By Jim Cline and Sarah Derry
In Seattle Police Dispatchers’ Guild, Arbitrator Jeff Minckler determined that although the Seattle police department lacked just cause to discipline a dispatcher for a call, the other call over which he was disciplined was sufficient to uphold the punishment.
The dispatcher was docked five days’ pay for his handling of three calls over two days in December, 2013. The Guild, represented by Cline & Casillas attorney Mitch Riese, argued that the Seattle Police Department lacked just cause for disciplining him over two of those calls. With respect to one call, the dispatcher admitted “[t]here are some ways I could have handled that call better…I could have modulated my tone differently….” In the second call, which concerned a bank robbery, the dispatcher ended the call before police officers had arrived.
The Arbitrator focused his analysis on whether the dispatcher violated clear policies. Considering the first call, Arbitrator Minckler determined that the dispatcher violated a policy to use “appropriate interview techniques.” But regarding the bank robbery, the arbitrator found that the policies did not necessarily require that the dispatcher stay on the line because the robbery was not “dynamically changing.” The Employer presented evidence that bank robberies are often dynamically changing, but when asked about this particular call, multiple witnesses testified that this particular call did not pose such a situation.
Despite the lack of Just Cause to discipline the dispatcher over the bank robbery call, the Arbitrator found that the other two calls, one of which the Guild did not dispute, were alone sufficient to warrant discipline.
This case involved the frequently challenging question of what happens when an arbitrator sustains some but not all of the charges. More often than not in a suspension case, failure to uphold all the charges would result in at least some reduction in the period of suspension
