ST. AUGUSTINE BEACH, Fla. -- The local cops in this quaint beach town should be celebrating tonight at City Hall, but a brewing battle between police veterans promises a sobering twist.
Town officials plan to recognize an officer who survived an April shooting and a clerk for her tenure in the 18-member police department. The new assistant police chief also is to be sworn in at the monthly commission meeting.
If fired Assistant Chief Joni Mathis has her way, however, the setting could turn explosive.
Mathis has told commissioners she intends to complain about being the victim of gender discrimination when Chief Richard Hedges fired her in October 2009. Her plans include describing a double standard in disciplining male officers -- including a sergeant counseled for sending cellphone pictures of his genitals to a married woman. Mathis also plans to question other aspects of Hedges' leadership.
Hedges counters that he is an effective leader who fired Mathis for a combination of problems highlighted by an internal investigation of her relationship with an officer.
Mathis said she started out counseling the officer over personal issues and became his lover well after the internal investigation began. The case involved a domestic squabble that erupted when the officer's estranged wife spotted him in Mathis' home in May 2009.
The investigation, the only one by Hedges against Mathis despite saying she had other problems, found her relationship with a subordinate inappropriate. It also found Mathis violated policy by failing to immediately tell Hedges about the dispute.
Hedges described that failure as the "icing" of what he calls his concerns that Mathis didn't consistently relay important matters to him. Mathis blames their communication breakdown on his disrespect for her as a woman. She said she felt her experience and rank allowed her some autonomy, but she said she also told Hedges about important issues.
Hedges denies being a sexist, but a former city commissioner told the Times-Union of hearing Hedges lament over having hired a woman after he decided to fire Mathis. Hedges denies the allegation.
The troubles have divided parts of the Police Department and left one-time friends questioning each other's loyalty. Citizen activist Barry Tuttle, who considers Hedges and Mathis his friends, said he believes Mathis was treated too harshly.
"He could have accomplished it without drawing the blood that he did," Tuttle said.
Tuttle brokered a discussion between Mathis and Mayor Rich O'Brien last week to bring the mayor up to speed on her dismissal. O'Brien declined to comment about the firing but said he considers Hedges a valued leader who wouldn't treat anyone unfairly. "I have never seen any instance of that," O'Brien said.
Commissioner Undine Pawlowski said the controversy "casts a shadow on the city."
"The divisiveness is always a distraction from the real stuff we want to get done," said Pawlowski, who also is an attorney.
An expensive fight?
The problems could be costly: Mathis is awaiting word on a federal gender discrimination complaint she filed nearly two years ago and plans to sue.
"I had made up my mind that I was going to fight it, that it wasn't just going to go away, because it was wrong," said Mathis, 51, now a family mediator.
Hedges blames Mathis for rejecting an appeal to a police review board. She said he tainted the process by meeting with her chosen board member. Hedges said he has no regrets about firing Mathis and doesn't believe she should use tonight's forum to discredit anyone.
"I don't think that's the venue to do it," said Hedges, 56.
Hedges said he treated Mathis as a cop, not a woman, but former Commissioner Edward George said he heard otherwise. George, who helped hire Hedges in 2003, said he went to him as a commissioner to question Mathis' dismissal.
"I'm not making this up. He said to me, twice, ... 'That's what I get for hiring a woman,' " George said. "I was shocked. I said, 'What did you say?' And he said it again."
Hedges' reply: "That may be either a misinterpretation or a fabrication."
Mathis spent 24 years at the Orlando Police Department before retiring as a lieutenant in 2007. Hedges hired her in January 2008 at $60,000 a year.
Mathis said Hedges, a 37-year police veteran, almost immediately began rejecting her attempts to modernize the policy book, evidence room and other areas. She also said Hedges would sometimes ignore her or communicate only by email. Hedges said he supported some of Mathis' suggestions, including improving the policy book improvements, and had an open-door policy.
Hedges said he grew frustrated with Mathis' failure to tell him about important matters and repeatedly told her. She said the only message she got about communication came in her January 2009 evaluation, when Hedges noted, "Be sure to keep the Chief informed of noteworthy incidents."
And then came May 26, 2009.
Marital problems
Mathis said she had been counseling Officer Todd Smith for months over marital problems and other personal issues. She said she considered him a good friend but kept their relationship professional at the time and felt no need to tell her boss.
On that May day, Mathis and Smith said they were sitting on a couch in her St. Augustine living room when Smith's wife appeared. Kelly Smith said she saw them through a glass storm door laying on each other and engaged in a deep kiss, which they both deny.
Smith joined his wife outside and they took their dispute down the street, where someone called police. Officers let them go but wrote a report after learning that Mathis and Todd Smith were cops. St. Augustine's police chief told Hedges that night, but Hedges said he waited for Mathis to call him.
Mathis said she called Hedges the next day but didn't tell him about the dispute. She sought to tell him in person, which she did the following day. Mathis learned then that Hedges had ordered the internal investigation to be done by the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office.
The probe found Mathis violated three conduct-related general orders: Employees shouldn't engage in activity contrary to the best interest of the department or law enforcement; employees shouldn't perform acts which tend to bring the department into disrepute or which interfere with reasonable supervision; and failure to perform the duties of her rank.
Hedges put Mathis on paid leave after the probe began, then unpaid leave and finally fired her.
Smith received a written reprimand for bringing the department into disrepute and a one-day suspension for discussing the investigation with his estranged wife. The couple never got back together. Mathis and Todd Smith said they became lovers in October 2009, just before she got fired.
Undersheriff Joel Bolante of the Sheriff's Office said Mathis' gender had no bearing on his findings against her. "The issue here is the fact that you had an executive officer who had an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate officer the individual commanded," he said.
Cellphone photos
Mathis' poster child in her argument about a disciplinary double standard is Sgt. Joseph Beaudoin, who admitted during an internal investigation this year that he sent cellphone photos of his genitals to a married woman. Her husband saw them and complained.
Beaudoin denies sending the photos on duty or on his city-issued phone, which Hedges said he couldn't prove or disprove. Hedges said he believes the photos were sent by consenting adults. He said that Beaudoin's punishment of counseling for unbecoming conduct was sufficient.
Mathis contends the discipline was unfair since she was fired, in part, for bad conduct.
"There is no female in that department who could photograph their genitalia and not be fired," she said.
Hedges and Beaudoin said the cases couldn't be more different.
"She's using my case in a self-serving manner to help in her case," Beaudoin said.
One person who clearly hopes Mathis finds no sympathy tonight is Kelly Smith, who blames Mathis for destroying her marriage that ended in divorce in July. Smith once drew blood by striking Mathis in the face during a confrontation in April 2010 -- nearly a year after she found her husband in Mathis' home. Smith later pleaded no contest to simple battery.
"It's an outrage," Kelly Smith said of Mathis' relationship with her now ex-husband.
O'Brien warned that Mathis might not even get the chance to speak tonight. Just after the three police recognitions is a fourth presentation involving a dicey land-use issue that O'Brien said could last until he ends the meeting at 10:30 p.m.
The mayor said he will not change the agenda's order for Mathis. She will have to wait for commissioner comments before the public comment period.
Mathis would get three minutes.
Copyright 2011 - The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
