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.
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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.

Some background

To this story.

Pittsburgh's police internal affairs office is investigating an incident in which a commander showed up at an accident scene involving a friend and drove her home.

Chief Nate Harper said the Office of Municipal Investigations is looking into the conduct of Cmdr. RaShall Brackney, commander of the East Liberty station, who arrived at the scene of a crash in the 3600 block of Liberty Avenue early Sunday after a friend of hers crashed into three parked cars.

Notice the name? Rashall Brackney. The same Rashall Brackney that our old friend Dennis Regan went ballistic over.

Documents in the case also shed light on another incident we first brought to light: Regan's interceding on behalf of a Southside tire business cited for violations by another police commander, Rashall Brackney.

Regan went to see Brackney at the Southside zone station and found that she wasn't there but according to the sworn statements from the officers who were there Regan told them to give Brackney a message: "(expletive) rolls down hill, and she will be in the (expletive)."

I'm pretty sure the "expletive" in those sentences is the word "shit" but I could be wrong.

I'm not saying that the two incidents are connected. Without any evidence it would be wrong to assume such a connection - post hoc ergo propter hoc. Someone, though, should maybe think about asking the question as to whether they are.

I'm just saying.

If anything it only underscores what the formerly long-haired one said a while back:

Do you ever feel like Pittsburgh is a little too much like a small town? I mean, you go to a bar, say, and meet someone who's just your type ... until you find out they work with your ex.

Yep, that's Pittsburgh.

Fireworks at Pittsburgh City Council

You can watch the replay at 7:00 PM tonight on the City Channel if you missed today's Pittsburgh City Council meeting (or if, like me, you tuned in during the middle of it because you were too busy negotiating with some guy to clean your sidewalk of snow).

The council gave tentative approval today to payout $200,000.00 because Sgt. Mark A. Eggleton beat up a guy while working off duty at the Dirty O.

If you recall the case, Eggleton was found by the City to have acted inappropriately and was fired by then Police Chief, Dom Costa, but he was reinstated by then Operations Director, Dennis Regan, who at the time had been nominated by Interim Mayor Luke Ravenstahl as Pittsburgh's Public Safety Director. Regan gave Eggleton a mere 5-day suspension and Eggleton remains on the force to this day despite Acting City Solicitor George Specter determined in January that Regan did not have the authority to change Costa’s punishment.

Notice all the "thens," "interims," and "acting" in that last paragraph?

As everyone knows by now, Regan never actually became Pittsburgh's Public Safety Director because, first Councilman Bill Peduto pointed out that he had not one ounce of experience (which was largely ignored at first) and then Police Cmdr. -- and whistleblower -- Catherine McNeilly accused Regan of inappropriately interfering in past police discipline matters (and that's a whole other lawsuit).

But, back to the Council meeting.

When I came in, Bill Peduto was questioning why Eggleton was still on the force and why Pittsburgh no longer had any cost recovery program to, well, recover the costs of just such lawsuits.

It was at that moment that Chief Ravenstahl Water Carrier, Jim Motznik, interrupted to claim that no comments could be made about Eggleton because that was a "personnel matter" and that no comments could be made about any cost recovery program because that wasn't in the bill. He also chimed in with the Ravenstahl Administration's favorite cry that it was politics saying, “This isn’t an opportunity to run for mayor in the city of Pittsburgh.”

Council President Doug Shields and Councilman Len Bodack echoed the "personnel matter" concerns with Shields saying, "It's not good public policy to play lawyer at the council table regarding settlements."

Apparently any real discussion of these very real matters of punishing, or not punishing, rogue cops and being then liable for their actions are supposed to only be had behind closed doors in Executive Sessions.

The Burgh Report calls it a "cover-up" and Agent Ska at The Ideas Bucket has her own satirical take on it here

Since we, the public, will be paying for the settlement, I say that we, the public, have a right to know why an apparent loose cannon like Eggleton is still on the force. I mean, does anyone even know if Eggleton is still allowed to work off duty at the City's risk?

