This story is so breathtakingly stupid, I had to confirm it a couple times to be sure it was not a hoax. A Detroit groundskeeper, John Chevilott, found a loaded handgun in the weeds while working and waited for the police to drive by to turn it in. When they didn’t show up, Chevilott took the gun home and handed it into his local police station where he was commended for his actions. He did this with the full knowledge and approval of his supervisor. According to news reports, that was then fired by the Department of Public Services for possession of a gun.
Chevilott is just two years shy of retirement after 23 years on the job. His supervisor was suspended for 30 days.
Chevilott’s superiors at the Department of Public Services found that he had violated department policies by possessing a weapon on work property.
At first I thought the Department must have had evidence that Chevilott was lying and that the gun was his. However, the stories all report that he found the gun in the weeds. It is not uncommon for criminals to toss a weapon when they are being pursued by police. The gun turned out to have been stolen when the police traced it.
Assuming that the Department does not believe this was his gun, there should be a firing . . . of every supervisor and official who approved this action.
What is astonishing is that I have been to Detroit and see public workers who appeared catatonic and unresponsive to verbal or physical stimuli. Yet, they have secure jobs. We have discussed how it seems that every Detroit city council member is either under investigation or facing criminal charges. They also have secure jobs until their convictions. This guy turns in a weapon before it could hurt someone and he is fired just short of retirement.
Can anyone find any more information that makes this appear less moronic?
“This story is so breathtakingly stupid, I had to confirm it a couple times to be sure it was not a hoax.”
This seems to be a time for things like that. It seems more and more difficult to determine fact from fiction these daze.
If this guy truly found the gun, he should have a recourse against the Department of Public Services for the loss of his job. You are right, Professor. (as usual!) Every supervisor who signed off on this should be shown the door. I am betting it was a good way to avoid paying a pension!
bureacracy at its finest.
This is the kind of story that lowers a red haze of rage over my eyes.
They saw an opportunity to cut costs and they took it. This happens every day in corporate America and the opportunists who do such things usually get a bonus. Let us hope Detroit does the right thing but I wouldn’t hold your breath.
How come he didn’t first file some sort of OSHA or other claim against the city for being having to work in a hazardous area with loaded guns just lying around? If he did that first I bet he would not have been fired. It is clearly his fault.
I agree with Justice Holmes analysis.
The message communicated by the bureaucrats to all employees is that if an employee finds a gun or other weapon laying around, LEAVE IT WHERE IT IS AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!
If a kid finds it or someone is hurt, then that is just tough.
Congratulations, geniuses. The stoopid, it burns.
A grandmother was given life without parole on a first-time drug charge, when she did not know of the drugs, see them, touch them. or much of anything else.
Meanwhile those who killed hundreds of thousands, forced millions from their homes, and tortured thousands, will not see one day of jail.
Can’t find any report of this in the Detroit News or the Detroit Free Press.
Faux Noise is the only source that knows about this?
Blogs with ‘AR15′ and ‘AK47′ in their titles are having a field-day with this.
I’m highly suspicious, but then, I always am.
Are they paying 20% on pensions cancelled due to firing of soon-retirees% Can we guess to which brother-in-law of the department chief gets the bonus?
In Indonesia they call it SOP, and praise the President for exemplary conduct. Of course he owns the newspaper.
Kinda stupid way to cut costs. They will most likely end up paying lawyers and a nice settlement.
It appears this may be a hoax, so let’s not all get our knickers in bunch until we have some facts. There is nothing in the police blotter yet and the only reports I can find all refer back to the local Fox news as the primary source. As most of us know due to 1st Amendment protections, Fox has the right to lie (based on a case in which they didn’t just spin the facts, but were proven in court to have knowingly misinformed.)
The key point in this story is that he was just shy of retirement…when I was working for the North Carolina Employment Security Commission, it was not uncommon for a company like GE to fire someone just before they were scheduled to retire. GE and other companies saved money that way.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/carlos-de-luna-execution-_n_1507003.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009
Apparently this dude was killed erroneously in Texas 49 years ago. Chilling.
@rafflaw – Were I a cynical person (which, of course, I’m not), I’d agree with you that this was a cost-saving measure on Detroit’s part.
Unflipping believable. . .
Next employee who finds a loaded gun, pick it up and do something constructive with it.
A side note before my full rant. Long ago, My Grandfather was 6 months away from a 20 year pension when Safeway concocted some BS and fired him, denying him a pension. He started his own business and competed against them successfully. (Meat Market) For some reason the men in my family often get the shaft from management.
That aside for this fellow in Detroit, I agree, unbefricking-unbefrickinglievable. We need a viral type of citizens’ campaign to humilliate and embarass the city into doing what is right and restoring him.
