Coming full circle

You have to admit, there's a nice symmetry to it. Lil Mayor Luke's very first scandal involved the police and an Officer Frank Rende and now his administration is up to its eyeballs in police scandals and the latest involves an Officer Frank Rende.

Back in 2006, Ravenstahl had to drop his public safety director nomination of Dennis Regan. Part of the reason was because police Cmdr. Catherine McNeilly had sent an email to city officials warning them that "Mr. Regan undercut her effort to discipline city Detective Francis M. Rende, the brother of the woman with whom Mr. Regan shares a Point Breeze home." The article in the Post-Gazette back then noted that Rende had a "dozen accusations of conduct unbecoming an officer, verbal abuse and excessive force" including coming back to have sex with a woman who was depressed and very drunk when he had answered a domestic call earlier that day. Rende was also calling off sick for his police job to work side jobs and had been using another officer's password to pick up even more work. The other part was because Bill Peduto (and others) were hammering Regan as being completely unqualified for the position. Rende kept his job.

Now, some six and a half years later, Officer Frank Rende is in the news again, but this time, Ravenstahl is calling for him to be fired. Maybe it's because this time the incident is on tape. But the snark in me says that while Luke was able to look past officers beating down Jordan Miles and look past officers having incidents of domestic violence when promoting them, this is just a case of projection on Luke's part. After all, soon he may be the drunk white guy who's partied a little too hard on the South Side:

If you haven't yet...

Head on over to Macyapper to read his RAVEnstahl piece from yesterday (and see the great graphic -- Let Opie be Opie!).

I have to agree with John that the Dennis Regan/Commander McNeilly mess was one of Mayor Ravenstahl's biggest blunders, if not the biggest blunder, and it's too often left off the list of Luke's mistakes.
.

Commander McNeilly Rates Luke's P-G Report Card

Commander Catherine R. McNeilly wrote a letter to the Post-Gazette with her thoughts on their report card on Mayor Luke Ravenstahl. As they have declined to print it, she's sent it over to us to print.

As I emailed her back, I'm more than happy to have her do the hard work of reviewing the P-G's review:

"I must take issue Sunday’s article regarding the “Mayor Meeting Most Goals.”

He was given an “A” when in April, 2007 he began charging businesses an administrative fee for hiring off-duty police officers. However, the city had been charging this fee for years to help recoup losses incurred by administrating these details. But this fee was nixed by the Mayor late last year. ("Ravenstahl dumps plan to add service fee to bill for off-duty cops" November 22, 2006). It was only re-implemented (grudgingly) in April after great pressure by his then-challenger, Councilman Peduto.

So, his “A” is truly not deserved!

In September, 2006 the Mayor was given a “C” on the goal of creating a “Women’s Commission” that would bring “concerns of women to the city and improve gender diversity in top staff.” This goal has stalled, however, because his chosen co-chair has moved out of town and has yet to be replaced.

If the Mayor were truly sincere about his commitment to the “concerns” of women, he had a valuable and unique opportunity in September, 2006 to tout the Command Staff of the Pittsburgh Police as a “model” of female representation in “top city staff” when 7 out of 12 people (or 58%) who held the rank of Commander or higher were female.

Since becoming Mayor, there have been seven promotions made to the Command Staff of the Pittsburgh Police. Six of those promotions were male. Today, 6 of the 14 people (or 43%) of the Command Staff is female. Sadly, Mr. Ravenstahl missed a golden opportunity, and as of the date “Ravenstahl’s Report Card” was published, the same Command Staff of the Pittsburgh Police is no longer the “model” that it was just 10 month ago.

One of the most recent males promoted to the Command Staff jumped over a number of females (and males) who have rank, formal degrees, higher degrees and well-respected police management training which highly qualifies them for such a move upward – but they were not even considered for such a move.

Additionally, as has been widely reported, the last three promotions have raised concerns to a number of women’s groups in the Pittsburgh area because of allegations of domestic abuse; however, Mr. Ravenstahl will not even address the “concerns" of these women.

The Post-Gazette has been very lenient in giving the Mayor a “C” in these areas. If I were his professor in “Women’s Studies” and he were my student, it would be obvious by this time that he just isn’t getting it - he would have failed my course miserably."

Catherine R. McNeilly
(the writer is a Commander with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police)

McNeilly Source Material

I saw FOP President Malloy on NightTalk last night (guest hosted by Mike Pintek) spin and spin again on the McNeilly settlement. The spin was so bad I thought it might be a good idea to bring everyone back to some primary source material, namely Judge Donetta Ambrose's preliminary injuction. The Judge begins (page 1, line 8-15):

Why are we here? We are here because the Plaintiff, Catherine McNeilly, on October 9th, 2006, sent e-mails to City Council, the Fire and Medic Bureau chiefs, she blind copied the same to her husband and her brother; and in these e-mails and attachment she questioned the appointment of Dennis Regan as Public Safety Director and Dennis Regan's interference with her attempts to discipline a police officer under her command, who was the brother of Regan's housemate.

The Plaintiff attached to her e-mails a disciplinary action report she had filed on this police officer which contained personnel information. She was subsequently demoted for having sent the e-mail -- the attached disciplinary action report to the e-mail.

Malloy last night accused (or at least implied) McNeilly of leaking confidential information to the public. Not so, wrote Judge Ambrose (page 9, line 10-16):

As to the confidentiality matters, Plaintiff made every effort to keep the e-mail and attached DAR confidential. Indeed, she marked the e-mail confidential and disclosed the information only to those individuals who themselves had a duty to keep it confidential. It was someone to whom Plaintiff disclosed the information, not the Plaintiff herself, who revealed the information to the public.

