Mark Brunswick; Staff Writer
January 19, 2001, Friday, Metro Edition
Copyright 2001 Star Tribune
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
January 19, 2001, Friday, Metro Edition
(HENNEPIN COUNTY, Minn. -- A sheriff’s captain who worked so much overtime that he was the second-highest-paid employee in the department has been disciplined for working an outside job without proper authority and improperly scheduling other workers in his division so that they could work more overtime.
Capt. Rod Nelson, who has since left the Sheriff’s Office to work as an attorney for a private law practice, was found to have violated six departmental rules.
Nelson, a 23-year veteran and head of the office’s civil division, worked 4,751 hours of overtime from 1994 through 1998, more than any other county employee. He was part of a Star Tribune story on overtime in the sheriff’s department in 1999.
An internal-affairs investigation and grievance that followed publication of the story were completed last month. Nelson was suspended without pay for five days. He left the department before the punishment was imposed but was still being paid for accumulated vacation time. He filed a grievance over the discipline, and in an agreement reached last month, the department restored three days of the suspension.
Nelson described the discipline as “a witch hunt” and said many of the infractions he was accused of were approved by sheriff’s department administrators to address staffing crunches at the jail.
“I didn’t do anything wrong; in fact, it was just the opposite,” he said. “People would call from the jail or the courts and they needed staffing, so I would try and help them out.”
According to a disciplinary letter sent to Nelson, the internal investigation found that he had allowed his staff to split shifts to accommodate overtime work outside the division; that he had failed to get approval to work an outside job despite a previous disciplinary action, and that he had permitted a sergeant working for him to work more than 93 hours of overtime in a two-week pay period, an amount regarded as excessive. He also was found to have improperly used a county take-home car.
“You have not acted in the best interest of your employees or the Sheriff’s Office,” said the letter, signed by Inspector Phil Weber. “Supervisors should lead by example. You have done a disservice to your staff and the reputation of the Sheriff’s Office.”