Whipped Cream Difficulties

Kevin Leverenz, a sergeant with the Austin Police Department, is going to be promoted to lieutenant.

That’s good news, right? Certainly it is for Sgt. Leverenz. Not so much so for Chief Art Acevedo. You see, Chief Acevedo denied Sgt. Leverenz the promotion; however, the chief’s decision was overturned by an arbitrator.

Even better, this is the second time an arbitrator has overturned a promotion decision by Chief Acevedo in the past two months.

Acevedo said the ruling was based on a technicality, not the merits of his decision.

What, pray tell, was that technicality?

According to Miller’s ruling, Acevedo promoted Leverenz to lieutenant in June, the same day that City Council members cut several vacant positions amid budget reductions.

To legally slash those jobs, however, the city had to first promote officers into those vacancies — state civil service law said they were legally entitled to the jobs — then demote them and place their names on a list for reinstatement.

Leverenz’s lawyer Stribling argued that Leverenz could not be legally bypassed for promotion in November once he had already been elevated a rank and was on that reinstatement list.

So it appears the “technicality” was that he had already been promoted, then the chief changed his mind and tried to yank the promotion. And this is such a minor “technicality” that the arbitrator didn’t even wait for a hearing; he issued his decision weeks in advance of the scheduled hearing, based only on the documents filed by both sides. Some “technicality”.

Now, to be fair to the chief, it looks like there are some questions about Leverenz’s record, and it is possible to argue that he shouldn’t have been promoted in the first place. (To be fair to Leverenz, it is also possible that the charges outlined in the Statesman are trumped-up.)

But…

According to Miller’s ruling, city officials also argued that Acevedo was not responsible for knowledge about Leverenz’s performance and discipline history when he promoted him in June.

What? What?! I cannot believe the chief of police seriously made that argument. “Well, I’m not responsible for knowing the record of my officers before I make promotion decisions.”

That’s over the line.

And Raynella Leath has been convicted of killing her second husband.

So why do I care about a murder trial in Knoxville? Because it has some rather strange aspects; I was going to blog this NYT article on Sunday, but got distracted by shiny objects.

There was a fatal car crash, a love child, a missing will and, strangest of all, the 1992 death, officially by cattle stampede, of the Knox County prosecutor, Ed Dossett, who happened to be Ms. Dossett Leath’s first husband at the time.

Dossett’s death was ruled an “agricultural accident” by the medical examiner.

Mr. Dossett had been in the late stages of terminal cancer, and Ms. Dossett Leath told the authorities that she had helped him out to the barn to feed the cattle at his request.

The medical examiner who made that ruling

lost his medical license after being convicted of sedating and sexually molesting minors in 1995.

The current medical examiner found

Mr. Dossett’s morphine level was “so extraordinarily high it is unlikely that any human could function in an ambulatory manner or continue to live.”

Les Jones, as I recall, was covering this case for a while.

Texas State University down in San Marcos has been running a hostage negotiation competition.

Now, I was not aware hostage negotiation was a competitive sport. My first question was, “How do you judge this? Number of ‘dead’ bodies at the end?”

During the competition, which continues today , each team works to resolve the same hostage scenario, and judges grade each team using the same criteria, which include composure while negotiating and ability to get terrorists talking during phone calls.

So this is like Olympic gymnastics without the Chinese judges. Good to know.

I’m waiting for next year’s event to show up on ESPN 8, “The Ocho”.