Clay Times Journal
Former chief files suit against Ashland
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Former Ashland Police Chief Derrick Forbes has filed a lawsuit against the city.
Forbes' attorney, Greg Varner, said the gist of the lawsuit is that the city failed to pay Forbes for overtime and comp time he had while he worked for the city.
Varner advised the suit is being filed based on the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Meanwhile, the city's basic argument is that the chief's job is a salaried post and is not subject to the conditions imposed by the Fair Labor Standards Act.
A summary judgement hearing is set for Monday at Clay County Courthouse in front of Circuit Judge John Rochester. After the hearing, the judge will rule if there is enough merit in the case for it to go to court. If not, he can dismiss the suit at that time.
Ashland Mayor Terry Turner basically confirmed what the attorney had said.
He added depositions were taken from City Clerk Charles Foster, all five City Council members and himself.
"We are denying the claims for overtime and comp time,"_Turner said.
He also noted he had worked thousands of hours of overtime when he was chief of police and other positions of law enforcement and had not asked for or been compensated for them.
"If the judge rules in our favor, then it's over. If he rules against us,"_the case will go to court.
The next session of Circuit Court is slated for February 2009.
I went to high school with Derrick Forbes and smoked lots of weed with him at parties we both attended. He was one of the hardest partiers in high school. Everyone was shocked when he chose law enforcement as a career and we were beyond disgusted when one of the first things Derrick did after becoming a cop was to arrest his long-time best friend for a little weed. I mean....what a total piece of shit!
Derrick went on to become police chief of Ashland and was fired when pictures of him posing naked with naked women and with drugs that had been seized turned up on his work computer. Somehow he avoided prison time and apparently even basic charges for possession and for raiding the evidence room and is now a cop in either Hoover or Pelham...I can't recall which. Don't you just love the hiring practices of police forces in Alabama? Man....must be nice to fuck up so big time and still land a job where you get to carry a gun and rob other people of their hard earned weed.
I hope Mr. Forbes loses the case. It's a real shame there can be no prosecution for him being such a piece of shit.
2 comments:
Loretta ---
WOW! While we are not immune to corruption here in MoTown -- as evidenced by our ex-mayor being a multiple felon awaiting sentencing and a former police chief sent to jail for bribery -- this is "beyond the pale" so to speak.
Mike
My two cents:
Unless it was written into the contract...agreed to before hiring...then you can forget about overtime. Most towns have a standard contract for these jokers which lays out the "bonus" (your traffic ticket scheme) and your monthly pay.
What you typically see is some joker who can't get hired on with a real police force (Mobile, Huntsville, etc)....so they go to some small town and try to hustle up extra cash and build their networking skills. Most of these guys are failures in life...and this law enforcement game is how they "bully" like they did as a kid.
From my hometown in Bama...which shall remain nameless...the local cop of a dozen years finally quit last year (he was to be fired). The guy was taking home all the ticket money...then rigged up the clerk who basically tossed out tickets as the dimwits paid their fine and he learned how to keep the entire amount of the ticket. The mayor eventually figured this out.
This guy went ten miles away and got a four-lane ticket scheme...and this year ran for mayor (last week, they had the election...and he won). The town has $200k in their bank account.
Since leaving town...the new cop has arrived and become the biggest thorn in peoples sides. This guy has three auxillary part-timers who rig up road-blocks and various bully schemes. Half the town want the cop gone and the young "bulls" terminated.
If we talked to Bama folks as a whole....the majority in small towns would prefer to see their cops fired or gone. The larger towns have a process of getting more qualified folks and will fire very quickly if they have issues. The state really needs some kind of program to dump about half the cops in the state...who are corrupt.
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