SAPD contract talks focusing on discipline
Negotiators with the city of San Antonio and the police union clashed Friday in the third day of contract talks over how much authority Police Chief William Mcmanus should have to punish officers accused of misconduct.
At issue is a third-party process officers use to appeal punishment handed down by Mcmanus. Under the city’s current contract with the police union, an arbitrator can overturn disciplinary measures if the arbitrator believes the police chief was unfair.
That process has been used to return officers fired for serious misconduct, including racism and domestic abuse, to the force.
The city wants to change that to say that an arbitrator can flat overturn a firing if the arbitrator can’t find “substantial” evidence of the misconduct. City officials don’t want the arbitrator to be able to reduce punishment. It’s either all or nothing.
The union agrees with the allor-nothing, but wants it to happen if the arbitrator can’t find a “preponderance” of the evidence — a standard considered harder to meet than “substantial.”
That issue continues to be a sticking point and wasn’t resolved Friday.
City negotiators also wholly rejected a proposal Friday by the police union that would allow an arbitrator to throw out disciplinary actions if the arbitrator found Mcmanus had punished another officer less severely for the same offense.
“It perpetuates the status quo,” said First Assistant City Attorney Liz Provencio, one of the city’s lead negotiators. “It perpetuates bad precedent.”
Negotiators for the city pointed to a number of cases where
using past rulings on similar cases made it difficult to make punishment stick.
Two years ago, Mcmanus fired Detective Emanuel Keith for threatening to kill his estranged girlfriend in a barrage of text messages and voicemails — which Keith admitted he sent. An arbitrator put Keith back on the force and reduced his punishment to a 90-day suspension.
In that case, the arbitrator cited a 90-day suspension handed down to Mcmanus' former driver, officer Jose Zuñiga — who had “performed a choke” on a woman. Mcmanus has said that situation was different because the woman had broken into Zuñiga's house.
The union's negotiators argue they need some check on potential overreach by Mcmanus and a guarantee that officers who contest their punishment will have due process, which city negotiators say they're not trying to take away.
“An arbitrator puts somebody back who's lost complete credibility,” Provencio said. “Based on those facts that we demonstrated, they can't do their job. But they're still part of the department.”
Ron Delord, the union's chief negotiator, said the union is “not interested in having a system that makes the chief infallible.”
“I don't want people to believe that what you have on the table creates any any form of due process,” Delord said. “It does not because you will win 100 percent of the cases.”
Within the past decade, arbitrators have allowed 10 fired officers back on the force, reversing Mcmanus' decisions in about 14 percent of 71 terminations in that period, city records show. Mcmanus himself allowed 20 officers he fired to return to the force — under the threat of arbitration.