Megan Boehnke
Knoxville News-Sentinel
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Mayor Madeline Rogero said Friday she is looking into an appeals panel that overrode a failed background check to allow the hiring of disgraced former Florida lawman Michael D. Washam.
But Rogero stopped short of saying she had lost confidence in the appeals panel process.
“I think we really have to wait, because in all these years and this is the first situation that has arisen, you don’t necessarily want to throw something out because of one case,” Rogero said. “Are there tweaks that can be made to it? Certainly we’ll take a look at it with the civil service department to see if it’s something that needs to be revised or not.”
Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch, meanwhile, Friday morning defended the appeals panel as a means to ensure fair hiring practices.
“What’s interesting is that there is this outcry in communities today for more engagement by citizens and folks outside law enforcement in making decisions,” Rausch said. “Now we’re being criticized because we didn’t have a law enforcement person making decisions.”
Washam, a supervisory agent with Florida’s largest law enforcement agency, was forced to resign but four years later made the final cut to join the KPD, a review by Knoxville’s civil service director showed. Washam flunked the final hurdle — a background investigation by the Internal Affairs Division, according to KPD spokesman Darrell DeBusk.
In accordance with an appeal process Civil Service Director Vicki Hatfield said was put into place in 1982 following a U.S. Justice Department probe of hiring discrimination, three city employees with no ties to the police agency or police experience overrode the background investigation’s finding.
“At that point, the decision of the background panel is final,” Hatfield wrote in response to News Sentinel questions Thursday. “Barring any violation of a rule of procedure, I do not have the authority to override their decision. Neither does the police chief.”
Questions remain, such as why KPD’s chief — then Sterling P. Owen IV — allowed Washam to be assigned to investigate the city’s worst crimes and why the background panel in Washam’s case rejected the conclusion he wasn’t fit for the badge. It was also unclear Thursday whether current Police Chief David Rausch or other supervisors were made aware of Washam’s past.
Washam was forced to resign from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement after an internal affairs investigation by that agency concluded he had an affair with a felon who operated a pornography website and that he placed an entire police department in Riviera Beach, Fla., under a corruption probe after the agency raided her father’s business. Washam married the woman, Michele Leahy, in 2004. The couple moved to Cocke County in 2005.
Washam’s credibility was called into question this week in his handling of two recordings in the first-degree murder trial of Norman Eugene Clark, who is being tried in Knox County Criminal Court in the December 2011 deaths of his pregnant girlfriend and unborn son.
The News Sentinel on Wednesday asked to review Washam’s personnel file. Hatfield said Thursday a staffer was still working to redact any confidential information. Hatfield sought Thursday to review Washam’s hiring but said that proved difficult.
“That hiring process was conducted under a chief that is no longer with the city,” she wrote. “The members of Internal Affairs that oversaw that process have retired from the city, and the staff member from my office that participated on the panel no longer works here.”
She said it would have been unusual for a background panel to override the recommendation against hiring a police job candidate.
“What I can attest to is that common practice for background panels is to defer ultimately to the recommendation of the representative from Internal Affairs at the conclusion of the appeal,” Hatfield wrote. “The IA member has considerably more information about the candidate, having conducted the investigation, and it would be very uncommon for a background panel to endorse a candidate that received a hard non-endorse (recommendation) from Internal Affairs.”
The background appeal panel is made up of a civil service employee who specifically handles police applicants and two “professional level” city employees. The process applies only to police and firefighter jobs. Hatfield said the city ensures “that there is a minority and a female member on each panel.”
Hatfield identified the three members of the background appeal panel in Washam’s case as Melissa Berry, then deputy director of civil service, city codes administrator Chevelle Lewis and Risk Management Director Gary Eastes.
Hatfield said the appeal process changed in November 2014 under Rogero. The overall process is now “guided” by Hatfield’s staff.
Internal Affairs still is responsible for conducting background investigations and polygraph examinations of the KPD’s top picks for police jobs, she said. The process also was tweaked in November 2014 to include the city law department as a nonvoting member of the appeal panel, she said.
Copyright 2015 the Knoxville News-Sentinel