Parole officer tells truth, despite career threats
Member risks job to help another
By M.K. Fottrell
Senior parole officer Janice Smith never had met fellow parole officer Umar Rahim.
But when Smith had to choose between risking her career by speaking up for him or playing it safe, she had the courage to do the right thing.
Fortunately, both PEF members had the union on their side.
In June 1999, Smith had recently been promoted and was on probation as a senior parole officer at Willard Drug Treatment Campus when she received a message that ultimately would threaten to turn her career upside down.
Seventy miles away, in Syracuse, Rahim had been suspended without pay, pending dismissal, for allegedly pushing his supervisor during a heated exchange.
Pressured to stay out of it
In preparing Rahim’s defense, PEF associate counsel Steven Klein began interviewing people who had worked with the supervisor and discovered that he had a history of stormy, even violent, encounters with co-workers and others.
Klein began searching for witnesses who would testify about that history in order to show that the supervisor might have provoked the incident with Rahim. That search led him to call Janice Smith, who had previously worked under that supervisor.
That phone call opened a “Pandora’s Box” of hassle and pressures for Smith that finally led to an investigation and report by the Office of the State Inspector General (OIG).
According to that report, Janice Smith’s own supervisor, Douglas Smith (no relation), heard about Klein’s call and warned her, “if she testified at the hearing, her career would be over.”
But she decided to tell what she knew.
“If I were in a jam, I would want somebody else to be free to help me out,” Smith says. “That’s what it’s all about.”
“Up to that time, her record was spotless,” Klein says. But within weeks, Douglas Smith gave Janice Smith her first poor review and a counseling memo for taking “personal” phone calls, such as Klein’s, at work.
Douglas Smith and Rahim’s supervisor even went to Rahim’s hearing and sat outside it with Rahim’s witnesses until Klein protested to the arbitrator and the managers were told to leave.
PEF puts agency on the defense
In response, PEF filed an improper -practice charge against the state Division of Parole, claiming that these actions violated the state’s Taylor Law, which prohibits public employers from threatening or attempting to coerce someone from exercising their rights under the law.
Janice Smith’s employer broke the law by trying to coerce her into not exercising her right to testify, the union argued.
Thanks in large part to Klein’s vigorous defense and the courageous testimony of witnesses such as Janice Smith, Rahim was reinstated and awarded full back pay and benefits. However, he was disciplined for a relatively minor infraction.
Janice Smith’s promotion to senior parole officer was made permanent.
This past June, PEF and the Division of Parole settled the improper-practice charge. Under that settlement, the division withdrew its counseling memo from her personal-history folder and transferred her supervisor, Douglas Smith, to a different worksite.
Test of character, friendship
It was a good outcome to a situation that could have been disastrous for the careers of dedicated public employees, says Gary Stern, a parole revocations specialist who represents Smith and Rahim on the PEF Executive Board.
But Stern sees lots of room for improvement.
“The process takes too long, and it takes a heavy toll on the people,” Stern says. “Mr. Rahim had to take money out of his deferred compensation plan to feed his family and yet, in the end, he was found to have done very little wrong.”
Rahim said he is deeply grateful for all the support he received.
“The union did a good job. It saved me a lot of money and I’m very glad it was there,” Rahim said.
“I also appreciate the astuteness of the arbitrator who heard the case, because he saw the truth of what really happened,” Rahim added. “But most of all, I want to thank the parole officers who came to my defense and stuck their necks out for me, particularly the two officers at my worksite.”
Smith also thanked “PEF members who came to my aid and offered a lot of support. The friendships that I had became even stronger, and support — that I didn’t even know existed — developed.”
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These agencies compete with public employees for work:
• People — Services to the Developmentally
Disabled Inc.
• Suburban Adult Services Inc.
• United Cerebral Palsy Association (statewide)
• Association of Retarded Citizens of Oneida County