STATE TROOPERS Decision puzzles monitors

A bargaining impasse could hamper efforts to prevent future problems.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- The decision by the state troopers union to force arbitration over discipline guidelines "is puzzling" in light of previous statements that supported reforms to prevent sexual misconduct, according to a consultant's report being released today.
Kroll Associates Inc., hired last year to monitor the state's response to the state police's sexual-misconduct scandal, said improvements have been made but warned an impasse in bargaining over a new union contract could hamper efforts to prevent future problems.
"Since the negotiation of the guidelines has not been concluded and no agreement has been reached, and since the goal of restoring the public's confidence in the [state police] has likewise not been achieved, [we] would assume the [Pennsylvania State Troopers Association] would want to keep negotiating," the Kroll monitors wrote.
The 56-page report, obtained in advance by The Associated Press, is the third of four quarterly evaluations Kroll was hired to produce.
Complaints reviewed
Patterns of sexual misconduct within the department were brought to light by federal lawsuits concerning Michael K. Evans, a trooper who pleaded guilty to sex crimes in 2000. The state recently settled those claims for $5 million.
Inspector General Donald L. Patterson's own review concluded that many of the 163 sexual-misconduct complaints lodged from 1995 to 2001 were mishandled. He has called the department's discipline system lax and inconsistent.
Representatives for Gov. Ed Rendell and the 4,200-member union met this summer to refashion discipline procedures as part of negotiations for a new collective-bargaining agreement, but the union broke off talks a month after the four-year pact expired July 1.
Union president Sgt. Bruce Edwards said his members don't want the administration to be able to impose immediate unpaid suspensions for such noncriminal offenses as sexual harassment or misconduct and lying during an administrative hearing.
"Our concern is the fairness and justness of it and the protections of members' rights and due process. And also coming up with what both sides feel are fair penalties for different types of infractions," Edwards said.
But Kroll's report called the union's decision to stop bargaining over discipline "at odds with the spirit, if not the letter" of a letter from Edwards to Rendell in October 2003 that promised cooperation.
New contract
A panel of three arbitrators is expected to rule on a new contract by the end of the year. The union has already put its case before the panel; the administration began to present its own case last week and will continue for three more days over the coming two weeks, after which both sides will have a day of rebuttal.
"I would characterize this as, we're at a crossroads here," said Adrian R. King Jr., Rendell's deputy chief of staff. He said the concessions the administration seeks will help rehabilitate the department's tarnished image.
"Just because somebody has not been convicted of a crime doesn't mean that they have not engaged in conduct that arguably should exclude them from being a police officer," King said. "If the department wants to claim -- and the union certainly supports this -- that the troopers are exceptional, that their integrity and their discipline is without match, then we have to live up to that standard."
King wants to restart talks solely on discipline guidelines, but Edwards said the union will wait for the results of arbitration.