Tuesday, July 21, 2009

BOFPC votes to terminate Gorski

The Woodstock Board of Fire and Police Commissioners met at 5:00PM in City Hall to conduct a "Aggravation and Mitigation" hearing as the final part of the lengthy hearing into Chief Lowen's efforts to fire Sgt. Steve Gorski.

Gorski's attorney, Tom Loizzo, questioned Chief Lowen about performance evaluations, commendations and reprimands. The chief seemed unfamiliar with Gorski's complete personnel file, much of it compiled before he came to Woodstock. There were only two reprimands in the file, in May 1999. One of them was for not meeting his monthly ticket quota.

All of Gorski's performance evaluations were above standard, including two that were 4.277 and 4.33 on a 5.0 scale. But all the good stuff was before the period when the Chief asserted that Gorski's problems began.

Loizzo also asked Chief Lowen what proof he had that Steve had taken any drugs not prescribed by a licensed physician. The chief's answer was "None."

After hearing from both sides, the Board went into Executive Session to discuss what they'd heard and, when they came back into Open Session at 6:08PM, the Board's attorney proposed a Motion to terminate Steve, which was made and seconded. The three commissioners each voted "Yes", and that was that.

The Board's attorney announced that the Findings & Decision of the Board would be written in a few weeks.

My opinion? There is plenty of room for a successful appeal in this case. The Board decided in Gorski's favor in February 2008. Nothing has changed since then, except the Chief was able to get the Board to accept an amended complaint that included Judge McIntyre's ruling, and then the Chief, through his attorney, Dave McArdle, was able to further able to get the Board to accept the rules and regulations of the Woodstock Police Department, which should have been introduced during the original hearing.

I don't understand why Judge McIntyre's Decision was important to the Board. It was the Board that heard all the original testimony - first-hand. All Judge McIntyre did was read about it. Her Decision went far beyond the scope of the question asked of her in the chief's appeal.

I'm sure there will be more to come in this case.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If the Sgt was injured on the job, he deserves to be taken care of medically (Workmans' Comp, Disability, etc). However, if he returned to work and abused drugs (prescripts or otherwise) while on the job, he violated the law of which he's to uphold and deserves to be fired.
Can it be any simpler than that?
And since there maybe an "opening" now on the WPD, why dont you Gus apply for it and actually do something instead of b$tch'n about traffic and parking violators! Punk.

Unknown said...

Because he can't. He is not already a certified police officer and is too old. Unlike "the good old days" where guys like Gus would just strap on a badge and gun, there are now certain standards that you must meet. Gus does not meet those standards. Not even close!!!