OFFICER’S TERMINATION
OVERTURNED
A hearing officer
recently concluded that Police Officer Brian Adair was guilty of one
thing and one thing only – bad timing!! Adair was a 15-year veteran of
the city of Orange Police Department when he was terminated for
allegedly tipping off a vendor of fake watches about his department’s
investigation and the vendor’s pending arrest. Following a three-day
hearing, at which he was represented by attorney Michael Schwartz of
Silver, Hadden & Silver, Adair was fully exonerated of having
committed any misconduct and ordered reinstated with full back pay and
benefits.
Adair had been assigned
to the department’s substation at "The Block", a large,
outdoor mall/entertainment complex within the city, for about two years.
During that time, Adair became acquainted with many of the patrons and
vendors, including a merchant who sold watches from one of the
"push carts" that populated the outdoor mall. Throughout Adair’s
tenure at "The Block", it was common knowledge among officers
that the merchant sold "fake" watches. Another officer had
previously notified his supervisors about the fake watches. They told
him "not to rock the boat". Adair would, however, occasionally
tell the vendor to get rid of the knock-off watches when he noticed that
the inventory of fake timepieces was high.
On January 25, 2001, at
about 2:00 p.m., Adair and his partner conducted their routine patrol of
the mall. During that patrol, Adair noticed an abundance of counterfeit
merchandise on the watch cart. Adair and his partner returned to the
substation around 2:30 p.m. Unbeknownst to Adair, the new supervisor of
"The Block" substation had begun an investigation of the watch
vendor. At about 2:00 p.m. on that same date, the supervisor held a
closed-door meeting with a fellow supervisor, during which they
discussed the illegal sale of "fake" watches and their plan to
arrest the watch vendor the following week. Adair was not included in
that meeting and was unaware that an investigation had been started. At
about 2:45 p.m., Adair left the substation and notified the watch
merchant to get rid of the fake watches on his cart.
Two days later, the
supervisor arrived at "The Block" and noticed that the watch
vendor had rid the cart of its counterfeit merchandise. Alarmed that the
vendor had been tipped off, the supervisor began an investigation and
reviewed the mall’s surveillance video of that area. He noticed that
at about the same time as the closed-door meeting on January 25th, the
video shows Adair speaking briefly with the watch vendor and,
thereafter, the watch vendor immediately begins unloading the
counterfeit goods.
The department was
convinced, even before talking to Adair, that he must have tipped off
the vendor. The department’s investigation immediately focused on
proving Adair guilty. As the hearing officer ultimately determined,
"certain assumptions were accepted as fact at the outset…and no
serious investigative effort was devoted to providing support for one of
the most significant issues of the investigation: whether Adair knew or
learned about the investigation and the planned arrest prior to his
conversation with the watch vendor." For his part, Adair never
denied his conversation with the vendor, but did deny any knowledge of
the pending investigation or the planned arrest.
The department leapt to
the conclusion that Adair must have overheard the closed-door meeting
and, for reasons unknown, decided to tip off the merchant about the
investigation and his pending arrest. The investigators, however, failed
to interview the participants in the closed-door meeting. They also did
not thoroughly interview two other people who were in the substation
during the closed-door meeting. Those two individuals testified they
were unaware of the closed-door meeting, much less what was discussed.
The two supervisors who spearheaded the complaint against Adair
contradicted one another to the point where they could not even agree on
who was present during the closed-door conference. Although both
testified they discussed a plan to arrest the watch vendor, neither
person bothered to document that fact in their memos of the meeting.
Attorney Schwartz
exploited the conflicting testimony, took advantage of the generally
inept investigation, and highlighted the lack of significant evidence
showing that Adair knew about the closed-door meeting, let alone the
plan to arrest the vendor. After three days of hearing, the hearing
officer determined that "the city failed to prove by a
preponderance of the evidence that Adair learned of the investigation of
the watch vendor or of any plan of the department to arrest him…"
The hearing officer noted Adair’s "outstanding reputation for
honesty" and concluded that the evidence did not sustain the
charges and that "termination of Adair’s employment was not
warranted." A vindicated and very happy Brian Adair was awarded
full back pay plus benefits.
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