Now for a real event since those in the ivory towers of detroit need to be educated. One of the guys in my old depatment and a city guy got into a vehicle pursuit with a carload of bangers. In two locations the bangers threw out hadguns and ammo (which were later believed to have been used in a drive by some time ago). I was in the South part of the county when the call came out and I arrived just as they were finally stopped, after nearly hitting an officer in another nearby city.
One of the city guys and I walked down an alley trying to locate one of the guns. We looked over a small picket fence and there was a revolver on top of the snow, underneath a child’s tricycle. Can you imagine what might have happened if the child found it before an adult did? Children seem to have a curiousity about guns and it can be dangerous. Anyway we politely asked the homeowner if we could search his back yard and take the gun out. He was worried he might be get in trouble because of the gun. We certainly could have taken the gun for community care taking purposes but it’s better to get consent for his own peace of mind. I put in the report that the homeowner, in all caps, was in no way responsible for the firearm in his property and it was obvious he did not know of its existence (due to the fact it was slightly snowing and the gun was uncovered) . Why did I do this, well for the bangers’ case obviously but it was because of a rather rash incident I got mixed up in several years before.
Another city had an officer that I had a problem with. I was with him to back him up on a domestic and was observing what he was doing since it was his call. Essentially it was a typical case of a psycho girlfriend getting mad at the boyfriend and sicking the criminal justice system on him. She swore out an affidavit declaring he had abused her and got a judge in an ex-parte hearing to execute a DV Protection order against him, thereby denying him the right to possess a firearm. To protect himself, the male half asked his dad to come over and take all the guns into safekeeping until this legal issue was resolved.
The gf called the PD and made up some BS about the guy doing something to her. It was not credible but the man invited us inside to discuss it. While there the city officer noticed on a shelf next to the man, up high, there was an antique revolver behind some items on the shelf. he handed it to me for safety purposes. When the man saw this he was overcome with worry in the “Oh my God I forgot about that, now I’m screwed” sense. It was obvious he forgot it was there, believing he had removed all the firearms to comply with the order. I told him not to worry about it that we could take it into safekeeping and he could sign a form releasing it to his dad the next day. The city officer was bent out of shape over this, insisting he should be arrested for Unlawful Possession of a Firearm. It told him there was no intent. He said it didn’t matter. I told him I was not going to allow him to jack the guy on a felony charge and have him risk losing his right to keep arms over a simple mistake. I called up the prosecutor’s office on a cell phone and explained the situation to one of the deputy prosecutors. She agreed there was no intent and said it was unlikely they would secure a conviction with a jury anyway. I told the officer the prosecutor would not charge him and the officer was very angry with me over it but I stuck to my position. We had a falling out that lasted for months over that incident but that’s just the way things go.
So you see folks, because there are people in gov’t that will fly off the handle and destroy a person at any given opportunity, you as public servants, or members of the public need to keep in mind that if you don’t find a way to make the innocent person anonymous, or cover them somehow, they are vulnerable to being fuxored by some bureaucratic wonk.
Darren Smith, ya done good. Every department has those kinds of officers. Some have more than others. Rutting around on testosterone, instead of using their ability to reason through a situation. My father had an expression regarding folks like that. Dad would say, “He does not have the sense God gave a goose.” Glad you were able to defuse the situation and obtain a just and equitable outcome. Well done, sir.
As of 8:30 PM PST, no Detroit news service has any information on this story.
Neither does any reputable news organization.
It may not be on current news pages because it happened on May 3. I found a couple of links, but they said, “The page you are looking for is no longer available.” This is the latest link I could find and there is a picture of the gentleman. His union has filed a grievance.
http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/local/wayne-county-worker-fired-after-finding-gun-on-the-job-20120514-ms
OS,
Great work on getting the link. I would hope the union would file a grievance on this crazy firing.
Yes, OS, that’s the same link cited in the Professor’s article. It’s still the original Fox report. I’ve been looking through archives of the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News. No mention of this.
Darren Smith,
Good on you.
Bob,
If you search for his name, he appears to be easily findable on Facebook which tells me:
John only shares some information publicly. If you know John, send him a friend request or message him.
BK, I found some dead links, but newspaper web pages usually are pretty sucky as a general rule. Local TV stations often have more and better local news stories than the dead tree press. There are exceptions, but I suspect most of the reason is that newspapers are on life support and keeping a top notch web page going is not cheap. I know this because my oldest daughter’s former boyfriend was the sports editor of a paper. He left the paper because he said he could see the handwriting on the wall. I think he works for NASCAR now, doing publicity. At least NASCAR has money to pay the help reasonably well.
OS / Gene H. thank you for the comment.
What is certainly the most regretable issue is knowing the Public Works employee here is in the right, Nobody at least here thinks he personally is at fault. I’ve no doubt that if he is somehow afforded an objective trier of fact/law he will prevail, but consider this:
The way these cities work is essentially this. The powers to be arbitrarily decide to give an employee the shaft. Usually this is for two reasons, the employee in their minds represents a threat to them, even if imagined and the other is there is some kind of political advantage in shafting the person. Once that has happened, the employee is under the gun from day one until day 1,200+.
