Whistleblowing & Getting Even
Whistleblowing starts with a dissatisfaction. Which becomes an itch that eventually finds
an ethical violation. It did for me
anyway.
The ethical violation is usually real enough. It deserves disclosure. But the whole thing starts earlier than that.
We want that ethical violation to be corrected, sure. But we also want something else. We want to get even – for the retaliation or
for something before that. The problem
is whistleblower cases can drag on for so long that no one is left to get even
with.
The board chair so hot to be rid of me, Suzanne St. John-Crane,
left HomeFirst Services of Santa Clara
County five months after I was fired.
CEO Jenny
Niklaus left after seven months.
Treasurer Gary
Campanella quit the board a year after he and Niklaus fired me. My HomeFirst peers, the development and
program officers, decamped. My staff
have gone. Three of the five program
managers work elsewhere. Over the three years, nine of the
eleven board members moved on.
Lots of times, whistleblowers settle their lawsuits against the
private companies that retaliated against them.
Their agreements prohibit them from ever discussing their cases[1]. That secrecy produces an empty sort of
getting even.
It’s nearly as empty when the people who let you down and
the people who harmed you are gone. No
one who is left knows or cares anything about you.
Whistleblower cases in the public sector, where staff turnover
is lower, are sometimes different. Master
Corporal Brandon
Eller joined the Idaho State Police in 1997 and moved to ISP’s
Crash Investigation Unit in 2004 . Things went
well enough for him until 2011. On
October 18, Deputy Sheriff Scott Sloan responded to a 911 call. Traveling at 115 mph down the left side of a
two-lane road, lights flashing, Sloan struck Barry Johnson’s car as he turned
into his driveway. Trooper Justin
Klitch, the investigating officer, called Sloan’s an unsafe operation. The draft report by Corporal Quinn Carmack concluded
Sloan’s reckless driving caused the accident.
Captain Richardson and Lieutenant Kelley called a meeting with
Eller, who had interviewed Sloan. They pressed
him to agree that Johnson’s slightly elevated blood alcohol level was the real
cause of the accident. He refused. Then Richardson and Kelley urged Carmack to
modify his report to shift blame to Johnson.
He also refused but agreed to mention the alcohol blood level and
Johnson’s possible failure to put his turn blinker on.
Sloan was charged with vehicular manslaughter. During the April 2012 preliminary hearing,
Eller and Carmack testified to these facts.
By this time Klitch had changed his mind and said Sloan had not driven
recklessly at all.
ISP Lieutenant Kelley, Captains Richards and Zimmerman, and Majors
Hudgens, Rollins, and Wills met with Sergeant Rice, who supervised Eller. They told Rice that Carmack and Eller had
“laid them out.” They talked about
taking the men off the crash unit. A few
days later Colonel Powell met with the officers and Rice. They decided that Eller and Carmack could not
be trusted.
Eller was reassigned to patrol duties, and he began getting
negative reviews[2]. He filed a lawsuit and recently won a $1.5 million jury award. Seven years after
the incident.
This whole time Eller and Carmack have continued to work
with ISP. Sloan was fired but not
convicted due in part to Klitch’s testimony. Rice was reprimanded for concealing evidence
in the case, but Klitch, Kelley, Hudgens, and Wills all remain with ISP,
working at higher level jobs.
It took HomeFirst just two months to fire me after I
admitted disclosing its suspected wrongdoing.
Those two months were miserable.
Niklaus was nasty. Board members
carped. The old friendly conversations were replaced with cool suspicion. Everyone
at a distance. I can’t imagine living through
what Eller has for seven years at ISP.
Whistleblowers who try to stick it out often give up. They quit and claim constructive discharge[3]. Or they feel forced to retire[4]. When they do, the company is quick to claim
that the whistleblower wasn’t fired; she quit[5].
Now that Eller has won his lawsuit, maybe he feels he’s beaten a bad
lot of people. Some do feel vindicated[6]. If I ever win my
complaint against HomeFirst, I doubt that I will feel satisfied. The people who caused me to turn to the State
have vanished. They will never need to
admit wrongdoing. They will never feel
remorse for what they did. An insurance
company will pay the settlement amount, and the company will delete a footnote
in its audit report.
I suspect that my itch will continue[7].
[2]
Eller has been variously accused of having a negative attitude and poor
communication skills, being a disgruntled employee, causing dissension, failing
to complete his work, and failing to maintain high standards of personal and
professional responsibility.
[4] As
examples, Rustyann
Brown, Beth
Burns, Robert
Churchran, Randy
Henry, Linda
Hobson, Joseph
Lovelace, Brent
Ritchie, Valerie
Riviello-Drew, Robert
Smith, and Brian
Sullivan
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