The Gilroy Police Officer’s Association has discovered new
information about the city’s next police chief, and the union wants
the interim city administrator to take a good look at it before the
city council formally approves hiring the chief.
The Gilroy Police Officer’s Association has discovered new information about the city’s next police chief, and the union wants the interim city administrator to take a good look at it before the city council formally approves hiring the chief.
The possibility of formally hiring a new chief and then learning something damning could put the city in legal trouble, but POA President Frank Bozzo declined to elaborate on the type of information he planned to forward to interim City Administrator Anna Jatczak. The dilemma does not mean the POA is withdrawing its approval of Denise Turner, a chief with a 26-year career at the King County Sheriff’s Office, which covers Seattle, he said.
“Stuff has come up, but it hasn’t changed our position at this time,” Bozzo said.
Bozzo was referring to a letter former POA President Jim Callahan sent to the city council Dec. 10 weighing the pros and cons of Turner and the two other finalists at the time: Morgan Hill Police Commander Joe Sampson and San Jose Police Department Deputy Chief Donald Anders. While the letter conveyed the POA’s approval of Anders and Turner, but not Sampson, Callahan also cautioned that the officers in the King County POA had not responded.
“My e-mails to their POA officers have not yet been returned,” Callahan wrote. “I would guess that (Turner’s) Technical Services Division is not the hot-bed of POA/Management issues.”
Councilman Perry Woodward surmised that negative responses to these e-mails must have gotten back to Callahan. For this reason, Woodward said he would not be opposed to holding another closed session meeting on the said information so that it can remain confidential, as Bozzo intends.
Personnel matters justify closed session meetings, but if Bozzo were to send the information to all council members, it would become public record. Jatczak, however, can deliver the information confidentially to the full council in a closed session.
Mayor Al Pinheiro said he expects Jatczak to digest the information and then make a decision as to whether it deserves a closed session that only Pinheiro can call for under the city charter.
“If there’s a question on (Jatczak’s) mind that needs to go to council, I would expect that she would do that,” Pinheiro said. “I’m sure she is not going to sit on that without explaining it to the council.”
Jatczak said she could not comment on the matter Thursday afternoon because she had not received anything from the POA. Any new information will be incorporated into Turner’s ongoing background check, drug test and psychological and medical evaluations. If she passes everything, and Pinheiro decides not to hold a closed session before Jan. 22, the council could vote formally to approve Turner’s hiring then. In a controversial move, the council voted 4-3 Dec. 17 to informally approve Turner, but that decision was not legally binding, and Pinheiro said he was open to a vote some time after Jan. 22: “There is nothing magic about Jan. 22.”
Turner did not return messages for comment Thursday.
Woodward said he wanted all the information he could get because firing someone after such an exhaustive interview process is no easy chore.
“It seems to me that we need to go back into closed session to discuss this information as a personnel matter before any decision is made,” said Woodward, adding that former Gilroy Police Department Chief Roy Sumisaki was investigated by the district attorney, and the city had to pay him $80,000 so he would resign.
“If we’re going to have Turner come down here only to discover that she is not suitable, we may be exposing the city to liability,” Woodward said.
