Milwaukee council approves $900K settlement with fired officers
The Milwaukee Common Council on Tuesday approved a $900,000 settlement with seven veteran Milwaukee police officers over their firings by former Police Chief Alfonso Morales after they returned to the department as civilian employees.
Morales' firing of the employees gave them “no opportunity to respond, no recourse and no constitutional due process,” according to the complaint filed in federal court.
“Morales' actions were willful and wanton, and blatantly violated the very written standard operating procedures he held his subordinates to as chief,” the complaint states. “These are not merely allegations, but also the conclusions of an independent investigation released in October of 2020.”
That investigation by the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission found Morales was responsible for the employees being capriciously removed from the department in February 2019. It also implicated former Assistant Chief Raymond Banks, who supervised the bureau where the employees worked.
However, the investigative report also found the employees — Jeffrey Hadrian, Thomas Flock, Efrain Herrera, Richard Lesniewski, Hattie Nichols, Sandra Poniewaz and Jeffrey Watts — were reliable and hard-working and committed no fireable offenses.
The employees had been performing background checks on potential city employees, including verifying applicants' responses, investigating their backgrounds and interviewing references, the complaint states.
Flock and Watts resigned after being told they would otherwise be fired while the rest were “immediately and involuntarily terminated,” the complaint states.
Deputy City Attorney Robin Pederson told a council committee earlier this month that the employees were released “in what appeared to be a goodfaith effort on the part of the chief to do some changing within his own administration.”
However, Pederson said, there had been “some mix-up in terms of the due process rights” of the employees in terms of how they were let go.
The settlement largely reflects attorney's fees and the back pay to which the employees would be entitled, he said.