Court rules officer should be reinstated following 2022 firing
A Pittsburgh police officer fired after he was accused of sexually assaulting a fellow officer should be reinstated, an appellate court ruled this week.
The Commonwealth Court opinion issued Wednesday is the second court to uphold the findings of an arbitration panel that ordered Aaron Fetty to be reinstated to his job with the bureau of police.
The question at hand centers less on the allegations against Mr. Fetty but on whether the city violated its collective bargaining agreement with the police union when officials moved to fire the officer.
The city’s agreement with the union dictates that any disciplinary action against an officer must come within 120 days from the time of the incident or from the time the city found out about the incident.
The city was made aware of sexual assault allegations against Mr. Fetty within days of the June 19, 2021 incident. He was fired effective Sept. 27, 2022.
The collective bargaining agreement leaves a narrow set of circumstances in which the 120day rule might not apply, namely “unusual circumstances” like ongoing criminal investigations. When that happens, the union must be made aware within a certain time period. Absent unusual circumstances, no disciplinary action can be taken beyond those 120 days.
A female co-worker accused Mr. Fetty of sexually assaulting her after a Zone 5 cookout in 2021. Court records allege that Mr. Fetty, the co-worker and others went to a bar after the cookout, after which Mr. Fetty drove the woman home.
That, according to the records, is “where he allegedly perpetrated an indecent assault upon her.”
Days after the alleged incident, an anonymous tip was sent to the Office of Municipal Investigations, the city office tasked with investigating complaints against city employees. OMI ruled that while the incident did not rise to a criminal level, Mr. Fetty violated the bureau’s rules on unbecoming conduct. He was suspended for three days without pay and entered into a fiveyear “last chance” agreement for sexual harassment. Allegheny County Police investigated, but no charges were filed.
In December 2021, the female officer sent a mass email to the bureau laying out the allegations and what she said happened that night. The same day, she applied for and was granted a temporary order for protection of victims of sexual violence.
At a hearing on that order months later, the judge found “a preponderance of evidence” that the woman was a “victim of sexual violence and, at minimum, [Mr. Fetty] committed the act of sexual assault.”
Based on that information, acting police Chief Thomas Stangrecki recommended Mr. Fetty be suspended in July 2022. Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt ultimately ordered Mr. Fetty suspended pending termination effective Sept. 27, 2022. Mr. Fetty appealed his firing and filed a grievance through the police union. Two months later, three arbitrators ordered the city to reinstate the officer.
In their appeal, attorneys for the city argued that they were not bound by the 120-day rule because they did not learn the severity of the alleged misconduct until December 2021, at which point a second county police investigation was triggered and they alerted the Fraternal Order of Police to the unusual circumstances. Arbitrators would ultimately reject the idea that substantially different evidence came to light in December, six months after the alleged incident.
The city appealed the arbitrators’ ruling that Mr. Fetty should be reinstated. In April, the Court of Common Pleas upheld the initial ruling, which is when the city then appealed to Commonwealth Court.
The court relied heavily on a state Supreme Court case in which a similar scenario played out: Two Pennsylvania State Troopers were fired for misconduct but later reinstated in arbitration. State police appealed the reinstatement, arguing the arbitrator overstepped its power when it reached a decision that was “contrary to public policy.” The state Supreme Court rejected that argument.