Mandopoulos, Warren chief, leaves lessons to be learned

Mandopoulos, Warren chief, leaves lessons to be learned

The tenure of John Mandopoulos as Warren police chief is a testament to how bad things happen when too much weight is put on a civil service test. While test results are important, one person’s outscoring another by a few points should not put someone as ill suited as Mandopoulos at the head of the department.

Over the years, Mandopoulos had shown a pattern of open disrespect for mayors and members of city council, and that pattern continued through his nine years as chief. Indeed, it was his inability to resist hassling yet another member of the administration, this time the city’s human resources director, Gary Cicero, that was his undoing.

No real surprises

Mandopoulos’ behavior would have come as no surprise to former Mayors Arthur Richards and Hank Angelo, or to the present mayor, Michael O’Brien. Mandopoulos had been suspended for three days back in 1977 for a verbal attack on Richards, when Mandopoulos was president of FOP Local 34.

In 2000, when then-Capt. Mandopoulos was named to succeed Chief Albert Timko, Mandopoulos was on orders from Timko not to go into City Hall because Timko feared a clash between Mandopoulos and Angelo. Three years later, Angelo suspended Mandopoulos for 10 days for misconduct. The chief threatened to sue Angelo for filing false charges against him, but the suspension was upheld by the civil service commission.

Just last year, Mandopoulos was given a choice of accepting a 30-day suspension without pay, or writing an apology for remarks he made to Councilman at-large Dan Crouse. He apologized.

There is not space enough in this column to recount all the disputes Mandopoulos had with a mayor, a safety-service director or a council member over the years. Not to mention the need for U.S. Justice Department intervention when Mandopoulos refused to take citizen complaints seriously.

Not that Mandopoulos didn’t have his strengths. Many in his department consider his support for them to be unqualified, and they return his loyalty. But overall, he set a bad example.

It isn’t a surprise that far too often some of his police officers got the impression they could push or go beyond the line. If Mandopoulos could mug for the camera during a raid on a troublesome night club on Youngstown-Warren Road, why couldn’t one of his officers use a racial slur at the same time? It is no accident that during Mandopoulos’ tenure far more officers than would be expected for a department Warren’s size found themselves involved in investigations. Misconduct ranged from attempting to profit on guns a citizen wanted to get out of her house, Tasering and kicking a drunken woman, or doing personal shopping or attending basketball games while on duty.

The true shame is that the majority of police officers who report to work and make every attempt to do the best job they possibly could — in other words those who didn’t take their cues from Mandopoulos — don’t get the positive recognition they deserve.

A final grab

It is a final measure of Mandopoulos’ meddle that when the time came for him to resign or be fired, he could not simply go gracefully into the night. He had to wring every last cent he could from the city.

Mandopoulos will remain on sick leave and at full pay for four full months. He negotiated a separation payment worth nearly $120,000 for unused sick leave, compensatory time and vacation time. We’re not impressed that he agreed to take his bounty in three payments so as not to overtax the city.

Based on his salary in recent years of more than $80,000 and his 37 years of service, Mandopoulos will receive an annual pension of about $65,000. That’s our conservative estimate using PERS tables. A public servant who showed himself incapable of controlling his temper in so many ways over the years should have been content to take his $5,500 a month and go away. But that’s not Chief Mandopoulos.

In a city struggling with layoffs, a city where his patrol officers have agreed to wage freezes, Mandopoulos had to grab another $120,000 on his way out the door.

Warren’s residents can only trust that there will be better leadership and better days ahead.