Interim Mayor Ravenstahl is saying that he has a new plan for off duty officers that will be implemented by April that "could include a fee" (he shelved a plan to charge businesses $4 or $5 an hour back in November).

"Could"?

Only "could"?

Yeah, it's definitely better for we, the public, to pay for these things out of our pockets than for our Interim Mayor to actually have to negotiate with businesses, like, oh, certain sports teams, or to risk pissing off any buddies in the police union before an election.

You can bet that this is one viewer who will be watching the Council meeting rerum at 7:00.

(The Post-Gazette covers this story here and the Tribune-Review here.)

UPDATE: The Admiral has a great post on this subject, although I totally disagree with his contention that Peduto should run in November as an Independent.

Geez, The Admiral is Fast.

Rich Lord's piece on the $200 grand settlement:

The federal lawsuit was filed by Deven W. Werling of Largo, Fla., who said he was roughed up by Sgt. Mark A. Eggleton at the Original Hot Dog Shop in Oakland in 2004. The city's Office of Municipal Investigations found that Sgt. Eggleton contradicted himself under oath, and he was fired.

Presumably the P-G posted it on the web sometime around midnight. According to the time stamp on his blog, The Admiral had this posted about an hour later.

His initial posting on the event in question is here.

There is one paragraph of Lord's piece that screams out to be reprinted here. Here's the set up. There was a fight at the Original Hot Dog stand in late August, 2004. Werling and a couple of friends were there but not involved in the fight. Two officers, being paid "under the table" were doing security work for the O cleared the area with a lot of pepper spray. Werling made some comments that got back to Sgt Eggleton. He approached Mr Werling (after the fight had been cleared) and the two had a few words. Eggleton ordered Werling to leave the O and Werling refused. And (according to The Admiral) this happened:

Sgt. Eggleton swept the food off of Mr. Werling's table, and then, according to an expert witness who worked on the case, "… pulled him out of his seat, threw him against a window, thrust a baton across his throat until he almost passed out, threw him against a cooler, and punched him in the mid-section".

This lead to an arrest outside etc etc etc. The City found that Eggleton had lied under oath and fired him. Rich Lord:

In October, the dismissal was reduced to a five-day suspension by then-Operations Director Dennis Regan. Mr. Eggleton continues to work as a sergeant.

Dennis Regan. And so Sgt Eggleton, after working under the table (and thus paying no taxes on that money), assaults someone who wasn't committing a crime, and lies about it in a court of law (Lord wrote "contradicted himself under oath"), and gets fired for it, he's the guy who gets reinstated by the same guy who was pulling strings to get his girlfriend's brother a promotion.

So Regan's at the heart of the McNeilly case (with a possible settlement costing the city something around $85,000) and he's at least attached to this case (with a possible settlement costing the city $200,000). Looks like Mayor Luke's abortive choice of Public Safety Director is going to cost The City of Pittsburgh somewhere around $300,000.

Can someone please ask Mayor Luke to confirm that Dennis Regan's sweaty paws are no where near his campaign - now that he's been exhiled from City Hall?

The Thing With Two Heads

I guess when you have a mayor who only has two and a half years of government experience, it makes sense to have a public safety director whose closest experience in that field was as the late Bob O'Connor's driver (public safety, traffic safety, it's all the same...).

In case you haven't heard, Director of Operations Dennis Regan has been nominated by Mayor Ravenstahl to take on the position of Pittsburgh's Public Safety Director in addition to his current title.

As the Tribune-Review notes:

Regan is viewed by some as a peculiar choice for public safety director.

He has no experience in public safety or emergency management. The last two public safety/operations directors -- Robert Kennedy and Sal Sirabella, both under then-Mayor Tom Murphy -- had experience in managing public safety departments. Kennedy, who left as public safety director in July 2005, was a veteran paramedic and EMS chief. Sirabella had been Allegheny County chief clerk and administrator.

As Pittsburgh City Councilman Bill Peduto said in the Post-Gazette:

The director "should be someone who has dedicated their lives to public safety," Mr. Peduto said, mentioning Fire Chief Mike Huss as a good candidate. "I cannot find any city in America with someone as its [safety] director who has no experience."

