Matter of speech
Signs are down; what remains is whether a police captain had a right to put them up
GREENWICH — During political season, everyone has an opinion. This particular season, a town employee who paid to put up controversial political signs also raised questions about whether he went too far in expressing his.
As of Friday, Greenwich Police Department Capt. Mark Kordick remains on paid administrative leave for his role in the sudden appearance last week of lawn signs throughout town linking Republican first selectman candidate Fred Camillo to President Donald Trump. The signs met with instant Republican outrage and were removed that day, but for Kordick their ramifications have remained.
The signs urged voters to “Vote Republican” and “Vote Team Trump/Camillo.” Camillo and GOP leaders called them a misrepresentation of the candidate’s views that were fraudulently made to look as though they were authorized by the Camillo campaign and the local Republican Party.
“I did not authorize this,” Camillo said Friday at a debate at Greenwich High School. “The person who did it did not own it. He hid in the shadows and he was intending to harm someone politically. He only admitted to it when he got caught. That’s is misleading and deceptive and it’s one of the lowest things I’ve seen in a political race.”
The signs included a website address that looked as though it belonged to the Camillo camp. He in fact did once control it but ownership lapsed and Kordick said he bought it this past March.
Kordick, a registered Democrat and a 31year veteran of the Greenwich Police Department, said he was simply expressing his political views as a resident and voter. A vocal opponent of the Trump administration, Kordick said the signs were meant to spur a conversation about his belief that local Republicans have not done enough to speak out against controversial Trump policies, including racist and sexist statements made by the president.
“I have friends and relatives in this town who don’t enjoy the same white male heterosexual privilege that I do,” Kordick said in an interview with Greenwich Time. “For people in this town to say they want to elect Republican leadership who do not disavow their party’s national positions on issues of women’s rights and LGBTQ rights, it’s dumbfounding to me. It’s unbelievable to me. All I wanted to do was cause people to think about the relationship between local candidates and national parties.”
Kordick said he acted alone and not in any coordination with the Democratic Town Committee, the campaign of Democratic first selectman candidate Jill Oberlander or any activist groups.
“I’m a resident, a taxpayer and a registered voter here,” Kordick said. “I’m entitled to have political views and participate in the political process. I should have the same rights as anyone else to put up political signs.”
Policy
In a followup interview on Friday, Kordick said he remains on paid administrative leave as the GPD considers his future. He said the only correspondence he has received from the department is the one he got Tuesday telling him to stay away pending an investigation of his offduty activities.
Deputy Chief of Police Mark Marino said Kordick, who has been a captain for 10 years, will remain on leave “while the police administration conducts a full review of these circumstances to determine if any departmental rules, regulations or policies have been violated.”
Under the GPD’s Unified Policy Manual there is broad language stating officers must not “compromise the authority, integrity, trust or confidence inherent to their positions.” The policy also prohibits officers from creating “conflicts of interest or potential conflicts of interest with the duties and obligations of their positions.”
The manual states, “When conflicts of interest occur between the officer’s private rights as a citizen and the privileged rights attributed to the officer’s position, management attempts to bring about a reasonable balance if possible. When this balance cannot be negotiated, management must initiate action designed to safeguard the public trust.”
But the policy also states free speech is considered a nonviolation, “… provided the exercise of such rights does not substantially interfere with the ability to provide services to the community in an efficient, effective and safe manner.”
There has been no indication yet as to what the department will determine about Kordick’s future.
“The police administration will reserve passing judgment until all the facts are reviewed and Captain Kordick will be afforded all the due process rights in which he is entitled,” Marino said in his statement.
Free speech
A first amendment specialist at Yale Law School believes Kordick was within his rights as a citizen to act as he did. Francesca Procaccini, a lecturer in law at Yale, reviewed the public facts of the matter and called it “quite an interesting little case.”
“It’s definitely a first amendment issue,” Procaccini said. “Government employees do not check their first amendment rights at the door by virtue of being government employees. But the government also has more leeway to restrict the free speech of an employee. It has to be able to justify it though.”
The question, she said, is whether his speech has interfered with the orderly operations of the Greenwich Police Department, including whether it could cause people to believe his views are representative of the department.
After a quick review of the GPD’s policy, Procaccini said they appear consistent with the first amendment. That makes this case a difficult balance, she said.
Kordick’s name was not on the signs, which Procaccini said could bolster his claim that this is a freedom of speech issue.
“To me that makes it a stronger first amendment case,” she said. “He is trying to put his views out there without connecting it to his position of privilege as a police officer.”
Sign removal
On Friday, Kordick questioned whether his free speech was violated by the signs being removed, as they were less than a full day after they went up. The police department initially told the Camillo camp it couldn’t take the signs down. They were later removed, reportedly by joint agreement of Republican Town Committee Chair Richard DiPreta, Democratic Town Committee Chair Joe Angland and the town’s legal department.
“I never spoke to the town attorney regarding the removal of the signs,” Angland said. “Rather, Rich DiPreta called me, explained that he had talked to the town attorney about the issue, and explained that the town attorney wanted to know if the DTC objected to their removal. I told Rich that the DTC had no objection because they were not our signs.”
The town’s policy on political signs is that they can go up on town property two weeks before an election. Kordick said he not only followed the policy but checked with the State Elections Enforcement Commission to make sure he was acting within the rules and didn’t have to identify himself on the signs.