Attorneys Office). When I raised the issue about the discipline being the wrong OPR he pulled out the Policy book to look at it himself. Since I included a detailed synopsis of the problem in my 18 page grievance I was surprised to see him unfamiliar with the issue I raised. He then told me he would have to get back to me so he could research the issue. I left the building and got a call to come back an hour later. When I came back he stated that it was going to have to remain as-is. I then had to mark “Not Acceptable” on the grievance form and move on to a Grievance Panel Hearing. I have little faith in panel hearings given my previous experience with them. I was involved in one where the City of Portsmouth was in violation of Federal Law and the panel simply said that it needed to be taken up with the feds.

I disagree with Chief Corvello’s decision today for a couple reasons. The first is that I did nothing wrong involving the Farm Fresh Shoplifter and followed the Departments Policy on handling Shoplifters. Here is were the Administration of former Chief Ed Long is flawed. They stated that I failed to release the suspect on a summons which they claim was a violation of Police OPR-20. The problem with that is that OPR-20 is not applicable because OPR-19 is the policy specifically written for the handling of Shoplifters. The city does not want to admit that they were that incompetent in the handling of the matter and my termination so they won’t yield or admit they made a mistake. So you can read both of the Policies yourself Click Here to see Portsmouth Police Policy OPR-19 & OPR-20. Examination of OPR-20 will reveal it’s inapplicability in this case, and likewise, review of OPR-19 and my actions will show I followed procedure to the letter. I followed OPR-19 as I was trained to do and as we have always done. I was not going to accept punishment for something I didn’t do even if it meant getting my job back. The underlining reason I believe that they won’t do the right thing is because if I will take the punishment then I am admitting the whole incident is my fault hence the civil rights violation that was committed by Deputy Sheriff Joe Lilly and the attempted cover up by the City of Portsmouth would then disappear. The City would claim that I should never have brought the prisoner into the Sally Port. Nice try but I’m not biting, I followed established policy and procedure. It’s sad that they just won’t do the right thing but they need a scapegoat so when the Civil Rights complaint is investigated by the Feds they can justify the Sheriff’s actions and the City’s attempt to cover it up.

I have finally obtained a copy of the Sally Port incident on DVD after a year of legal wrangling with the Sheriff and the City. I am making it available but be forewarned it is a 40 meg Windows Media File that is 33 minutes in length. See the video below to watch the whole incident;

It shows the Sheriff’s Department taking custody of the criminal after I executed the warrant issued by the Magistrate. The warrant was “permitted” at my discretion. This means it’s up to me whether I release the criminal on her signature and she walks out of the building or she is processed (photographed and fingerprinted) then bonded out. This criminal had just committed two shoplifting incidents in an hour and we did not have a photo or fingerprint of her on file. I decided that given her current behavior it would be important to have her photo and fingerprints on file in case she committed additional criminal incidents. This way if she got away a photo would be available to the Police Department to conduct a photo lineup with her next set of victims. Sheriff’s Deputy Baker took custody of the criminal then took the criminal and all her property into the processing area. Once the warrant is executed and this occurs the Sheriff’s Department now has custody of the criminal and I am no longer responsible. Shortly after they took her into the prisoner processing area they bringing her back out while not allowing me to leave even after repeated demands for them to unlock the door. They refused and Deputy Lilley tries to force me to unlawfully seize the criminals property. I had no legal right to take the criminals property at that point. She had legally purchased the products at Farm Fresh (she stole some items and paid for some items). When they refused to allow me out they were in essence abducting me. I asked numerous times for them to allow me to leave and they refused. It’s convenient that there is no audio which I was told was broke that day. Think about this incident and how you would feel if someone refuses to allow you to leave someplace. That is abduction or illegal imprisonment. No one should have to tolerate that, it is contrary to our constitution, it is a civil rights violation.

In the next couple days I will go into more detail about the various incidents, provide more documents and more clarifications to incidents I have discuss and some that I have not. There is plenty more that needs to be shown about the unethical and illegal conduct of various members of City of Portsmouth Agencies.

Tags: City of Portsmouth, City of Portsmouth Illegal Activity, Deputy Joe Lilley, Former Chief of Police Edward Long, illegal imprisonment, imprisonment, Portsmouth Police Department, Portsmouth Sheriff's Department, sallyport, Sheriff Willaim Watson, Virginia