Someone I had contact with recently within the Portsmouth Police Department told me that I shouldn’t be bitter. I explained to them that I am not and then we had a discussion about the serious lack of morals and ethics within the management of the Portsmouth Police Department. Both of us having similar view points that doing the right thing is important and a trait lacking within our management. A large portion of the Portsmouth Police Department executive staff has refused to acknowledge mistakes that they have made. Instead of saying, “your right, our mistake how can we fix it” they take the point of view that they must defend the decision to a point of embarrassment of themselves, the Police Department and City of Portsmouth as a whole. I have never dealt with such incompetent management in my 30+ years of employment.

Below is a link to an Internal Affairs Complaint I made in 2006 on several issues. While the issues were not of monumental importance it involved basically what I identified as liability issues that could expose the City of Portsmouth and it’s employee’s to lawsuit or other legal action. This included mistakes made by 911 Dispatchers,  suspected misuse of government funds, harassment by supervisory personal and a threat made against me personally via a third party because I made Freedom of Information Act request for 911 Center financial documents which is my right as a citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

City of Portsmouth Policy states that you can be terminated for threatening another employee. You would think that the Chief of Police might be concerned and look into matters. Apparently not, at least not from any evidence I have seen. As far as I can tell the complaint was never investigated. The principle witness involving the threat was never contacted by Internal Affairs to be interviewed. In a meeting I had with Former Interim Chief Corvello last year he told me he could not find a record of the complaint nor any investigation. The incident occurred after Chief Corvello’s first departure.

Because I am not bitter in the least but on a quest for justice and to demonstrate just how lacking several members of the Portsmouth Police Executive Staff is I’m going to share the pivotal moment when I came to realize that not everyone believes in doing the right thing in the Portsmouth Police Department Management. I believe, as do many others at my level in the department that we should do the right thing even if it means standing up and saying that I messed up, made a mistake or to respond to an accusation, “Yep, I did that”. Law Enforcement Personnel must be above reproach and set the example to society to be effective. Police Officers at all levels must be above reproach and be able to self-police themselves. My peers at the Portsmouth Police Department for the most part do that, the same can not be said of a number of our leaders.

In the very near future I am going to be revealing evidence and documentation that supports the claims I made above and will demonstrate the issues described. For the moment take a look at the beginning of my quest for justice and the pivotal point in my career with the Portsmouth Police Department. I realized I was naive, that their are Police Officers and sadly those in management that are not interested in doing the right thing but only protecting themselves and there turf.

Click here to read the Internal Affairs Complaint made 01/17/2006 that started my quest for justice.

Email sent a little after 8pm tonight indicates that Chief Corvello met with City Council and they addressed his concerns. He has decided to stay.

That’s good news because the City of Portsmouth was not going to find anyone of Chief Corvello’s caliber, stature or experience.

Thanks Chief Corvello for staying ..

Click here for a copy of the email; Interim Chief William Corvello will be staying in Portsmouth

City of Portsmouth Interim Chief of Police William Corvello submitted his resignation on August 18th after a little over 3 months on the job. (Click to see Chief Corvello’s resignation letter to City Manager Kenneth Chandler). The resignation has an effective date of September 1st 2008. Chief Corvello was Portsmouth Police Departments best hope of getting all the numerous problems fixed and getting morale up in a demoralized Police Department that is fraught with numerous management problems for years.

Their has been much conjecture about Chief Corvello leaving short of his employment contract requirements. The Chief was on a Month-to-Month contract since starting his employment on May 7th, 2008 (Click here to see Chief William Corvello’s employment contract). If a retired Superintendent of State Police with Chief Corvello’s stature can not fix the problems or is not given the cooperation by City of Portsmouth Officials he needs to fix the Police Department then who can? Certainly not the current upper management of the Portsmouth Police Department. They have a sorted past, part of the current problems and lack of accountability can be directly attributed to the shenanigans of certain members of the current executive staff. Very few of the rank and file officers have any confidence in them. I have some personal experience with several of them and will be relating some incidents that will demonstrate that the current upper level executive staff is not fit to be a Chief of Police in Portsmouth or anywhere else.

I have had numerous contacts with Chief Corvello during these past months. I have only good things to say about him. He was fair, personable and reasonable. He cared about the people that worked for him and it was apparent that he wanted to fix the numerous problems that have plagued the Police Department for years. Unfortunately his hands were tied, he was micro-managed by the Office of the City Manager. As you can see in the resignation letter, he was “backdoored” by the City Attorney at least once (and I suspect that was one of many occasions).

He was not given the authority to accomplish the tasks neccessary to implement positive and required changes to fix a broken Police Department. I suspect Chief Corvello had to get everything pre-approved before he was allowed to do anything. Chief Corvello publicly speaks very highly of his association with Portsmouth City Manager Kenneth Chandler but if that was really the case would he be resigning? I think not !

A man of Chief Corvello’s stature and experience should have been allowed to make the necessary decisions on his own and implement them. If Chief Corvello can’t fix the problems with his vast resume who can?

Their are still a number of issues (moral, ethical & legal) that have been covered up over the years that are going to come out. Their has been illegal activity within the upper management of the Police Department. Some that people are aware, (i.e. Lt. Ali) some that hasn’t come to light yet. Their have been transgressions committed by Portsmouth Police management in the past that they have never been held accountable for. The saying “Do as I say not as I do” is a fitting phrase to describe many in Portsmouth Police leadership positions. Part of the problem is that they are supervisors but not leaders, they lack the discipline to follow their own policies. Certain staff members have been involved in illegal spending of department funds, had sex with subordinate female civilian employee’s in there office and other various incidents.

I know that if I was the Chief of Police trying to be fair, do the right thing and hold people accountable for their actions and was told “no you can’t” I’d resign too.

It’s extremely doubtful once Chief Corvello leaves that their will be any forward progress made in fixing the Portsmouth Police Department. He was the cream-of-the-crop, it is doubtful they are going to find anyone with his experience and caliber again. That’s a shame, given that they had a guy capable of pulling it off and the Portsmouth City government let him get away. You hired the guy to fix the problems, guess you should have let him do the job you hired him for.

Farewell Chief Corvello, we know you gave it your best shot ..

It appears that the City of Portsmouth City Manager Mr. Kenneth Chandler had finally reached the point that he felt action needed to be taken to maintain credibility of the Portsmouth Police Department. I applaud his actions and hope other senior executive staff still there are held accountable for their transgressions.

Accountability is the key word and needs to be applied uniformly throughout the department. I don’t know Chief Corvello personally but I have heard nothing but good things about him. I wish him well in his new job and offer my assistance in anyway possible to help fix the problems within the department. I really enjoyed the work there just not the working environment or the management style of the former Chief.

I have plenty more to say, quite a few more documents to post but in an effort to let the new Chief settle into a position that is going to require significant work I am going to hold off posting any new material for a couple weeks to give him a chance to start moving forward with positive change within the department.

I have heard some interesting things about an incident involving a public figure from Portsmouth that occurred in another city but until I can confirm the information (via some additional FOIA’s) I am not going to spread rumors without documentation to back it up.