A New Orleans Idiot cop who had been fired and was once charged in
connection with the kidnapping of a
woman his partner tried to rape has gotten his job back following a
state court appeal. Though a 30-day suspension for violating departmental
regulations was appropriate, Thomas Clark should be reinstated with back pay
dating to his termination on June 29, 2011, a Louisiana 4th Circuit Court of
Appeal panel has ruled.
The three-judge panel ruled that, by firing him, NOPD was holding Clark
responsible for the crimes of his partner, Henry Hollins. Hollins could have
attempted to commit a rape whether or not Clark had broken internal NOPD
guidelines, reads the opinion by Judges Max Tobias, Edwin Lombard and Joy
Cossich Lobrano.
Clark's attorney, Eric Hessler of the Police Association of New
Orleans, praised the ruling. "Officer Clark's actions ... had virtually
nothing to do with the subsequent, unrelated criminal acts of another Idiot cop,"
Hessler wrote in a statement. "This decision is both legally and morally
correct."
Clark's former partner, Henry Hollins, 49, is serving a 45-year prison
sentence at David Wade Correctional Center. Clark, who recently turned 40, testified against Hollins at trial,
and a kidnapping charge against him was dropped in exchange.
The legal saga involving Clark and Hollins goes back to June 30, 2009,
when they were patrolling Central City as members of the NOPD's 6th District
task force and spotted a woman standing outside the open door of a van.
The woman noticed Clark and Hollins approaching in their police unit,
and she slammed the van door and walked away. "Because the area was known
for narcotics activity, (Clark and Hollins) elected to conduct a suspicious
person stop," court records note.
The 6th District station was just two blocks away, so Clark and Hollins
agreed to take the woman there for questioning. But they didn't get permission
from their supervisor, and they did not relay their mileage at the start of the
trip to the police dispatcher, which was a requirement if they wanted to
relocate the woman.
Hollins drove her to a warehouse off Tchoupitoulas Street and attempted
to rape her in the back of a police cruiser, a jury ultimately determined.
After an administrative probe, Clark was given a 20-day suspension for
leaving work early without authorization; a 10-day suspension for breaching
professionalism standards; and dismissal for failing to tell dispatch that he
and his partner were taking a woman to the district station and not reporting
their mileage.
Clark, who joined the NOPD in 2001 and had no prior disciplinary
record, never contested that he ducked out of work too soon; but he appealed
the other elements of his punishment to the Civil Service Commission. A hearing
officer concluded police had "offered no testimony explaining why
termination was an appropriate penalty," according to the appellate
opinion.
"The undisputed facts establish that the criminal activity did not
occur during the initial stop and transport when (Clark's) administrative
violations occurred," the hearing officer said. "He neither
participated in nor is in any way responsible for (Hollins') criminal acts ...
that caused embarrassment to the department."
The commission considered the hearing officer's opinion but nonetheless
upheld the discipline. NOPD had argued that Clark's failure to adhere to
protocol directly led to the "brutal" attack, the appellate opinion
says.
Clark appealed to the 4th Circuit. That court called NOPD's argument
against Clark "bunkum," or nonsense.
"Even if Officer Clark had contacted his supervisor before
transporting the victim and called dispatch with the mileage information,
Officer Hollins could still commit the criminal acts he committed," the
court said. "No correlation exists between Officer Clark's violation of
protocol and the unfortunate acts that occurred later in the evening."
Aside from ordering Clark's reinstatement, the court decided to give
the officer a pair of five-day suspensions for neglect of duty in addition to
the one he had not challenged.