Friday, December 21, 2007
The official says he deserved the reprimand.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN — Though Attorney General Marc Dann’s senior staffers occasionally use colorful language in their e-mails to each other, Leo Jennings III, the office’s communications director, said he crossed the line with one he wrote.
That e-mail led to a letter of reprimand.
“I should have been reprimanded,” Jennings said. “I could have expressed myself better. It was an improper use of language. I absolutely deserved to be reprimanded. I don’t disagree with the decision of the attorney general.”
The Dayton Daily News reported that Jennings sent a Sept. 7 e-mail to Steve Lamantia, then the acting superintendent of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, about the latter’s failure to keep him informed about an investigation into the death of a Summit County inmate.
The newspaper reported that the e-mail read: “Steve the fact that you thought you could go around me to Jennifer Brindisi [an AG spokeswoman] shows what an absolute [expletive] incompetent insubordinate moron you really are. You’ve completely botched this, I know it you know [it] and everyone else is going to know it you coward. If you have something to say to me call me and say it to me you [expletive]. Leo”
Dann, a Liberty Democrat, has used expletives in a few e-mails to his senior staff, and once told a reporter to “go [expletive] yourself” in front of a group of journalists in Boardman.
Jennings said he’s never seen a Dann e-mail that came close to using the inappropriate language he used in the e-mail to Lamantia, the former Howland police chief. Lamantia is no longer the acting head of BCI&I, but is still with the agency helping Robert Fiatal, its superintendent.
After learning of the Sept. 7 e-mail, Dann wrote to Jennings, according to the Dayton Daily News, that the language was “inappropriate, unprofessional and unbecoming of this office” and directed Jennings to “refrain from using such language in communication with anyone in the future.”
Jennings said he and Lamantia had a disagreement, he apologized, it’s been settled and the correspondence between them since this incident has been professional. Also, Jennings said something like this won’t happen again.
While admitting he made a mistake, Jennings said he was bothered that he was discussing the e-mail and the letter of reprimand. There is “substantive stuff” being done by the attorney general’s office that deserves attention, he said.
For example, the issue related to the e-mail was the office’s assistance in investigating the 2006 death of an inmate in the Summit County jail, he said. A grand jury indicted five deputy sheriffs, including one on a charge of murder, in September on charges related to that death.
skolnick@vindy.com