Sheriff Altiere: Termination after hostage ordeal justified

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

The Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office has appealed a ruling by the Ohio Unemployment Compensation Review Commission that made a terminated corrections officer eligible for unemployment benefits.

Documents from the commission contained in the appeal filed Thursday in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court say that corrections officer James D. Millik was terminated for being untruthful about his actions minutes before three inmates took another corrections officer hostage last April.

The hostage situation ended quietly several hours later.

The documents give some details of Millik’s conduct but leave out many others that Sheriff Thomas Altiere and his staff would not provide Thursday.

Millik was placed on unpaid leave last year, but his appeal steps have not been completed, so the part of Millik’s personnel file relating to the hostage ordeal are not being released, said Dan Lester, assistant jail warden.

Millik arrived at work at 3:03 p.m. April 23, 2014, for his 3 p.m. shift on the fourth floor, according to the documents.

Inmates on the fourth floor called Millik over the intercom and asked if they were scheduled for recreation that day, to which Millik said they were not, but they were scheduled for “out of lockdown time.”

“Almost immediately after being released out of lockdown time at 3:16 p.m., the inmates grabbed Joe Lynn, corrections officer, and held him hostage with weapons they had created from sharpened spoons and a pen,” the documents say.

Lynn was not injured. Two of the three inmates were indicted later for their role in the hostage taking.

Maj. Thomas Stewart of the sheriff’s office interviewed Millik on May 20 about the events of April 23, and Millik discussed the intercom conversation, but he told Stewart he did not remember two earlier intercom conversations.

Stewart advised hearing officer Emily Briscoe of the Unemployment Compensation Review Commission during hearings Nov. 25 and Dec. 16 that “the record shows that there were three intercom communications shortly before the hostage was taken.”

The document doesn’t make it clear how jail authorities knew there were three intercom messages, but jail officials have said nearly all activities, such as jail doors being opened, are recorded.

Millik was given a lie-detector test June 10, and the person giving the test, Holly Soltesz, accused Millik of trying to “cheat the test” by “altering his breathing patterns,” documents say.

But Briscoe concluded that the test results might have been affected by the way Soltesz became “agitated” over what she considered cheating, the documents say.

“As such, the hearing officer concludes that the [lie-detector] test is not conclusive proof of [Millik’s] dishonesty,” Briscoe wrote in her Feb. 25 decision.

The allegation of dishonesty was the only reason given for Millik’s discharge, so he was discharged “without just cause,” the ruling said.

Under Ohio law, people can be denied unemployment benefits if they were discharged for just cause, the documents said.

The matter was being forwarded to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to determine how much Millik should receive and how much of the cost will be paid by the sheriff’s office.

Altiere said he can’t discuss the significance of the purported earlier intercom conversations. “In my opinion, he was [terminated] justifiably,” the sheriff said.