The current IMPD chief came to the job in the middle of the Bisard scandal as well as a couple of lower-profile OWI (Officerin' While Intoxicated) incidents, and apparently has instituted some reforms already, although I don't know if daily briefings start with a recital of the Twelve Steps or not.
One of the reforms he apparently still wants is the power to fire his employees, the lack of which can give the department a PR black eye in cases like l'affair Bisard.
I understand that police officers do not give up their constitutional rights when they pin on the badge and that among those rights is the one to due process of law, but I can't think of any job I ever held where my employer would wait on the jury verdict to fire me if I'd killed somebody with a company car while three sheets to the wind.
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I have to say that I am impressed with Terry Curry. Regardless of party, he was tenacious on this case. We'll see how it holds up through appeals, but he sure got 'er done when there were times it looked like Bisard would walk.
I've always wondered how it came to be that "due process of law" started applying to employment and not just imprisonment.
I believe that started, as did so many things, during the FDR administration, and IIRC the reasoning behind it was that unlike firing a Domino's Pizza driver, firing a government employee is a government action, and people are supposed to be protected from arbitrary government actions by due process of law.
I know that in the federal .gov there have been soon-to-be-former employees that were on PAID admin leave while they were in jail waiting for their trial. Just a ghost in the bureaucracy I guess.
I get the reasoning behind the decision, but it's pretty obvious that nobody really thought through the implications.
How many union jobs have you had?
If you can't hire and fire, you aren't the boss.
I believe that started, as did so many things, during the FDR administration
Isn't that the same administration that, without due process, herded a bunch of citizens into concentration camps? Just askin.
Yes.
Without staking out a position on this one way or another, I'll note that my broken clock correctly indicates that it's 3:46 twice a day. Because the clock is broken, does this mean it's never actually 3:46?
I've always wondered how it came to be that "due process of law" started applying to employment and not just imprisonment.
If I remember when I get home, I'll pull my ConLaw text off the shelf and answer it. I think Tam's answer is close, but I remember discussing this in class. Give me a couple of hours.
Alright, research hat on.
The best case for (generally) requiring a hearing before termination is Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593 (1972), in which a non-tenured professor's contract was renewed. Despite his lack of a formal "tenure right to re-employment," he showed that the school had a de facto tenure program, so the non-renewal of his contract deprived him of his property interest in renewal: "A person's interest in a benefit is a 'property' interest for due process purposes if there are such rules or mutually explicit understandings that support his claim of entitlement to the benefit and that he may invoke at a hearing." This contrasts with Perry's companion case Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564 (1972), which held that "[The range of interests protected by procedural due process is not infinite. [It] is a safeguard of the security of interests that a person has already acquired in specific benefits." The Court found that Roth had acquired no property interest in the renewal of his contract, so he wasn't due a hearing.
As to IMPD and Mr. Bisard, I suspect that union contracts and the role of the review board work to establish a property interest in the job that can only be terminated by established procedures, e.g. a hearing before the board.
Incidentally, both cases stem from Goldberg v. Kelly 397 U.S. 254 (1970), which held that termination of welfare benefits required "an evidentiary hearing before termination of benefits." Yes, the court held that welfare recipients have a property right to their dole cheques. That's been pared back somewhat, but still...wow.
The RCMP had the same problem thanks to some meddling by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Commissioner Bob Paulson remarked that it could take up to 5 years to fire a bad Mountie. It's a little better now.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/bill-to-boost-rcmp-commissioner-s-powers-passes-senate-1.1309461
It goes back much further than FDR. Federal "Civil Service Reform" in the U. S. was enacted into law after the Civil War. Until then, hiring and firing in the U. S. government was straight up patronage for everyone, so when a Presidential party changed, so did most every Federal non-Constitutional, non- military job.
The man who shot James Garfield was described to the public as a "disappointed office seeker", and his words at the time were that he was a "stalwart"- the anti civil service reform wing of the Republicans. Civil Service Reform was a pretty hot issue, and with a Presidential corpse behind it, it passed.
Gradually it has expanded since then, and reached into many other employment relationships. In the United States, employment at will is the law's default- you can fire your employees for any non prohibited reason.
The way that can change is either by statute or by contract.
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