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5 members of A.J. police disciplined after probe
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An afternoon barbecue at the Apache Junction Police Department led to an unanswered call for service, an altered computer log and the discipline of three dispatchers, a police officer and a sergeant, according to a recently released internal investigation.
An entire Apache Junction police squad was in the building at once — and many were on the patio eating — when a person called dispatch to report a possible drunken driver on the road.
But instead of dispatching the call over the radio, as is policy, dispatcher Karen Dobbs told officer Danny Campano, who was on the patio, about the call in person.
Campano never responded to the call, but told dispatch supervisor Lisa Eminhizer to clear the call in the computer as if he had gone to the scene.
The May 4 incident was brought to the attention of the department on May 19, when a sergeant filed a complaint about it through a captain.
Eminhizer and Campano received written reprimands, and dispatchers Dobbs and Celeste Zwolinski were given verbal warnings for chatting on the computer about the unanswered call and the number of officers on the patio, the report says. Sgt. Clyde Allison was suspended for one day for allowing all of his officers to be at the station at the same time.
Chief Jerald Monahan said he took the situation seriously and thought about many factors when he determined the discipline for each employee.
“What I looked at was the role that each one of them played, the control that each one of them had, and I tried to get a sense of the intent of their heart when they chose the conduct that they chose,” Monahan said.
The sergeant was given the most severe discipline; however, Monahan defended the sergeant by saying that he was allowing the officers to sit together and voice their concerns.
“It was an attempt at team-building for a sergeant who had not been one for long,” Monahan said. “It was simply a poor judgment call on his part.”
A request through Monahan for comment from the disciplined employees was unanswered. However, the report says that Campano took the blame for his decision and knew it was wrong.
“I have spoken with officer Campano, he immediately told me the circumstance of the call and not once tried to change or redirect blame from himself,” Allison wrote in a memo. “He understood where this went wrong and he knows to respond to all calls that are assigned to him.”
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