Suspended PBPD clerk has pay restored after hearing

A police clerk suspended for 10 days without pay after clashing with her superior had half her lost pay restored on appeal this week.

Devon Savage Bolden was suspended Jan. 18 for subordination after an incident with her superior, Lt. Shirley Warrior, on Dec. 12. Warrior had told Bolden to leave her office door open following a dispute between the two. Bolden objected, stating, “you passed by here earlier and didn’t say anything why are you saying something now,” according to Warrior’s account of the incident. Bolden was “confrontational,” closing the door several times while Warrior re-opened it. Warrior left and returned soon after.

“She said, ‘You’re gonna need to get your things and go,’” Bolden told the Administration Committee Wednesday. “I said, ‘I’m not going to go anywhere. I have things to do.’”

Interim Police Chief Ivan Whitfield asked to meet with Bolden after speaking to Warrior. When told that Whitfield wanted to see her, Bolden said “the city like paying money out,” according to Warrior. “They want this I’m going to give it to them.”

Bolden was interviewed by Whitfield, who was then the assistant chief of the department. Bolden “admitted that she was wrong by her actions but felt Lt Warrior was wrong for opening the door the way she did,” according to a memorandum Whitfield sent to then-Police Chief Jeff Hubanks.

Whitfield said he has told all clerks that if what they are directed to do by a supervisor is legal, “just do what is requested a[n]d write a memo to me. Mrs. Bolden failed to carry out a legal directive given by Lt. Warrior.”

On Jan. 18 he suspended Bolden for 10 days without pay. Bolden, an employee at the department since 2009, has been suspended twice before for insubordination after incidents with superiors. She received a three-day suspension in December 2014 and a four-day suspension in October 2015. The second suspension was overturned upon appeal to the Administration Committee.

Bolden appealed the Jan. 18 suspension as too severe for the offense. She took issue with the suspension being issued more than a month after the incident, and said she was transferred to a night shift after the dispute.

She also took offense at advice and language used by Whitfield in his original interview with her. Whitfield told her that in an argument with a superior, “you can’t win,” Bolden said. He also explained there was a “pecking order” at the department, which she objected to.

“I’m familiar with what a pecking order is, and I don’t feel like that should ever be used in a professional setting anyway,” Bolden said.

Alderman Lloyd Holcomb, Jr., a member of the Administration Committee, asked what a pecking order is.

“They use that with hens in the hen house,” Bolden said. “From what I read, it was a sign of bullying. You beat the person down that’s under you.”

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a pecking order is defined as either “a social hierarchy”; or “the basic pattern of social organization within a flock of poultry in which each bird pecks another lower in the scale without fear of retaliation and submits to pecking by one of higher rank.”

Whitfield told the Administration Committee the formal punishment for insubordination is to fire the employee, “but I was not going to terminate her.” He waited until January to suspend her out of compassion, he said, because Bolden has children and he did not want to suspend her during the Christmas season.

He said she had misunderstood his message during the interview.

“I might have said [‘pecking order’],” Whitfield said. “But what I mean, there’s a way we do things, through your supervisors, through your officers.”

Earlier on the day of Dec. 12, Bolden was reprimanded for taking a report from a citizen in the police department lobby instead of a private room, but Whitfield said that incident did not play a role in her suspension. Bolden said she did so because the citizen had very strong body odor.

After calling an executive session, the Administration Committee of Holcomb, Alderman Steven Mays and Alderwoman Thelma Walker voted to restore Bolden’s pay for five days of the 10-day suspension, which she already served.