By Mindy Ragan Wood
Staff Writer
Okarche police officer Charles Snyder did not wait for anyone else to tell his side of the story to town officials regarding a personnel issue but addressed them Monday night.
“You guys know this is the second time I’ve come back (to the department to work),” Snyder told board members. “I left. I got asked to come back and to come back and be treated like this? I feel it’s not going to be safe for me to be a police officer in this town with the way I’ve been treated.”
Snyder described a confrontation he and Police Chief Forrest Smith exchanged when Snyder returned home from military orders as a U.S. Army Reservist two weeks ago. He visited the department to inform them he would be ready for work Feb. 1.
“It was about stuff he wanted me to do while I was on military orders,” Snyder said of the argument. “I explained to him that I was on military orders, I’m not working for you. Therefore, you cannot ask me to do stuff for you.”
Snyder told board members that Smith immediately began yelling and threatened to report him for insubordination. The officer then sought Town Administrator Richard Raupe, who was out of the office. In front of Town Clerk Dana Reese, Snyder said Smith continued to scream at him and threatened to call the Canadian County Sheriff’s Office to remove him. Snyder then left.
During the confrontation Snyder noticed he was no longer second-in-command and that his badge number showed he was third in command.
“The other issue I have is did you guys approve him giving my position to the guy he hired and then bumped me down?” he asked.
Board members said they could look up minutes of the meetings to check because they could not remember it on any agenda.
Mayor Mike Mendel said he did recall that the department now had a lieutenant position and hadn’t had one before.
The lieutenant’s position is second-in-command.
Town Attorney Bryce Kennedy addressed the matter by saying that he’s “welcome back” but that the department had moved on, “with completely different officers” and that Snyder would be given what was due him “under federal law.”
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Act forbids an employer from demoting, terminating or reducing the pay of military reservists because they are deployed.
Typically, reservists are expected to be reinstalled at the same pay and same rank prior to military service.
Kennedy did not explicitly state that Snyder had been demoted, even though the officer is no longer in the same position he held before. He offered to meet with board members in executive session to which they declined.
Chief Smith defended the decision to make someone else second-in-command.
“When we take rank into accountability, we look at the hours of CLEET time and the years of service,” Smith said. “The lieutenant that’s above him has six years of service and 1,000 CLEET hours and this gentleman here has 100 CLEET hours which are all online, not actual physical classroom time. At the time he was appointed as sergeant it was five months, which looking at his records looks like it was a probationary period when he came back for that year anyway, which he was given a rank while inside a probationary period which it seemed a little odd to me.
“Either way my lieutenant has the education, bachelor’s degree, countless hours of education as far CLEET goes and police administration, therefore that’s why he’s at the rank he’s at…to help run the department. Since Charles left none of the officers that were here left…of course we have to move forward and restructure this department…and I think we’ve succeeded at that. Our policy requires a lieutenant, not a sergeant to be working underneath me.”
Snyder has retained Irvin Box as his attorney. Kennedy stated he had spoken to Box about the matter. “I explained what our position was, and he was very pleased with where we’re going.”
The town board members did not ask Smith about his alleged behavior or the altercation between he and Snyder.
After the meeting, Snyder said he had “no issue” with an officer being above him if it came down to experience and training.
“That’s fine, if you’ve got someone with more experience and training,” he said, “but we never got that far in our conversation (that day) because he was yelling at me,” Snyder.
