Dearborn Heights Council de-funds Police Directors Swope and Vanderplow

Chief Hart said directors will stay

By SUE SUCHYTA

Times-Herald Newspapers

HEIGHTS – The City Council voted 5-2 Jan. 9 to eliminate the salary budget for Police Directors Paul Vanderplow and Kevin Swope, which Police Chief Jerrod Hart said will not take effect. 

Tom Wencel, Denise Malinowski-Maxwell, Hassan Ahmad, Mo Baydoun and Hassan Saab voted in favor, with Robert Constan and Nancy Bryer opposed. Bryer said she voted no out of concern for the likelihood of a lawsuit being filed against the city. 

In a Jan. 10 email to Police Department employees, Hart said the city council’s “illegal defunding” of Swope and Vanderplow’s positions would not prevent them from remaining fully employed, with pay, benefits and their command positions intact. 

Saab, who brought the motion to the table, said the Police Department director positions were not mentioned in the city charter. 

Vanderplow serves as the director of support services, while Swope serves as the director of police operations. 

Saab said the city council was not formally notified of the appointments, and the two were not initially hired under Act 78, the state police and fire civil service system. 

He called for elimination of the city budget section that provides for Swope and Vanderplow’s compensation, and to disallow compensation for any legal fees arising from the mayor’s decision to hire them without council approval. 

Saab also called for a moratorium on any Police Department hires outside of Act 78, excluding the chief, police officers and cadets. 

“For anyone to say, ‘Let’s table it and look at the ramifications,’ he (the mayor) violated the city charter,” he said. “We have a charter we follow, and so should his administration.”

Constan said the problems in the Police Department should be resolved before the two director positions are eliminated. 

Employment and Labor Attorney Christopher Mikula said the police director positions and police chief are specifically identified in the latest collective bargaining agreement with the command officers’ union, and the agreement was reached under the Public Employment Relations Act. 

Wencel expressed concern about the city’s obligation to the balance of the directors’ three-year contracts, as well as the contracts’ three-month severance package. 

Corporate Counsel Roger Farinha said the council is opening itself up to litigation. 

Baydoun said that since Bill Bazzi has become mayor, the city has been subject to more litigation than in any other time period. 

Ahmad said the city charter requires the mayor to go to the city council to approve new director positions, which the mayor did not do, and still later made a contract with the command officers’ union. 

Baydoun reiterated that the mayor’s initial hiring of the directors was illegal since the council did not approve the money.

Saab said the recent Department of Justice presence at the Police Department was not to conduct an investigation but to make recommendations, which DOJ officials conveyed to council members during a meeting at the Canfield Center. 

Farinha said that the city charter, under the duties of the mayor, allows that the mayor, except as is otherwise provided in the charter, shall have the power of appointment over all directors, and control of commissions and boards that are in charge of several departments. 

“It’s a ‘shall,’ not a ‘may,’” he said. 

Farinha repeated that’s Saab’s resolution opens the city up to liability. 

Baydoun said if the council allows this to happen to the Police Department, the same thing could happen to the Fire Department. 

Saab said his problem is not with the police director positions, but with the fact that the charter was not followed and the city council was bypassed by the mayor. 

Bazzi left the meeting about 15 minutes before discussion began on the resolution, and therefore was not present to dispute any of the allegations made against him.