CLPEX Chat Board

With all due respect,

Two sides in a dispute may each tell the truth as they see it to a disinterested third party, and the third party would never even realize the two sides had represented the same incident, so different would the two truths be. I think that is the case with most divorces. It is also the case with many firings. I'm sorry your career has gone down in flames and the truth, as you present it, would seem to imply some severe and sinister animosity against you by other officers at your level and up your chain of command. But I suspect their story, their truth, would paint a picture of an entirely different scenario from the one you have given.

I wonder if your case has made it into the local press, and if you would care to post a link to the story here?

Tazman wrote:With all due respect,

Two sides in a dispute may each tell the truth as they see it to a disinterested third party, and the third party would never even realize the two sides had represented the same incident, so different would the two truths be. I think that is the case with most divorces. It is also the case with many firings. I'm sorry your career has gone down in flames and the truth, as you present it, would seem to imply some severe and sinister animosity against you by other officers at your level and up your chain of command. But I suspect their story, their truth, would paint a picture of an entirely different scenario from the one you have given.

I wonder if your case has made it into the local press, and if you would care to post a link to the story here?

Tazman... I appreciate your comment. However, I would not be doing myself any justice by asking for opinions and not including the whole story as it was presented. The story I have told in this post is what happened. Although I told it from my point of view, all of the facts are presented. All I can ask for is honest opinions based on what is in my post. It is expected that after reading the story that one would assume, "There has to be more to this story", but honestly, there isn't.

As far as the news, they did run a segment, but it had absolutely no information other than, officer was fired for alleged policy violations.

<<Of course I can never work in Law Enforcement ever again unless I can clear my name in my upcoming Civil Service hearing.>>

Did you notice Minnesota state lab has an opening? =) I am not sure that we would (given this story and your version of the facts) necessarily hold this against an applicant. I have seen too often what you describe cause terrible conflict at agencies and bad blood (if the person stays through it all).

I would be interested in discussing more detail offline, but if you consider yourself a skilled examiner (and could pass a sufficiently difficult comparison examination as part of an interview process), don't write off your career yet. You might find that the right environment, the right co-workers, and sufficiently clear policies might be what you want.

Anyway, consider it....

g.

glenn.langenburg@state.mn.us

Sorry to hear about the outcome.

I would think that you have a decent case at least to get your job back as a police officer. You should hire a Quality Manager, Program Manager, or Latent Section supervisor who has worked at an ASCLD/LAB ISO lab to explain to the board why exactly those labs have all of their checks and balances in place. It is because all latents and latent examiners are not created equal. Sometimes latents are bad or sometimes the examiner just does not see it. Some places actually require a ‘vision’ test before you are hired or accepted for a class, since some people just don’t have a very good eye for it…it is not their fault, it just is what it is (not saying your have a bad eye). I also think it is a requirement that you have a yearly proficiency test to make sure you are working within the lab guidelines.
At worst, this should have resulted in a CAR which is just a corrective action that requires a plan to fix the problem. In this case, you probably would have had to do a little retraining and then had a period of supervised casework, kind of like what you went through when you started.
The Destroying the Evidence claim is ridiculous. If it was technically evidence it should have a chain of custody. At worst it would be case documentation, but your lab does not seem to be too into policy and procedures so I cant see how they could fault you for that when there are probably other issues where they do it.
Sounds like they need to make the policies first, before they can punish people for not following them:)
Good luck with it though. Let us know how it turns out.
pg