[snip]

Mr. Peduto contrasted that resume with public safety directors of other cities, including Cleveland's Martin Flask and St. Louis' Sam Simon, former police chiefs; Columbus' Mitchell J. Brown, who rose through the ranks of paramedics; Indianapolis' Earl S. Morgan, whose background is with the Army and in counterterrorism; and Denver's Alvin J. LaCabe Jr., a police officer turned prosecutor turned director.

The P-G also quotes Yarone Zober on the appointment:

In an e-mail sent to council Monday afternoon, Chief of Staff Yarone Zober called the nomination "simply an administrative matter" since Mr. Regan already oversees all departments.

Well, cool! Let's see what else we can make him director of since he already knows everything about everything.

Seriously, as if there weren't already questions being raised about Dennis Regan and what power he already has...

Those questions started back at least as long ago as the Thursday Morning Massacre and haven't exactly let up.

You can see questions being asked about who is really in charge all over the 'Burg Blogosphere (with Jim Ferlo's name also being thrown into the mix):

"DENNIS REGAN PROMOTED TO KING OF THE WORLD
Well Not Quite, But A MacYipper Questions His Qualifications For Pub. Safety Director"

and

"WHO'S IN CHARGE IN THE 'BURGH?
MacYapper E-Mailbagger Curious About Just Who's Running Things"
at MacYapper

"With today's appointment of Yarone Zober to the URA board, the Ferlo household now holds 40% of the votes on that board. Might as well hold board meetings in the kitchen." at The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat

"FIRST PICTURES: DENNIS REGAN ORCHESTRATES PURGE OF MAYORAL OFFICE DISSIDENTS " at The Carbolic Smoke Ball

FIRST TOPIC EVERY MORNING AT MAYOR O'CONNOR'S DAILY BRIEFING
"THERE, THERE, DENNIS -- JUST TELL ME WHO'S IN YOUR WAY TODAY, AND WE'LL TAKE CARE OF IT." atThe Carbolic Smoke Ball

As well as in the comments section of this blog, Progress Pittsburgh blog, and others.

Having Regan add the title of public safety director -- a job that he seemingly isn't qualified for -- isn't going to help this one bit.

Thursday Morning Massacre: The Movie

With discussion of the Thursday Morning Massacre taking on a cinematic bent -- and because we like flogging a dead horse -- we're certain that it won't be long until the Pittsburgh Film Office starts lobbying for the inevitable movie to be made here in the Burgh.

Wanting to keep in tune with Pittsburgh's new hi-tech rep, we've turned to myheritage.com's face recognition technology to cast the film.

Just keep in mind: My Heritage is the same website that claimed that Wendy Bell looks like Pamela Lee Anderson and that I look like Keira Knightley with my glasses off and Samuel L. Jackson with my glasses on.

(I'm only the messenger! Do not try this at home! Your results may vary!)

Thursday Morning Massacre: The Movie (as cast by myheritage.com)

Starring:

Josh Hartnett as
Mayor Bob O'Connor
And:

Meatloaf as Dennis Regan	John Cage as George Specter	Harold Ramis as Scott Kunka
Julia Roberts as B.J. Leber	Patricia Arquette as Susan Malie	Albert Finney as Paul Leger

With:

Dick Skrinjar as
himself

Jean-Paul Belmondo as Jim Ferlo	Colin Farrell as Yarone Zober
Sharon Stone as Marlene Cassidy	Adam Carolla as Fr. Terry O'Connor	David Letterman as Jon Delano
Tom Hanks as Doug Shields	David Hasselhoff as Jim Motznik	Dean Cain as Luke Ravenstahl

And:

Zach Braff as Bill Peduto	Missy Elliott as Tonya Payne	Beyonce Knowles as Twanda Carlisle
Jim Carrey as Len Bodak	Gael Garcia Bernal as Dan Deasy	Brad Pitt as Jeff Koch