Page 19 - July 2017 Newsletter

2013, based on Appendix N of the Agreement. The City argued that Appendix N had been changed during ne- gotiations after the entry of the 2013 arbitration award and, as a consequence, no longer applied to the situation in which the City caused a delay in the officer’s medical treatment. Nielsen found that the City’s argument failed because the changes to Appendix N did not relate to de- lays in treatment and did not affect the applicability of the rationale of the past arbitration award.
Officers should keep track of the IOD days lost while waiting for approval for surgeries or treatment recom- mended by referral doctors for IOD injuries. officers are entitled to use IOD days for the recovery from an injury on duty as opposed to waiting for the City to complete its sometimes lengthy review of recommended medical treatments.
Equally significant is a June 6, 2017, award issued by Arbitrator Roumell, stemming from three separate griev- ances. The Department had suspended three officers each for 30 days, in November 2014, for allegedly enter- ing a building without permission from the owner and without a warrant. The Department based the suspen- sions on alleged violations of Rules 1, 2 and 22, for an incident that occurred in August 2004. That’s right: 2004. The Department conducted an investigation of the rule violations, but it took more than 14 years before the De- partment took any disciplinary action against the offi-
cers — a point not lost on the arbitrator.
The arbitrator focused his opinion on the fact that
there was no action taken on the recommended suspen- sions for four years between 2010 and 2014. The arbitra- tor reasoned that if suspensions are to have a corrective effect, then the discipline should come within a “reason- able time” after the alleged wrongdoing. In this case, the suspensions did not come within a reasonable time and so did not comply with the contract’s requirement that discipline should be for just cause.
Roumell went on to explain that he did not even have to reach the merits of the underlying grievances (that is, whether or not the City had just cause to discipline based on the rule violations). In other words, the arbitrator did not rule on whether or not the officers actually broke any Department rules. Instead, he found that since the Inter- nal Affairs Division and the Department took so long to issue the discipline, that flawed process alone violated the just cause standard found in the parties’ collective- ly bargained Agreement. The officers did not serve the suspensions. Roumell ordered the City to expunge the suspensions from the officers’ records.
The Department is not known for speedy investiga- tions and, oftentimes, officers must wait years before any determination is made. Sadly, this is not the first time arbitrators have chastised the City for a delay in of- ficers’ due process rights. Nor will it be the last time. d
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