Police chief, sergeant investigated
Results of probe into alleged racist incidents may be kept from public
NEW HANOVER >> The township has hired a law firm to investigate published allegations of racist comments and alleged abusive management practices by Police Chief Kevin McKeon and Sgt. William Moyer, officials have confirmed.
But the public may never know what the investigation uncovers because it is subject to attorney-client privilege, according to Supervisors’ Chairman Charles D. Garner Jr.
Garner, who serves as municipal solicitor for the boroughs of Pottstown and Phoenixville, as well as the townships of Lower Pottsgrove and Upper Pottsgrove, among other municipal posts, confirmed his understanding of the township’s position last week.
He further confirmed that because the investigation is ultimately a personnel matter, it is his understanding that it is unlikely materials from the investigation can be revealed through the Right to Know law.
Township Manager Jamie
Gwynn said township supervisors met in closeddoor executive session Sept. 23 and he was instructed to hire the law firm of Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman Goggin, with offices in King of Prussia, Allentown and Doylestown, to undertake the investigation.
The prime investigator is John Gonzales and the township will be charged $225 per hour for his services, said Gwynn.
The investigation was launched in the wake of an explosive Sept. 12 exposé in Philly Voice magazine in which two former officers made a broad set of allegations of racist comments by McKeon and Moyer, as well as accusations of intimidation and retribution against them.
Keith Youse and Dennis Psota, both of whom have retired from the New Hanover Police Department, spoke to Philly Voice and MediaNews Group on the record about their experiences.
Two others, described by Philly Voice as “a family friend who works in local law enforcement, and another friend with ties to the township’s volunteer fire department,” also spoke to Philly Voice about incidents they had witnessed, but their names were withheld. MediaNews Group did not speak with those sources.
Both Youse and Psota said they had witnessed numerous racist comments being made by Moyer and McKeon, who will not be made available to speak to the media on this matter while the investigation is underway, according to Gwynn.
For example, Psota authenticated a passage in the Philly Voice article in which Moyer is quoted in the waiting room of the District Court in Gilbertsville in the wake of a drug warrant service as saying, “when that flash bang went off, those porch monkeys ran like cockroaches.”
Youse, who was a New Hanover police officer for 14 years, said McKeon called the hasps which hold brass collar pins in place by the “N-word,” explaining “because they always hang around, but they never work.”
Both Youse and Psota also confirmed the existence of a book in which many of these comments were recorded, particularly those by Moyer.
“It started kind of innocently. We called it the ‘Book of Billisms,’” said Psota. “He often mixes up sayings, like calling someone ‘sharp as a cookie,’ and someone would say ‘put that one in the book.’”
But in time, “it morphed into recording inappropriate sayings,” Psota said.
Psota said the book recording these remarks was kept in the desk drawer of Cpl. Dekkar Dyas, but it is unlikely to still be there.
“Somewhere in the time frame” from when he was on administrative leave after getting into conflict with McKeon, “it disappeared.”
Township Manager Jamie Gwynn
Both former officers said they had been targeted by McKeon after falling out of favor with him.
In Youse’s case, it was due to a 2016 car accident at Swamp Creek and Middle Creek roads, which occurred when he was rear-ended while on the way to mandatory training for work.
Youse suffered neck, shoulder and back injuries in the accident which resulted in numerous medical procedures and a protracted battle with the township over special braces he needed to continue working, and over what treatments and diagnosis of his injuries the township would accept for a disability claim.
He said he fell afoul of McKeon when he asked to wear a vest brace, a request he said McKeon rejected because he did not like how it looked.
“Once you get on the wrong side of the chief, there’s no going back,” said Youse.
Youse continued to work when he could because he still wanted to be a police officer, but was frequently in pain and ultimately had to take an honorable discharge offered by the township, he said.
Youse said he recently filed for arbitration in an attempt to get vacation and sick-time pay worth $60,000 he says he is owed by the township.
Psota, who is currently running for district justice, said he found himself in the crosshairs because he supported Youse, something Youse and his wife said none of the other officers did once it became clear he was unpopular with McKeon.
He also feels he was targeted after filing a formal complaint about Moyer leaving the township, in a police car, in uniform, while on duty, for a court proceeding for a civil lawsuit that did not involve the township. He was later told it was a misunderstanding.
Subsequently, McKeon filed a complaint at the bank where Psota’s wife works “because she didn’t say hi to him when he was in the bank,” Psota said.
Psota was called into a meeting with the chief and Township Manager Jamie Gwynn on Nov. 20 regarding a traffic duty to which he was assigned. He was accused of never reporting, despite providing evidence that he had been called away to a reported bank robbery.
He said he subsequently found a ticket the other officer had written when Psota was accused of being absent, thus supporting Psota’s explanation for why he had not been seen by the other officer. “It’s a good thing I took a picture of it, because it was withdrawn and it disappeared,” Psota said.
Psota asked another officer from Lower Frederick Police to accompany him to the meeting, during which he said McKeon screamed at him and called him a liar, a characterization Psota said Gwynn subsequently dismissed when he sought an apology.
The Lower Frederick officer who accompanied Psota, Cpl. David Milligan, wrote a summary of his experience noting that the meeting “very quickly diminished into the chief screaming and accusing Officer Psota of lying. As Officer Psota was trying to explain his answers to the chief’s questions, the chief would become visibly angry and started yelling,” wrote Milligan, who was an instructor at the Pennsylvania in conducting interviews and taking statements at State Police Southeast Training Center.
