I wanted to take a moment and comment on the article titled, “Baker City Police detective remains on paid leave.” I first want to clarify that I have neither heard nor seen any evidence, from either side of this situation, other than what the DA was quoted as saying during the early stages of the investigation. What I do want to talk about is administrative leave and what it is intended for.

I too find it a travesty that the citizens of Baker City are paying for an employee to not do their job for this length of time. What I find is a bigger travesty is having any employee, much less one with over 20 years of dedicated service to the citizens of Baker City, sitting at home each day for the past 7 months not knowing what decisions are going to be made about their future.

I was taught that administrative leave was intended as a tool that could be employed to protect the city and the employee while a prompt, thorough investigation was completed to determine if policy and/or criminal violation(s) were committed by an employee. What it was not intended for is a means of placing an employee on leave for an indefinite amount of time while a bureaucracy tries to figure out how to settle a matter. That isn’t fair to the city, the department, the citizens or the employee.

What you are seeing is the result of a lack of leadership. There is absolutely no rational reason for this investigation to have lasted for 7 months and counting. During my career I placed numerous employees on administrative leave. Although I don’t remember the exact timeframes, you’d be hard pressed to find an employee who was on leave for more than 1 or 2 weeks at the most, whether it was an in-house investigation or outsourced to another agency. I will bet that you could contact Ontario, La Grande and Pendleton Police departments and find similar timeframes for personnel investigations.

It’s past time for Chief Duby and City Manager Cannon to start rattling cages, whether it be at the Department of Justice or the District Attorney’s Office and get this matter settled. You owe it to the citizens of Baker City and especially to your employee.

Wyn Lohner

Retired Baker City Police chief