Whipped Cream Difficulties

Since we have, in the past, noted cases where Austin Police Department (and Austin Fire Department) officers have won arbitrator’s rulings over disciplinary actions, simple fairness requires us to note this article in yesterday’s Statesman:

When Austin police officers and firefighters have disputed their punishment and taken their cases to outside arbitration, employees have lost that battle more frequently than not, an American-Statesman review of city records shows.

Certainly not the impression I had. However, if you read down a little more in the article…

Arbitrators have upheld 10 of the 23 police disciplinary cases that officers have appealed since Acevedo came to Austin in July 2007.

So if the arbitrators have upheld 10 of 23, that implies they haven’t upheld the remaining 13, right? So is it fair to say “employees have lost that battle more frequently than not”?

In fairness to the author of the article, he goes on to state:

• Arbitrators have overturned only a single police disciplinary case.

• Arbitrators have agreed that officers erred in five cases but reduced their punishment.

My impression is that he’s grouping those as “wins” for the employees. That accounts for six out of 13. What of the other seven?

• Department officials and officers independently have settled five cases, one is pending, and one officer withdrew his appeal.

I think the author is counting the five settlements as “wins” for the city, where I would count a settlement as a “win” for the employee. Reasonable people can differ on this, and I’m not sure there’s enough evidence in the article to resolve that difference. Let’s be fair and count a settlement as a “tie”. By that count, I make it 11-6-5 (counting the withdrawn appeal as a “win” for the city).

Also interesting:

• However, [Art] Acevedo [chief of police] and [Rhoda Mae] Kerr [fire chief] have lost each time they’ve tried to withhold promotions from those who had otherwise met criteria to move up a rank. Arbitrators found they lacked enough reason.