Another Sad Case at DASO

Imagine you're a young cadet in the Doña Ana Sheriff's Office Academy. 

 

You're an army reservist, having made it through basic training. You're being consistently called lazy. You're the only cadet being told to suck your thumb and asked to repeat various tasks after completing them. “Why me?” you wonder.

You are the only black cadet. 

 

On June 5, after an incident, you tell the instructor, Frank Kaiser, that you feel you're being discriminated against because you're African-American. The County's strong anti-discrimination policies require Kaiser to report your allegation immediately to H.R. for independent investigation. Instead, he sends you home and tells you to go see Undersheriff Ken Roberts the next morning.

Roberts asks why you made your claim, then interrupts and tells you that you're history. Gone. He says all your fellow cadets want you gone, and that Sheriff Vigil has approved the termination. You wonder how he talked to so many people so fast. Maybe you wonder if having a DASO officer “investigate” your complaint about a DASO officer is entirely fair. 

 

The above is from legal pleadings in Johnson v. Doña Ana County. Plaintiff is Tederick Johnson. His lawyer is Ben Furth. (Furth is an experienced employment lawyer who also represents Julia Brown against the County.)

Here we go again. 

 

I'd love not to be writing about another dumb move by Vigil and Roberts. I'd love not to be wondering how much we will pay for this one. Obviously I'd also like to learn some day that this was not motivated by racism. I want to believe we're better than that.

Johnson may have been a lousy cadet. Maybe he deserved to be canned, though apparently DASO didn't plan to terminate him on June 4, then did immediately after he alleged discrimination. Suddenly DASO concluded he wasn't deputy material. Officially he was fired for insubordination, which the Complaint calls “pretextual” – a cover story for racism. The County will likely claim Johnson cried racism to avoid or delay being fired. 

 

Whatever the facts, it was not Roberts's province to investigate them. Even if there was no racism, Roberts's conduct seems arrogant and imprudent. 

 

Once someone raises allegations of racism, sexual harassment, or retaliation, the matter must be handled by someone as neutral as possible – for the sake of both the organization and the individual. The County fired Johnson before investigating his complaint. (The County admits the firing occurred June 6 and that Johnson's supervisor reported the EEOC complaint June 6. The County claims it started the investigation before firing Johnson, but admits it finished investigating afterward.

Both Kaiser and Roberts were required to: (a) report the allegation immediately to HR; and (b) request that the employee fill out an internal EEO complaint, or fill one out for him. Failure to do so would subject Kaiser and Roberts to disciplinary action.

I called County Counsel Nelson Goodin, who said no one would comment on the pending litigation. 

 

I've no idea whether Johnson should or shouldn't be a deputy; but Roberts seems to have ignored mandatory procedures he must have been familiar with. Whether the reason was laziness, arrogance, prejudice, or to cover up questionable conduct by Kaiser, Roberts's mistake is likely to cost us more money. (A friend asked after the Slevin case why the County couldn't go after the employee whose conduct cost us so much. We can't.)

When will DASO learn to follow the law?

                                                    -30-

[This column appeared in the Las Cruces Sun-News this morning, Sunday, 10 December 2017, and also on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website.  A spoken version will air on KRWG Wednesday and Saturday and on KTAL on Thursday.]

[I've little to add to the column, except that the immediate response has been some positive comments from insiders.  People in the know are concerned about DASO, and say the Vigil-Roberts regime has done real damage to the department.  It's unfortunate.  I think Kiki Vigil meant well would have liked to do a bang-up job running and improving DASO.  He hasn't.  I'm not expert in law-enforcement matters, but I'm hearing that morale and response times are down; and a lot of officers who seemed pretty capable are gone, something I wrote a few columns about quite awhile ago.]   

[I should reiterate that I'm not presuming to decide whether or not racism was the basic reason for Mr. Johnson's firing.  That'll be up to a jury, if the case doesn't get settled first.  However, I don't understand, and will be interested to see the explanation offered at trial, why DASO had to act so precipitously.  What would we have lost, except a few extra days or a couple of weeks of continued pay to this cadet, by responding appropriately?  Any schoolkid would know that having Roberts send a crony along to interview all the other cadets could not be a fair inquiry and couldn't help but muddy the waters for any independent investigator later.   You send a cadet packing -- justifiably or not -- and then send an officer around to tell the cadets about the controversy and ask who's side they're on, the terminated cadet's side or the side of the instructor who could get another cadet or two terminated, uhh, gee whiz.   That's why we have procedures in place.   If -- as I expect the County to argue -- this guy was under-performing and tried to fend off termination by alleging discrimination, then recognize he might find a lawyer and handle his case by the book.  Why react as Roberts did and help the guy make his case against you? 
The unseemly rush to get Mr. Johnson off the payroll seems particularly odd when I keep hearing that Vigil and Roberts have had an experienced officer on administrative leave for many months.]