The Court of Appeal reversed a Pelican Bay State Prison employee’s 10% pay cut after it found errors in the state’s disciplinary process against him.
Steven Rodgers was accused of breaking contraband surveillance protocol, directing officers to falsify forms and confronting officers who “ratted” him out by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in a Notice of Adverse Actions. The CDCR recommended a 10% pay cut for two years.
The State Personnel Board found that he had not broken protocol nor directed officers to falsify forms, but that he had lost his temper and violated the CDCR’s conduct code when he confronted the officers.
Despite clearing Rodgers of two of the charges, the Board sustained the pay cut.
Rodgers appealed, arguing that he should not receive the cut after the board’s decision.
The Court of Appeal agreed with Rodgers Sept. 9.
“CDCR claimed Rodgers angrily confronted his subordinates for accurately reporting his refusal to perform the beginning-of-shift inspection. But that is not what the (administrative law judge) found. Instead, the (administrative law judge) found that, having properly discharged his duty, Rodgers angrily confronted his subordinates because he honestly believed they’d wrongly accused him of shirking his duties,” the court said.
Rodgers had been assigned to check an inmate suspected of hiding drugs or weapons in their body. The prison’s protocol is to physically restrain the inmate with leg irons and handcuffs in an isolated cell for either 72 hours or until they excrete the contraband. The inmates are restrained to prevent them from eating the contraband before the staff retrieves it.
Officers are assigned to monitor the inmates every 15 minutes. Rodgers’ job as a supervising sergeant was to conduct a restraint check twice each shift.
Two officers accused him of not conducting the check until two hours into his shift, and of telling them to pencil in that he conducted the check before he did. They then reported this accusation to another sergeant.
The State Personnel Board relied more on Rodgers’ testimony. They found that he had conducted the check only 45 minutes into his shift, at an acceptable point of time, and had confronted the accusing officers because he was angry at being reported, not in an attempt to intimidate them to silence.
The appellate ruling reversed a San Bernardino Superior Court ruling that affirmed the cut.
Brandi Harper of Castillo Harper and Michael Morguess represented Rodgers
San Bernardino Superior Judge Donald Alvarez presided at the trial court.
Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Two, Associate Justice Marsha Slough wrote the opinion, which Presiding Justice Manuel Ramirez and Carol Codrington joined.
San Bernardino Superior Court number CIVDS1921826.
Appellate court number E075803.
Read the ruling here.
