After a hearing that lasted almost twelve hours that featured testimony from a city director, a current officer with a checkered past, current and former officers and the Fort Smith chief of police, the Fort Smith Civil Service Commission voted 5-2 to reverse a decision on a two week suspension without pay for Corporal Johnny Bollinger on Monday.
Bolinger, who had been suspended for 80 hours also testified during the hearing that was held in the conference and training room at the Fort Smith Police Department, had his punishment for a "violation" of the FSPD social media reduced to a one day suspension and will receive back pay for the other seventry hours after the ruling by the seven-member commission.
Bolinger had posted a Facebook post questioning the promotion of some officers without proper training, referencing the mass exodus of officers from the department during the current police chief's regime and the refusal of the department to provide school resource officers to the Fprt Smith Public School District. The post came on the heels of a transfer of Bolinger from CID to patrol after he had requested the transfer but withdrew the request at the behest of his superiors.
Bolinger is a fifteen year veteran of the department that had never had any kind of disciplinary action placed in his file and had received several commedations over the years.
Van Buren attorney Candice Settle, representing Bollinger, started her defense of the fifteen-year FSPD veteran questioning the constitutionality of the social media policy, but the outcome of the vote hinged on the glaring differences in punishment handed out to Bolinger and other officers who had been cited for of similar violations.
She also touched on the issue of First Amendment rights in her opening statement and pointed out several inconsistencies in testimony given in support of Chief Nathaniel Clark and the two-week suspension.
Settle also compared the suspension given to Bolinger to the punishment of two other officers with similar offenses before the Civil Service Commission voted 7-2 on the eventual finding.
City Director Andre Good, who initiated the complaint against Bolinger and was instrumental in behind-the-scene communications that, in part, resulted in the hiring of Clark as the chief of police, contacted Lt. Wendell Sampson with his complaint after the FaceBook post that started the controversy was pointed out to him by "several citizens".
Sampson, who stated in open testimony that he had had at least a dozen complaints filed about him over his time with the FSPD, said that he then relayed Good's concern to the chief. Sampson claimed that the comments by Bolinger under minded the authority of the chief and painted the department in a bad light.
Sampson, who was just recently promoted to a spot in the Office of Professional Standards , was confronted about statements he had made in an open Civil Sevice Commission meeting in which he called the FSPD a "dumpster fire" accused fellow officers of criminality and sex scandal and compared the department to a "made for television Cinemax sex movie".
Sampson and Clark bohg stated those statements didn't rise to the the same level of violations regarding "casting the department in a negative light" and Settle produced documents showing that Sampson had not been disciplined for his statements.