“I attempted to follow the chief’s line of questioning. I quickly became confused as the chief angered. He was yelling and not asking clear, concise questions,” Milligan wrote, later adding “the township manager had to ask the chief at one point to let officer Psota finish answering one of the chief’s questions.”
“As a 25-year retired member of the Pennsylvania State Police who conducted internal affairs investigations, it is always inappropriate for the finder of facts to become so angry that nothing could be gleaned from the interview,” Milligan wrote.
On Aug. 13, Gwynn sent a letter to the Lower Frederick Board of Supervisors questioning Milligan’s use of official police forms and labeling them as an “internal affairs” investigation when the meeting was “clearly not a police matter,” but a “union matter.”
Milligan’s report was being offered as evidence in an unemployment dispute between Psota and the township.
Contacted Tuesday, Lower Frederick Police Chief Paul Maxey, who worked for many years as an officer in New Hanover, said he was concerned when he received Gwynn’s complaint because “there is information in that complaint that is totally incorrect and we have evidence to refute that.”
“And it concerns me because when I saw it, I thought ‘if this is how you are conducting investigations in letters to boards, what’s going on behind the scenes?’” Maxey said. “I’m concerned about that as a citizen and as a police officer who has now been pulled into the middle of this.”
Questioned by MediaNews Group about the Nov. 20 meeting, Gwynn said he would not answer questions about it.
But Gwynn did answer questions about the incident which ultimately brought the matter into the spotlight.
It was July 19 and Youse had come to the New Hanover Township Building to pick up his “retired police” ID and his belongings, much of which were in one large box. Gwynn and Psota offered to carry the box out to Youse’s car, because Youse can no longer lift heavy objects.
Inside the box, according to Youse and Psota, was an egg roll, which the two immediately concluded was a jab at Youse’s Asian wife Sandy.
Gwynn recalled that Psota pulled out the item,
Keith Youse in uniform at the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg.
showed it to him and put it back into the box.
“I didn’t really see what it was,” said Gwynn. “It just looked like a piece of wax paper from what I saw.” Despite the fact that the box was open and he was carrying it with Psota out to Youse’s car, Gwynn said he did not look inside to see if it was in fact an egg roll.
“It wasn’t my stuff,” Gwynn said.
When Youse told his wife Sandy about the egg roll, and all the other times a racial epithet that begins with g had been used in his presence, she convinced her husband it was time to speak out.
The couple filed a formal complaint with the police department and the township on July 26.
And at the Aug. 1 meeting of the New Hanover Supervisors Sandy Youse addressed the board telling them, among other things, that she no longer feels safe in the township.
“We are personally outraged and offended by this because I am Asian, our children are Asian and we have family members who live in this community,” she said reading from the letter sent to the township. Her comments were captured on video and posted on Facebook.
“It was disrespectful not only to us, but to all other minorities that live in this community,” Sandy Youse told the supervisors. “In this day and age, this sort of racial innuendo should not be occurring or allowed, especially in a government agency.”
“Everyone from the township manager, to the chief of police to the board of supervisors has been turning a blind eye to certain actions of certain individuals and everyone in a position of authority should be ashamed,” she said. “There needs to be some accountability for allowing these racist actions to occur.”
She further added that “this is not the first racial action made by a member of this police department,” and questioned how the matter could be investigated by a small department which is itself the subject of the investigation.
“How can someone from a 10-man department objectively investigate it? More importantly, how can you ask another officer to investigate his own brother from his own department?” she asked.
“We hope that by bringing this up, that others will stand up and not be afraid to be bullied anymore,” said Sandy Youse.
Gwynn told MediaNews Group Monday that the law firm will investigate both “the egg roll incident,” as he referred to it, as well as the other allegations in the Philly Voice article.
No time limit has been set on the investigation. “We want to give Mr. Gonzales latitude to do a full investigation as he sees fit,” Gwynn said.
Gwynn said since he arrived in December of 2016, and prior to the complaint from the Youses, “I have received no other complaints from staff or the community about racial problems.”
Gwynn said he has investigated all kinds of complaints brought to him since he arrived and has provided two anti-harassment workshops for staff.
According to a Right to Know request filed by MediaNews Group, McKeon has a 10-year contract with the township that expires on Dec. 31, 2022.
He can only be “terminated for cause” under five specific clauses, one of which includes “inefficiency, neglect, intemperance, disobedience of orders or conduct unbecoming an officer.”
McKeon will be paid $117,080 in 2019 and has received two consecutive raises of 3.5 percent in the last two years worth a combined $7,256.
Moyer is covered by the collective bargaining agreement with the police union which expires at the end of 2020. It does not include any specific language about terminations, but does contain an involved grievance procedure.
Under the contract, Moyer has also received two consecutive 3.5 percent raises in the last two years, worth more than $6,000 combined. He will earn $100,268 this year, according to the contract.
Youse said he misses being a police officer and added “it’s not the guys’ fault this was going on. They’re not racists. Sandy and I used to feed them all the time at our house. But from day one, they backed off. They may have wanted to say something but they don’t want to lose their job.”
He feels he was targeted unjustly. “All I did was get into an accident,” Youse said.
He said he and his wife decided to speak out in the hopes they can put a stop to McKeon’s inappropriate and bullying behavior. “The township has really just let him run amok.”
“I don’t want to file a lawsuit. I’m not looking for a golden parachute,” said Youse. “I want people to be held accountable. This community deserves better.”