Civil service refuses case of two fired Metro officers

Cathy Scott

Wednesday, May 6, 1998 | 9:39 a.m.

Two former Metro Police officers who were fired following an internal audit into Metro's hiring practices have been denied a hearing by the Civil Service Board to reconsider those terminations.

The board voted 3-2 against hearing the cases because the officers were not eligible under current civil service rules.

Metro's hiring practices were questioned last year following a shooting by then-officer Ron Mortensen, who was later found guilty of murder. The murder prompted an internal audit into Metro's hiring practices.

As a result of that audit, three recruits were fired, Sheriff Jerry Keller said at the time.

Scott Dinger and Chris Lafoya were two of them.

The internal audit followed a SUN story last year reporting that Mortensen, on the force for just 18 months when he killed 21-year-old Daniel Mendoza in a drive-by shooting, was recommended not to be hired by a background investigator, but was hired anyway. Mortensen was convicted in July and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Keller said last year at an announcement of Metro's new hiring practices that a breakdown in communication was the reason for some recruits to slip through the system.

But Dinger and Lafoya note several commendations and awards they received during their short time with Metro. They claim they were singled out "because we were still on probation and we were easy to fire."

Michael Snyder, Metro's human resources manager, told the board that employees eligible to appeal disciplinary action to the Civil Service Board are only those who have completed their probationary periods. Dinger and Lafoya did not qualify, he said.

The only recourse for the fired recruits is to file a lawsuit in district court, Snyder told the board.

Both Dinger and Lafoya say they are ready to fight their cases in court.

"They only went after us because we were still on probation," Dinger said. "Why did just us probationary people suffer from these new standards?"

Dinger was terminated because of information he provided to Metro but didn't have to.

"I was terminated because when I was 18 I stole some candy from a baseball snack bar at my high school in Kenai, Alaska," the 33-year-old Dinger said. "I felt bad about it and turned myself into the police department. I paid a fine and the judge set aside criminal charges. I was not convicted.

"That was on my Metro application. They knew about it when they hired me in August of 1996."

He was fired in September 1997.

Lafoya, 31, was hired in August 1996 and fired in September 1997 because Metro told him he didn't list a three-week seasonal job on his application where he and two other people were accused of taking a wristwatch. Lafoya was charged with a misdemeanor for petty theft.

"It was on my application," Lafoya said. "All the facts were disclosed," including a discussion of that with a background investigator, he said.

But the voluntary statement he said he turned in "was taken out of my file and is missing," Lafoya said.

Snyder recommended to the board that the officers' appeals not be received by the board because, as a probationary employer, they were not eligible.

But board member Norma Phillips said that "there is nothing in the civil service rules that state we can't hear it." She recommended hearing the former officers' stories "as test cases."

But board member Wade Leavitt, who made a motion to deny the officers' requests, said, "These are the rules we have to play by."