The next step will be to concoct a big pack of lies or half truths about the employee. Any mistake or small transgretion the employee makes will be magnified two orders of magnitude. This will be completely contrary to any sense of fairness since many in power wil have similar and more likely more misdemeanors they had commited. The city will then paint the employee as a renegade who has been nothing short of a villain in an attempt to put the employee or his counsel into a position of having to defend these new accusations to save credibility and deflect from the real issue; that is the city is railroading the employee. The city will use the rumor mill and might even, if the employee has a public voice on the issue, contact the press through a proxy to seed the community with libel to attempt to humiliate the employee and disuade him from continuing.
Third comes the attempt to drain the pocketbook of the employee. The city will not care if they have to blow $500,000 dollars or more out of the tax payer’s revenues to attack the employee. The effect this will have would be to send the battle to the employee’s own home with his wife and children. While the employee is greatly distressed in the matter, the wonks who railroaded him get to sit in their cushy chairs and hobnobbing with other snobs about other issues. Why? Because our system allows many people in power to get away with nearly everything short of murder while subordinate ranks or regular or downtrodden people get reamed.
And then begins the most evil period of the process, the long drug out process where the city will file every motion and decoy to drag it on forever. The employee then suffers the loss of income and the lifestyle his family is accustomed to. Again, the fat cats dine. At this point many people just give up
Penultimately, and I don’t say lastly because there seldom is a true conclusion ever offered by the wonks, the employee either has two outcomes. Either he loses due to all the craft and lies the city and is worse off than ever or he wins the case. Or, in winning he risked losing his house due to finance issues, he had to pay all these legal fees, suffered all the stress but received a judgement/settlement. The wonks, Well they got to watch this entire drama of their own creation from the safety of their sanctuary. Never once were they held accountable for these arbitrary persecutions, and the employee had to suffer months, years of this humiliation, only to be restored to where he was one day before this all happened.
Many of our ancestors emigrated from England, Germany, or wherever to come to the US because they had enough of arbitrary decrees or laws from sovereigns who are not subject to justice. They escaped the Rule of Men and embraced the Rule of Law here. I doubt our founding fathers envisioned such an outcome in drafting or federal constitution.
A reason unions are useful……
First, he should get another gun. Then make a list. Then….
First, a thank you to Mr. Smith. We should all be so fortunate to have an officer such as yourself on the scene should the need ever arise. It seems these days that there are far too many people itching to excersize (abuse) the power of their authority over others, justified or no. Thank you for being reasonable and rational and serving the community instead of subjugating it, as others are seemingly want to do.
It would seem that common sense is not so common anymore. Any thinking person would have been able to see that the man went out of his way to do the right thing. Then he got screwed. Mr. Smith is absolutely correct, asserting that the city found a flimsy excuse to fire him and deny him his pension. Save a few bucks for the city at the expense of an honest, conscientious, hard-working man. But the union issue is a double-edged sword, I think. There was a time when the unions were truly the representative of the collective workers. But as time passed they began to use the leverage they had in the employees to negotiate more and more into union contracts. Pension liabilities for government workers (teachers, public works, etc…) are crippling city budgets. Pensions are a nice idea; who WOULDN’T want to keep getting paid for a job you don’t do anymore, right? State and city governments and industries of all kinds are now wrestling with the issue of where all the money is going to come from to honor those contractual agreements. It’s as if nobody ever did the math for future projections to asess costs and where they had to draw the line for benefits to keep them sustainable. Honestly, whether right or wrong, ethical or no, I can’t say it surprises me to hear these types of stories; a honest man getting shafted by the city (or by a company…) so they can keep those pension dollars for their own bottom line. Of course, that’s not the official story, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out….
There are places where, if you want to work, you HAVE to join the union. And pay dues, etc. Unions frequently make generous donations to political candidates (liberals, primarily) using dues proceeds. Even if you don’t support who they like, they’re going to use your money in whatever way they see fit. Unions have become their own worst enemy, IMO. Power and greed (unions see billions of dollars go through their organizations) can seduce and corrupt even the best of men if they let it. And while I think that the original pupose and intent of the unions was altruistic and genuine, the men at the helm went the way of corruption, using their group power as a bludgeon to achieve their ends.
OT,
Canadian police commanders sound crooked.
http://www.thestar.com/news/torontog20summit/article/1179221–g20-police-trampled-basic-rights-of-citizens-report?bn=1
Thanks, Bud.
please sign the petition on change.org for this gentleman who was wrongfully terminated.
Here is the link
http://www.change.org/petitions/department-of-public-services-carl-levin-senator-of-detroit-mi-help-detroit-worker-finds-loaded-gun-turns-it-in-then-fired-by-city#
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