Last August, when Troy Parker was reinstated to the police force, I wondered aloud how that could happen to him and not Marshall Dunnigan, especially considering how much more serious Parker’s alleged crime was. After reading the public accounts of Dunnigan’s alleged crime, the whole case against him sounded pretty tenuous to the casual observer. I figured there must have been more to the story that wasn’t released to the public.
But today, we learn from the Journal Star that an arbitrator has concluded that “the city failed to establish that Dunnigan intended to commit theft or fraud when he cashed a $639 ticket from the machine at the [Paradice] casino, which actually belonged to another gambler, a retired Peoria police officer.” Now Dunnigan has been reinstated to the force and will receive back pay for all the time he was off for wrongful termination. All except a ten-day suspension for “fail[ing] to report that he was under investigation for a crime.”
Dunnigan was fired in March of 2007, so that’s going to be one mammoth check for back pay he’ll be getting from the city. Hope he doesn’t spend it all in one place, if you know what I mean.
He’s still a douchenozzle. Glad to know we have such dirtbags on our force.
someone’s head should roll for this….but wait — who are they going to blame? there is no City Manager….no human resources director……
Seems to me that 10 days is way too light a punishment for this infraction. I’m more concerned that the Benevolent is supporting poor employees and fighting to get them their jobs back. If Mr. Dunnigan is the most decorated officer on the force, we’re in a heap of trouble in P-town. Since when is discipline held to the “intent” of the individual? He should have been charged with conduct unbecoming an officer and it shouldn’t be too hard to prove that if he wasn’t smart enough to realize that it wasn’t his ticket he wasn’t smart enough to be on the force.
There is a lot more to both of these incidents. The majority of officers on the city did not want either Dunnigan or Parker to return and actually favored the Chief’s decision to terminate their employment. The one problem and why they got their jobs back? The Chief refuses to abide by the contractual proceedings between the officers of the department and the city of Peoria. There is a step by step process and had he followed it, both Dunnigan and Parker would have lost their jobs and had no lawsuits to stand on. And there are many many more incidents where the Chief is not abiding by the contract. This is why the arbitrator ruled in favor of Dunnigan, Parker and other up and coming grievences. The city’s own attorney’s told Chief he could not legally terminate either Parker or Dunnigan per the contract, but he ignored them and cost the city thousands of dollars. He has almost a dozen unfair labor practices filed against him as is. Moral is so low at the department and any officer with the time to retire or leave is walking out the door. 4 so far in 2 months. But these are things the public is not aware of.
Good for Officer Dunnigan!! He has done a hell of a job on the force and should nvever been kicked off. Wrong as he may have been, a less severe punishment was the answer. He is a good cop-don’t bedlieve all this crap you hear about him on the blog.
“He has almost a dozen unfair labor practices filed against him as is.”
this sounds interesting. Can someone file a freedom of information act request to learn more?