Judge sends ex-police chief Joel Fitzgerald back to starting line in quest for old job
A judge has ruled that fired ex-police chief Joel Fitzgerald cannot sue the city of Fort Worth in order to get his job back.
But he can sue Fort Worth city officials.
“In effect, nothing substantive has changed,” Fitzgerald’s attorney Stephen Kennedy said outside the courtroom after Tuesday’s hearing.
Lawyers will file additional paperwork with the Dallas County court and expect to have another hearing in mid-November when issues surrounding Fitzgerald’s request for reinstatement will be considered, Kennedy said.
Three of those officials who may be named in a new complaint — Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, City Manager David Cooke, and Assistant City Manager Jay Chapa — were in the courtroom for Tuesday’s proceedings.
“We’re going to have to replay second down, so to speak,” Kennedy said.
The order prohibiting the city from hiring a new police chief will continue to be in force and the judge will consider Fitzgerald’s petition to get his job back in November, Kennedy said.
The city is pleased with the way the court ruled and looks forward to Fitzgerald naming a city official in his complaint so the matter can be resolved, a Fort Worth assistant city attorney said.
Fitzgerald filed a whistleblower lawsuit after he was terminated in May. Fitzgerald claims that he was fired because he was conducting an investigation into compliance issues with the city’s crime reporting systems.
The city has maintained that Fitzgerald was fired because of failure to exercise sound judgment and leadership. City officials said that Fitzgerald was fired due to several reasons, including a heated confrontation in Washington and a failed attempt to secure a police chief position in Baltimore.
Confrontation in Washington, other issues
Based on what people who witnessed the incident in Washington told Cooke, he said in May: “There was an incident, nobody disputes that, regardless of how heated it got ... the issue is it was an incident that involved the police chief dealing with an issue that really was a personal issue with the head of the State Association of CLEAT. Our conversations with the chief at different times has been, ‘You are always the chief of police. You are always representing the City of Fort Worth.’ That was probably not the right time to take on that issue.”
During his interviews for the Baltimore job, The Baltimore Sun reported that Fitzgerald overstated his Fort Worth achievements in a résumé he submitted in his application for Baltimore police commissioner.
After the newspaper report, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh postponed community meetings with Fitzgerald, according to the newspaper, citing a family medical emergency for the chief — his son was undergoing brain surgeries. In January, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund called for the mayor to withdraw her nomination of Fitzgerald.
Kennedy has argued that the city has not made records available that are needed to pursue his court case. Kennedy said it is his understanding that the city will need more than six weeks to gather those records.
Fitzgerald is seeking reinstatement to his former position and claims his firing was in retaliation for conducting an investigation into city corruption. Fitzgerald said if he is reinstated, that corruption investigation will continue.
The lawsuit also alleges that the city did not follow its own charter because it denied Fitzgerald a public hearing prior to his firing being made final. The absence of that public hearing invalidates Fitzgerald’s termination, Kennedy argued in the lawsuit.
Fitzgerald is also asking the court for financial relief in the $10 million range, Kennedy said.
Fitzgerald said in a motion filed on Aug. 21 that the city ignored instructions from the court to deliver city officials for questioning and to produce evidence in the case, even though the two parties agreed to exchange evidence.
Fitzgerald alleges that the city has previously destroyed evidence important to his case in the form of instant messages that were transmitted between two employees working in the city’s information technology department.
This story was originally published September 24, 2019 at 1:26 PM.
