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The leaders of the Wilkes-Barre Police Benevolent Association have sued the city, alleging recent suspensions and the firing of the union’s vice president were in retaliation for their attempts to bring to light the mismanagement of the department and a call for an investigation of the chief.
The suit filed in federal court Jan. 5 compiled complaints raised by Sgt. Phil Myers and former patrol officer Dan Duffy in their leadership roles with the PBA as far back as nearly three years ago that they alleged were either ignored or turned against them in the form of unjustified discipline.
In addition to the city, Mayor Tony George, Police Chief Marcella Lendacky and Commander Ronald Foy were named as defendants.
Myers and Duffy each asked for in excess of $100,000 for claims their constitutional rights of free speech and association were violated by the adverse employment actions that cost them not only economically in pay and pension benefits, but also emotional and physical distress and loss of reputation.
Myers, PBA president, was to begin an unpaid suspension Wednesday until Feb. 1, according to the suit. He had been suspended last year after an in-house investigation into a post on the PBA’s Facebook page. Duffy, former chief of the Scranton Police Department, was fired in October for an alleged threat contained in an email sent to the mayor in defense of a union member.
Myers had previously said he suspected he, too, would be fired after being notified of a Loudermill hearing in December at which time he would have the opportunity to present his case to the administration.
The mayor, a former police chief himself, said Wednesday that Myers and other PBA members chose not to attend the hearings.
“Every Loudermill given in the last three months they waived,” George said.
That’s their decision, the mayor added. “They can do that but then you only get one side,” he said.
“It’s like pleading the Fifth,” George said of the union members invoking their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
‘Corrected reports’
George defended Lendacky against the allegations raised in the suit that she altered police reports to reflect lesser offenses and to give the false impression that crime was decreasing.
“What she did, she corrected the reports,” the mayor said. He explained that in cases were copper pipes were removed from a vacant house, officers reported it as a burglary. But the chief corrected it to theft because the crimes code states a burglary can occur only when a structure is occupied, the mayor noted.
“It wasn’t altering. It was correcting,” George said.
Even though neither the administration nor city council agreed to investigate the chief, they approved hiring the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association for about $26,000 to conduct a review of the police force.
That review, which began late last year, is expected to take 10 weeks. Once its finished, it will provide recommendations on resolving the discord between the union and administration.
