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Our Opinion: Luzerne County’s penny-pinching on mail service will pay off

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Yankees bring up RailRiders rookie catcher Gary Sanchez

<p>If a colleague pointed a loaded handgun at you, would you shrug it off and think, what a little goofball?</p><p>Or might you think, does this guy have issues; am I about to be the next victim of workplace violence?</p><p>We&#8217;re talking, of course, about an alleged incident last December, during which a member of the Wilkes-Barre Police Department is said to have pointed a loaded gun at other officers in the roll-call room.</p><p>Mayor Tony George recently <a href="https://www.timesleader.com/news/538315/wb-police-officer-terminated-after-pointing-loaded-gun-at-others-during-roll-call-says-mayor-george" target="_blank">told the Times Leader&#8217;s Opinion Board</a> that he fired the officer on Jan. 8, shortly after taking office, because his predecessor, Tom Leighton, didn&#8217;t.</p><p>Tony, don&#8217;t you know by now that you can&#8217;t do that to a union employee even if you had run a &#8220;law and order&#8221; campaign?</p><p>Like clockwork, the Wilkes-Barre Police Benevolent Association filed a grievance one week after the officer was terminated. The union then filed an unfair-labor-practice complaint with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board.</p><p>George would not name the officer, but Times Leader reporter Jerry Lynott learned through the complaint that he is Kyle Rogers, who was hired in February 2014.</p><p>Rogers told colleagues he was goofing off when he pointed his gun at fellow officers, George said.</p><p>Lynott has been unable to reach Rogers for comment. He also hasn&#8217;t reached Leighton. Union president Sgt. Phil Myers said, &#8220;We feel that (the officer) was terminated without just cause&#8221; and that the full story will come out at a hearing before an arbitrator in June.</p><p>According to George, Rogers had problems before the gun incident, and it was the last straw. &#8220;It wasn&#8217;t just because he drew the gun. It was his fourth discipline in three or four months,&#8221; George said, declining to discuss the previous incidents.</p><p>If true, and if four disciplinary actions &#8211; including the one for supposedly drawing a gun on co-workers &#8211; don&#8217;t justify a firing or a suspension, what does? Then again, there&#8217;s this little deterrent called grievance-centered unions.</p><p>Think about your own workplace. If someone pointed a gun at you, wouldn&#8217;t that alone be grounds for dismissal?</p><p>&#8220;Goofing off&#8221; in a police station would be taking a bite out of another officer&#8217;s doughnut or, worse, eating the whole thing. It&#8217;s certainly not directing a gun at him or her.</p><p>Historically, police rank at the top of the list when it comes to experiencing workplace violence. Facing threats from the public is part of the job; assaults on officers occur all too often. It&#8217;s rare, however, for another officer of the law to be the perpetrator.</p><p>&#8220;At a minimum, there should be zero tolerance for any officer who points a gun at another cop,&#8221; wrote Steve Albrecht, formerly of the San Diego Police Department, for &#8220;Law and Order&#8221; magazine in December 2011. &#8220;These locker room, field or station situations are often rationalized by the employee, using the &#8216;I was just kidding around&#8217; defense. Your response should be to investigate it and make the decision to use appropriate progressive discipline, to send a message that this behavior is dangerous, unsafe and bad for the team.&#8221;</p><p>Based on Mayor George&#8217;s account, Rogers pointed his gun at two officers who said something to him when they were discussing duty assignments for 2016. If so, what did they say that triggered that bizarre reaction from Rogers?</p><p>So now the city is dragged into another labor dispute. It seems the rocky relationship between the city&#8217;s new mayor &#8211; a former city police chief himself &#8211; and the police department has not improved.</p><p>George&#8217;s tenure began with the union warning that if he hired Marcella Lendacky as the city&#8217;s new police chief, morale would plummet. George did it anyway.</p><p>And now this.</p><p>If the incident happened as George described, shouldn&#8217;t the union membership have a problem with an officer pointing a gun at a fellow officer? The Luzerne County District Attorney&#8217;s office said it investigated and determined the incident didn&#8217;t amount to criminal wrongdoing, so it declined to press charges.</p><p>Harveys Lake Police Chief Charles Musial hired Rogers after the officer lost his job in Wilkes-Barre. Musial called the DA&#8217;s office, he said, and was told the case is closed. &#8220;No law was broken,&#8221; Musial said.</p><p>Would that also be the case if, for instance, a student harmlessly pointed a gun at a teacher because he thought it was a hoot?</p><p>There is nothing funny about pointing a gun at anyone.</p><p>Ever.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Zeroing In</p><p>Betty Roccograndi</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Betty Roccograndi, a former Times Leader reporter and award-winning journalist, is a freelance columnist. Reach her by email at broccograndi@gmail.com.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Zeroing In: Drawing gun on someone no laughing matter – in any circumstance