Records: DeLand mayoral candidate was fired as cop

Wednesday

Jul 30, 2014 at 5:12 PMJul 30, 2014 at 11:22 PM

By ANTHONY DeFEOanthony.defeo@news-jrnl.com

DELAND — In his campaign materials, mayoral candidate Pat Johnson touts his law enforcement experience and asks residents to vote for him so he can tackle DeLand’s crime problems.But Johnson’s own career with the DeLand Police Department did not end well, records show.Johnson, owner of Pompano Pat’s motorcycle dealership and gun store, worked for five Volusia County law enforcement agencies in the 1980s and 1990s. He worked for about two years at the DeLand Police Department, where his personnel file shows he was fired for “insubordination.”In an interview, Johnson denied he was fired and insisted he left DeLand police voluntarily. “If there’s one piece of paper that’s negative on my file, they loaded my file — deliberately and to try to make me look bad,” he said. DeLand City Manager Michael Pleus said that accusation is “definitely not true.” “I can assure you we did not load his personnel file,” Pleus said.Johnson, 48, a newcomer to politics, is challenging incumbent Bob Apgar, who’s been mayor since 2001 and also served as a city commissioner from 1983 to 1991 and 1996 to 2001.The two will face off in the Aug. 26 election for mayor, which pays $15,106 annually and carries a four-year term. Apgar declined to comment on Johnson’s employment history.According to Johnson’s personnel file with DeLand police, he completed law enforcement training in 1985 and was hired as a part-time officer with the Ormond Beach Police Department. He left a year later and worked for the Daytona Beach Police Department for two years and briefly for the Port Orange Police Department. In 1989, he was hired by DeLand police and then fired in 1991, according to city records.Two of his superiors wrote letters in 1991 to then-Police Chief Richard Slaughter quoting Johnson as complaining about being assigned to “city hall bank detail,” which involved taking money from City Hall to the bank for deposit, city records show. “Pat was indignant and he loudly declared that he was giving me his best, citing the fact that he ‘got a haircut,’ ‘not using foul language,’ not complaining about ‘people’ showing up on his calls and that I was singling him out for a ‘flunky assignment,’ ” read a letter dated March 23, 1991, from Sgt. T.J. Mattingly to the police chief. “He again stated emphatically that he did not want to do the escort duty and if I made him it would ‘ruin’ his attitude.”The letter goes on to say Johnson said the “flunky assignment” was appropriate for “a geeky kind of guy like Ridgway.” Bill Ridgway started as an officer in 1989 and now is the police chief. He could not be reached for comment for this story.Another letter on March 23, 1991, from Cpl. D.H. Hiers added that “Johnson said he found the detail menial and a part of the everyday ‘bull (expletive)’ that he did not want to deal with.” “Johnson said ‘I won’t do it, I’m not one of your rookie boys . . . You can’t make me do it, I’ll be miserable and I’ll make everybody else miserable,’ ” another portion of the letter reads. “I asked Johnson what the Sergeant should do if every person on the shift decided they would not perform their assigned task. Johnson would only say, ‘You will not win, you can’t win.’ ”A letter on March 25, 1991, from the police chief to Johnson said he intended “to recommend to the City Manager that (Johnson’s) employment be terminated on account of insubordination.”Johnson appealed the decision, but then-City Manager Harold Pyke upheld the decision, telling Johnson in a letter on April 18, 1991, that Johnson “did refuse to obey a lawful order and exhibited disrespect to your superior officers.”Not long after his firing, Johnson applied for unemployment benefits. The city appealed his claim, citing his involuntary termination and won the case, according to a notice from the Florida Department of Labor and Employment Security, city records show.Johnson denies he was fired and said he worked as a DeLand police officer at the Oakland Terrace public housing development, in a position funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. When the HUD grant ran out, Johnson said he was given the option to quit voluntarily or become a regular patrol officer. He chose to quit, he said.His personnel file shows he worked as an officer at Oakland Terrace and his June 1990 performance review shows he received a “satisfactory” rating. But Johnson had to “work on his attitude toward public,” the review stated. Johnson also received a letter of commendation during his time at Oakland Terrace and another compliment for making key arrests, including the arrest of an armed robbery suspect, city records show. The personnel file indicates that Johnson became a patrol officer after his Oakland Terrace position.He was hired by DeLand police after working for Daytona Beach police from 1986 to 1988. On his application to DeLand, he wrote that he left Daytona Beach police because of “Nepatism (sic).” In a recent interview, Johnson said he left Daytona police in good standing and he didn’t know why his application to DeLand police cited nepotism. Daytona Beach police said they no longer have a copy of his personnel file.After leaving Daytona Beach police, Johnson worked for Port Orange police as a narcotics detective from January 1988 to September 1988, according to his DeLand application. While there, he received several commendations from superiors and members of the public. Johnson wrote on his application that he left the position because of “marital/family difficulty” after his wife’s father died.In a background check by DeLand police before they hired him, Capt. Randy Milholen with Port Orange police spoke highly of Johnson. “He worked his way up to investigator and might have made sergeant had he stayed with Port Orange,” Milholen is quoted as saying in a DeLand police pre-employment screening report.The DeLand report recommended hiring Johnson, noting that Johnson “could become a good police officer for this agency as long as he is supervised very closely during his probation period.”But the DeLand investigator who wrote the report also said Johnson “did seem to have a know all attitude which could be contributed to his age and from working with a big agency like Daytona P.D.”At the time, Johnson was 23. The pre-employment screening also said one of Johnson’s former neighbors told the investigator that “Johnson had a temper. When I questioned him about this comment he would not elaborate,” according to the report.After his termination from DeLand police, Johnson applied for positions with the Eustis Police Department and the Knox County, Tennessee, Sheriff’s Department, according to his DeLand personnel file. The two agencies sent letters to DeLand, requesting information on him.In an interview, Johnson said he worked as a reserve officer with Oak Hill Police Department for several years in the 1990s after he left DeLand police and then he decided to leave police work for good to open his own business. But he said his background gives him insights into DeLand’s crime problems. “We need to make sure (criminals) understand that DeLand is not a place you’re going to come, break into someone’s dealership, get about $20,000 worth of merchandise and get away with it,” Johnson said at a mayoral debate last week, referring to a recent break-in at his motorcycle dealership.“I’m not happy about the crime rate, but that’s not the first time I’ve been affected by it. In front of my dealership, we can see prostitution going on up and down (U.S. Highway) 17-92,” he said. “This doesn’t make the newspapers, but it’s going on.”