By Thomas J. Prohaska
The Buffalo News
LOCKPORT, N.Y. — A former Niagara County Jail corrections officer has taken the county to arbitration, seeking 20 months’ worth of back pay he says he is owed after allegedly being fired without a hearing.
Derrick Brevard said he thinks the fact that he is black may have played a role in the contrast between his ouster on charges of threatening a superior and the treatment received by three white officers who were arrested on sex charges.
“I don’t want to play the race card. I wanted to use the law as my basis,” said Brevard, who was fired Dec. 9, 2005, in a move he says violated his union contract and state law.
The normal procedure in a disciplinary case is for the offender to be suspended without pay for 30 days, the maximum allowed by state law, followed by a resumption of payments until the matter is settled, even if the accused is not allowed to return to work.
But Brevard said his pay was cut off when he was dismissed and hasn’t resumed.
Sheriff Thomas A. Beilein and county Human Resources Director Peter P. Lopes declined to comment on the case, citing confidentiality in personnel matters. Lopes did confirm that an arbitration hearing is to be held in October.
Brevard said he started work at the jail in 1991 after graduating from Niagara University.
He was accused in the December 2005 notice of making threats against Capt. Kevin Payne and Maj. John Saxton during an Oct. 4, 2005, phone call with Sgt. Duane Vendetta to discuss leave time.
“The nature of the threats involved garnishing [sic] a weapon and ‘shooting the place up’ as well as ‘waiting outside in the parking lot and picking them off one by one,’ ” the notice said. Brevard denied all charges.
“They wrote me up on this guy’s word,” he said.
He said he contacted the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which he said dropped the case because he couldn’t prove race was a factor in the firing. He said the Sheriff’s Office submitted a denial of that allegation.
Brevard said that the other officers , all of whom were arrested on charges of sex crimes, were suspended with pay.
In June 2006, jail guard Roger L. Hueber was sentenced to 1xto four years in state prison for having a series of sexual relationships with teenage girls. He was paid for 10 months after his arrest and fired after his plea was entered.
Deputy Hugh C. Messer Jr., who had sexual contact with a high school student in February 2006, was suspended with pay for 14 months before pleading guilty to attempted official misconduct. He resigned as part of the plea deal and avoided jail time in a sentencing Friday.
Deputy Donald H. Piedmont pleaded guilty to minor nonsexual charges in May 2002 after a hung jury in his trial on charges that he forced a woman to perform sex acts at gunpoint. He was suspended with pay but retired six weeks after his arrest in March 2001.
Brevard provided The Buffalo News with a letter signed by Beilein on Jan. 11, 2006, which said that Brevard was terminated as of Jan. 8, 2006, “as a result of your disciplinary hearing held on Dec. 9, 2005.”
Yet when Brevard sought a transcript of that hearing, he received a letter April 6, 2006, from county personnel technician Shelley Pfeil, saying there was no record of a hearing.
A subsequent Freedom of Information Act request for records in the case resulted in a letter from Chief Deputy John T. Taylor on June 7, 2006, saying the department had no transcript of a hearing.
The Deputy Sheriffs’ Association contract says an officer accused of misconduct must have a chance to review the charges before disciplinary action is imposed and have 10 days to respond. Brevard said that procedure wasn’t followed.
Copyright 2007 The Buffalo News