Judge Ambrose wrote that McNeilly had two claims in the case, a 1st Amendment claim and a claim under the Pennsylvania Whistleblower Act (showing his own spinning self, Pintek oddly referred to this as a "so-called Whistleblower" case). The Judge found that if McNielly was acting as a private citizen, and if the issue was and issue of public concern, and if she was acting in good faith, then she had 1st Amendment protections. Judge Ambrose (page 10, line 6-17):

As I said earlier, this is a balancing test. Plaintiff's allegations and evidence of wrongdoing and governmental misconduct and concerns that wrongdoers would be placed in high government positions outweigh the city's concerns the Plaintiff's actions would disrupt the Police Department, which they apparently did not; and that the confidentiality of a disciplinary report was compromised, especially in light of the fact that the e-mail which the Defendants are not complaining about contained the same information as the disciplinary action report, which the Defendants are complaining about. Therefore, the Plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits of her First Amendment claim.

And now onto Pintek's "so-called" Whistleblower protection (page 10, line 18-23):

She also has a claim under the Pennsylvania Whistleblower Law which prohibits public employers from retaliating against an employee who makes a good faith report of wrongdoing to appropriate authorities. For the reasons already stated, I find that the Plaintiff made a good faith report of wrongdoing.

Judge Ambrose finishes up (page 11, line 21 to page 12, line 4):

Finally, I must consider whether the public interest will be served by granting the injunction. The public interest is always served by disclosure of wrongdoing and undue and/or inappropriate influence by public officials in Police Department matters. The chilling effect of discipline and demotion to a police officer who makes a good faith report of what she believes in good faith to be wrongdoing and inappropriate influence in Government never serves the public interest.

There was even a little something about that 120-day rule from Ambrose (page 5, line 10-14):

She consulted the Assistant City Solicitor for assistance in preparing a disciplinary action report. He told her about the 120-day rule and subsequently told her that what she described to him as her approach sounded like a good approach to him.

She consulted the Assistant City Solicitor on this? That I didn't know. I also didn't know that that ACS told her her approach sounded like a good idea.

Something else Pintek and Malloy left out of their collective spins.

Malloy also stated that because the Police Department was so short of funds (for instance, the cars are old, he said) this settlement is a bad bad idea.

Uh, sorry. That's not McNeilly's problem. If the financial situation of the city is such a concern, then perhaps they should have thought of that before retaliating against McNeilly.

City Council OKs McNeilly Settlement in 6 - 2 Vote

Pittsburgh City Council voted 6 to 2 in favor of the $85,000.00 settlement today for Police Commander and whistleblower Catherine McNeilly today.

Jeff Koch and Tonya Payne cast the "no" votes and, as is often the case, Twanda Carlisle was absent.

In a complete reversal from Council's behavior in the $200,000.00 settlement in the Sgt. Mark A. Eggleton/Dirty O matter, the vote was preceded by a lengthy conversation of the settlement and court case. While all discussion was stifled only four short weeks ago regarding Eggleton due to "concerns" about "personnel matters" being brought up in public, or "concerns" about playing lawyer at the council table, or charges of playing politics, this time around Council saw no problem in not only discussing the merits of the case, but also inquiring about whether or not McNeilly had put time in at the warrants office while she was being punished and discussing her vacation days and sick days.

Oh what a difference a difference in the mayors race can make...

Most Council members expressed that their "yes" votes were made reluctantly.

Misstatements and misrepresentations were made by some Council members that McNeilly had gone "public" (she didn't -- someone else leaked to the media) and that she had emailed the mayor and Council as a first step ignoring the fact that she initially only contacted the Mayor with her concerns and then later emailed others when Ravenstahl did not reply to her (charge Doug Shields guilty of implying the latter).

Koch expressed concerns that the settlement "rewarded" someone for breaking the rules -- seemingly oblivious to a judge's determination that McNeilly was a whistleblower, as well as a citizen with First Amendment rights.

Bill Peduto had to remind members that McNeilly was indeed protected by both whistleblower laws and the US Constitution.

The Post-Gazette covers the story here.

UPDATE: I've been meaning to mention that in the last two weeks at least three citizens have gone to Council meetings and spoken out during the public comments section against the stifling of discussion before the vote in the $200,000 settlement in the Eggleton case. Maybe that's why Council decided to have a real discussion of the McNeilly case this time around...

Hahahahahaha! Yeah, right!

Sometimes I crack myself up.

We'll Pay for Mayor Luke's Blunder

Jon Delano's reporting that there may be a settlement deal in the Catherine McNeilly case:

If Commander McNeilly's lawsuit is settled out of court, it would avoid a public trial that could prove embarrassing to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.

The terms of the agreement are not at all final but sources tell KDKA it could include:

McNeilly Reinstated to Commander Position

City to Pay McNeilly a Cash Payment under $100,000

City's Acknowledgment of Whistle Blower Protection

As Delano points out in his story, if the two sides settle then that'll keep Mayor Luke from having to testify under oath about certain things (like the exact circumstances of his being handcuffed by the police at Heinz Field, and so on).

As the Burgh Report blogged lastnight,

There is no way to spin a cash settlement as anything other than complete,
embarassing defeat for the interim Mayor. The city is literally paying for
Ravenstahl's mistakes.

See what happens when you're too young to play in the majors?

UPDATE: I forgot to link to Jon Delano's post. My mistake - it's now been corrected.