Wasteful Spending in Clermont PD

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...19,full.column


Lauren Ritchie
COMMENTARY
September 30, 2012

Clermont City Council members by now ought to recognize how foolishly they've acted with their police department and how much taxpayer money they are squandering trying vainly to appease a small group of malcontents.

Council members need to display basic leadership and put a stop to it.

What three council members have done is to allow themselves to be steered by continual complaints from a handful of fired former police officers, backed by a community activist whose self-proclaimed mission is to run off corrupt cops.

Lauren Ritchie


The result is a chaotic mess: police Chief Steve Graham is suspended with pay until his resignation takes effect Oct. 31, and his second-in-command, Capt. Jon Johnson, also sits home with pay until Clermont conducts an expensive and unnecessary investigation into the department.

The first clue that council members are unwisely kowtowing to complainers without credibility came in the form of a report from the Lake County Sheriff's Office on Sept. 13.

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Activist Charlene Forth had requested that Clermont reopen an internal investigation to look into new allegations against a lieutenant who had already been scolded in the spring for providing incorrect dates on his application for employment.

The Sheriff's Office conducted the investigation to ensure that it was unbiased, and the result was hardly a shock: Forth's complaints were unfounded.

An examination of the complaint by any fair-minded adult could have resolved the issue in 20 minutes and put the lieutenant back to work that afternoon.

But, no. We can't have the department's critics showing up at another council meeting and claiming corruption in public again! (They've aired their unjustified complaints at fully half the council's meetings since Nov. 29, 2011. This tactic has proved as effective with council members as it has embarrassing to them.)

So instead, Clermont taxpayers got to shell out $6,500 for Lt. Jim Loughnan to sit home for six weeks and then paid another $375 to a labor lawyer to make sure it was OK to let an officer exonerated of wrongdoing come back to work. The Sheriff's Office spent about $500, for a total of $7,375. All for nothing.

As of last week, Graham and Johnson were still suspended for, well, something. Neither has ever been accused of any specific wrongdoing. So far, the city has spent $25,687 in paying them to sit home and to increase the salaries of two other officers to take over for them.

Now we're up to $33,032.

Council members are supposed to be hiring a firm to do a management study of the police department. They decided July 30 to engage a consultant but so far haven't. Throw in another $10,000 to $15,000 for this one. This could get to be real money in a minute or two.

In the interim, city officials have begun providing Forth a degree of access to the operations of the police department that is inappropriate, and they don't want the public to know how desperately they're trying to placate her and her group.

Consider this: Interim Chief Chuck Broadway met with Forth at least five times in the seven weeks he's been chief. The purpose of the two meetings last week, which also involved other officers, "were to build a positive rapport and working relationship between the Clermont Police Department and the community," Broadway wrote in a email.

Really? Questioned about the explanation, Broadway acknowledged that Tuesday's meeting with Forth and Officer James Rooney really was about the officer's future at the department.

It probably is more accurate to say whether the officer has a future. Rooney was fired in 2005 and charged with a felony for forging a doctor's note to account for sick time. The charge was dropped when his doctor refused to testify, and Rooney eventually was reinstated. He promptly sued the city and lost.

Broadway said he allowed Forth to participate in the meeting with Rooney because she asked. Wow! What a useful thing for journalists and other citizens to know! One can attend any internal meeting at the Clermont Police Department!

Meanwhile, as if all this unnecessary drama isn't disturbing enough, Clermont councilman Rick VanWagner is slated to speak Oct. 15 at a private breakfast on the topic of the turmoil in the police department and death threats he supposedly received in connection with the mess.

Judy Proli, the organizer of what she calls a "Social Breakfast" at Summit Greens, sent this note on Sept. 8 to the 90 or so guests: "After spending over an hour on the phone talking with VanWagner, I felt that the information he gave me should be shared with all of you. I must say that what he revealed to me left me in shock.

"It's hard to believe that in a small city like Clermont you would hear that death threats have been made against him so now he has police protection."

Asked to provide specifics of the threats, VanWagner said in an email, "I'm not sure what you are talking about, but I have never received death threats from anyone."

Confronted with Proli's email, VanWagner did not respond. Broadway said the council member never reported any threats to police and that the department is not providing security for him.

Just what Clermont needs. A council member who is supposed to be in a leadership position stirring the pot behind the scenes.

But council members have the ability to fix it. Now, they need to find the courage. It is time they demanded at least specifics of the "corruption" this group claims has infected both the department and the suspended chief.

Forth said several times in an interview last week that "there are no specifics," just circumstances she believes are suspicious and should be investigated. She would not say what they are.

Even a letter from the city notifying Graham and Johnson of their suspension acknowledges there is no pending discipline and that the review of department is "to dispel the accusations and rumors that have created the perception of a problem without any supporting facts."

So it's fair for council members to help blacken the reputations of two professionals without a single specific allegation? That's not how we usually do things here in America.

Council members who pushed for this suspension and review — VanWagner, Ray Goodgame and Jack Hogan — should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

They can — and should — step up and make this situation right.

Lritchie@tribune.com Her blog is online at http://www.orlandosentinel.com/laurenonlake

Copyright © 2012, Orlando Sentinel

Council members who pushed for this suspension and review — VanWagner, Ray Goodgame and Jack Hogan

If the towns people would get rid of these 3 and put their Chief back to doing exactly what he was hired to do and has been doing, then clermont can get back on its feet again. This is proof a few whinning corrupt cops and 3 elected idiots will and continue to cost the city alot of money for nothing. What a joke

Lauren Richie is a TOOL. That "woman" is in the back pocket of half of the "good ol' boys" of Lake County and that is 100% the truth. Anything she writes is for her personal agenda.