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

City Attorney Tim Oksman requests Margarita Mixer

In an email I obtained via the Virginia Freedom of Information Act from City of Portsmouth, City Attorney Tim Oksman makes a request to the Commander of the Police Training Unit Lt. Scott Burke to obtain information about “any good margarita mixers”. This was in response to Lt Burke’s email he sent soliciting information requests from the Police Department for any items/products the Police Department might be interested in him gathering information about while he is at the IACP (International Association of Chief of Police) Conference.

Now does anyone think that this might be inappropriate?

We have enough problems in the City of Portsmouth and the Portsmouth Police Department management then to make requests for items that are at the least not appropriate for the work place. They would be City of Portsmouth policy violations and an automatic termination if used in the work place by an employee.

That brings me to some other interesting information. It appears that the City of Portsmouth Police Department’s Detective Bureau Management likes to encourage team-building. A noble concept if used in an appropriate manner and setting. But somehow I just don’t see how they can justify having supervisors and management go to a Norfolk Tides baseball game, consume alcohol and then put it on their time sheets with the taxpayers of the City of Portsmouth having to pickup the tab. Well from what I have been told that is exactly the case. Whatever happened to morals and ethics?

So perhaps alcohol use is in fact an accepted on the job/on duty endeavor given the City Attorneys email?

I can tell you first hand that the City of Portsmouth Management and the Executive Management of the Portsmouth Police Department follow whatever rules they feel like and disregard those they don’t. Actually this doesn’t just go with City and Police Department Policies but they have routinely broken the very laws that they are sworn to protect. It’s a very said state of affairs for the City of Portsmouth and the Portsmouth Police Department. The actions of a select few individuals in management give a bad name and reputation to a large group of honest City Employee’s and Police Officers that are hard working and dedicated to their jobs.

I have more to follow on these issues including some very interesting photo’s that the Federal EEOC might want to see.

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.

I received word yesterday that Interim Police Chief William Corvello resigned for the second and likely last time from his position with the City of Portsmouth Click here to see Chief Corvello’s second and likely last resignation letter. Having dealt with him personally during the previous months about matters related to my termination and grievance I have nothing but positive things to say about the Chief.

He is a “law enforcement officer” of the highest class who believes in doing things the right way, with honesty and integrity. I have no doubt some of his experiences with the current administration have left a bad taste in his mouth but I have no doubt he gave it his 110% during his tenure. I will have one last opportunity to meet with him on Monday as that is my final step in my grievance process and the last step in trying to get reinstated into the position Chief Long and City Manager Chandler terminated me from back in April. I have no expectations going into the meeting but one, that the person representing the City (Chief Corvello) has no ulterior motive, that he will do what he feels is the right thing to do and say. Unlike others in the executive staff of the Police Department that have personal agenda’s I firmly believe that Chief Corvello’s agenda was to fix the problems in the Department and to see that everyone at every level was treated fairly, honestly and that no one was shown any favoritism.

I have not made any posts in a while as I have been waiting on several Freedom of Information Act responses from various departments of the City of Portsmouth. My current project is to make an accurate estimation of the cost to train a newly hired Police recruit from the date of hire till the recruit is certified and released to Uniform Patrol as a fully trained productive officer.  Going hand-in-hand with that project is another one that will demonstrate the inequity between the pay raises given regular and public safety employee’s over the previous 10 years and the high level city management such as the City Manager, City Attorney etc etc.

Sometimes we live for the small victories in life. I received notification two days ago that the Virginia Unemployment Commission (VEC) ruled in my favor when I recently applied for unemployment benefits. After a telephone hearing, exchange of documents the Commission ruled that “The charge of misconduct is questionable” and that I am “Entitled to benefits”.

More to follow in the next week or so …

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

I had a good laugh today when I received an email with an audio attachment. It’s one of those funny things that’s sad. It starts off as a recruiting ad, kinda, but is actually a very well done parody of the current retention problems facing the Portsmouth Police Department. The Portsmouth Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) lodge had the ad made and is going to be airing it on various radio stations starting Monday.

I received permission to place it on my blog from one of the Officers of the Portsmouth FOP.

The Department has one very positive note for the junior officers that are hired. Once trained, then Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) certified Basic Law Enforcement Officers they can then find a job at any other Commonwealth of Virginia Law Enforcement Agency. A little over 10 years ago the City of Portsmouth changed their retirement system from a city run pension plan to the Commonwealth of Virginia “Virginia Retirement System” (VRS). By doing this they made a city employees retirement “portable”. You can now leave Portsmouth, go to any other Virginia state agency or municipality that is also under VRS and continue on with all your time from Portsmouth credited to you under your new agency for your retirement.

When you look at the pay differential of the local police departments (click here for area police pay comparison) you will see that Portsmouth ranks at the very bottom for pretty much everything. The question then becomes, why would a Portsmouth Junior Police Officer stick around in Portsmouth when they can go almost anywhere and get a pay raise in the thousands of dollars. Given the turmoil, mismanagement, politics, unfair treatment, inadequate compensation and poor working conditions how can you blame them for leaving? You can’t, but that doesn’t seem to concern the City of Portsmouth. The starting salary of a Portsmouth Police Officer is in the neighborhood of $30,000. It takes about a year from start to finish to train one to become a patrol officer and get them DCJS certified. You are talking about losing an investment of about $40,000-$50,000 every time a trained police officer leaves the department. Because Portsmouth Officers do more with less, handle more varied types of police cases due to the high crime rate (click here for Hampton Roads cities crime statistics comparison for 2006) they are far more experienced in a few short years then most of the other departments in the area and are popular applicants with the other departments. These departments avoid the $40,000-$50,000 cost to train a new officer and the applicant gets a pay raise in the thousands of dollars depending on the department that hires them.

Click the link below to listen to the ad, it’s accurate, funny and sad.. Portsmouth FOP Radio Recruiting Ad

If after you read my post or listen to the ad and want to help out, click the link below to go to the Portsmouth FOP page that has all the contact information to voice your concern to the Portsmouth City Council.

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 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.

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.