It appears that Chief Edward Hargis was riding in the new Portsmouth Police Boat yesterday when he got tossed out of the boat. I don’t know if any injury ensued (except  as a minimum to some ones pride and then hide), I hope not. Given that the boat was new I have my doubts that anyone was properly trained in it’s operation. It will be interesting to see what Public Relations spin the Portsmouth Police Department puts on the incident.

I can only speculate how this happened but here are my theories;

1) It was intentional - Not likely but with Portsmouth one never knows..

2) The Helmsman/Captain (driver) was not properly trained and had limited boat handling skills (as I am a former US Navy Sailor this would be my guess).

3) The weather - well that typically goes back to number 2 above. If you are the Helmsman/Captain of a vessel you are responsible for taking the weather into consideration before placing you vessel in the water or if it’s already in the water putting it in a hazardous situation.

US Coast Guard statistics indicate that “Operator errors account for 70% of boating accidents”. So my question is this, was the Captain of the boat a trained and qualified boat operator???

Below is the Executive Summary from the US Coast Guard Recreational Boating Statistics 2008 that indicates most of the causes of boating accident.  Take a look at Number 5, that’s my bet .. Another embarrassment involving the Management of the Portsmouth Police Department.

US Coast Guard Executive Summary from Boating Statistics 2008

Many public safety personnel in the City of Portsmouth do not understand the importance of the Civil Service Commission relating to there jobs, job security and advancement opportunities.

I have spent much time researching the rules and laws involving the City of Portsmouth Civil Service Commission. It is so important that I have decided that each meeting which is open to the public by law will be video taped and made available for all to see how the commission functions and the decisions that they make. Those decisions effect every single public safety employee in some way.

Below is the video of the May 29th, 2009 meeting. Most of the meeting is taken up with McCann and Associates explaining the statistics and appeals process for the recent public safety promotional exams given this year. At the end Chief of Police Edward G. Hargis makes a short presentation to the commission on some proposed changes in the department and the hiring process.

I am going to attempt to FOIA the McCann Associates reports presented to the Civil Service Commission about the recent promotional testing and make that available as well.

I received a comment back in January that I have not had time to address until now. Below is the comment and my response;

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First, I never went begging or groveling for my job back. In fact Chief Corvello offered it back to me prior to the Grievance Panel Hearing but I turned him down because I would have had to take punishment for something I didn’t do. That was something I will never be willing to accept.

Second, I stopped writing for a number of reasons. As I said I won my grievance with the City of Portsmouth and was reinstated to my previous position as a Police Officer. That job keeps me very very busy so my time is much more limited then before.  As an employee of the City of Portsmouth I have certain obligations as an employee that I feel I must follow in my blog postings that I did not have when I was not an employee. If you read my goals when I started this blog you will see that many of my goals have been achieved or are being addressed;

1) Got my job back, received $20,000 in backpay and all my benefits.

2) City Council passed the resolution granting a Public Safety pay plan and finally making Public Safety pay “market based” and comparable to the other Police Departments in the area. The city is hoping to stem the flow of Portsmouth Police Officers leaving for better paying jobs in other departments. Their are issues with the Pay Plan and a copy of the report produced by the consultant “Matrix Consulting Group” is available by clicking here. The city will not answer questions about the plan and refer inqueries to Officer Jim Swann who is the President of the local Portsmouth FOP (Fraternal Order of Police) Lodge. Anyone see a problem with that? He is not in HR or in payroll and the city has no business referring any employee to him regarding their pay. Given the current financial situation I do not believe the city will follow through with this long overdue promise and institute the plan in July. I fully expect the City Council to backout of the deal claiming they don’t have the money because of the “economic crisis” not that I thought they could/would come up with the money to fund this before the crisis. I also have heard rumors that the city is saying that the Pay Plan is “Time in Grade” based. I disagree after reading the Matrix Report. It clearly states “An employee will move one step for each year of service.” Their is no mention of an employee starting over at Step 0/1 if they are promoted. The notion is ludicrous and senior people being promoted would actually receive pay cuts. More responsibility less pay, don’t see the logic in that…

3) See that better management is put in place in the Portsmouth Police Department. I have already made posts about that in the past. To update everyone that is not already aware, Portsmouth has a new Chief of Police, Edward G. Hargis. Thankfully he is from the “outside” and was not one of the people that applied from within. He is already making changes and from what I hear holding some of his executive staff far more accountable then the previous Chief. I am hoping that accountability, ethics and professionalism become the words of the day under the new Chief.

4) Radio System problems are being addressed, very slowly but plans call for a multi-million dollar Motorola Smartnet Simulcast site in Churchland to address the considerable problems Public Safety personel having in communicating using the current generation of portable radios. I am looking into additional details because I am now assigned to work Churchland several days a week and find the radio problem to be of serious concern for officer safety. I have used the new car and fixxed base repeaters that have been installed in some of the police cars and at several sites in the Churchland area. I am not impressed overall with the functionallity of the repeaters. They are a step in the right direction but they have significant short comings. Portsmouth needs a simucast site in Churchland to correct the problems and make it safe for all the city employees that rely on the system for communications. I hope and pray that some public safety official does not have to die to have the radio system short comings addressed.

This was my first post in many months and I have a couple other issues that I will be making posts about in the future but with my current constraints I will not be able to maintain the same level of posts as before.