East Hartford police union sues to resolve long-running dispute over veteran officer’s bid for promotion
East Hartford’s police union has filed a suit against the town in the latest twist in Officer Jason Guerrera’s three-year-long battle for promotion to sergeant.
The complex bureaucratic dispute has gone on since the town conducted a promotional exam in 2019. At issue is whether Guerrera, a 16-year veteran of the police force, has been wrongly shut out of promotions since then.
The dispute was on track to end early next month because the promotional list from the 2019 test expires Sept. 2. But the union is suing to keep that from happening, saying that Guerrera’s right to due process requires the list to stay current for a few months longer.
Hartford Superior Court Judge Susan Quinn Cobb has scheduled an Aug. 25 hearing on whether to grant the union’s request for an injunction to keep the test list active.
The town contends that it is simply trying to keep the police promotion system fair, while the union contends the whole process in the 2019 test was defective from the start.
After extensive delays, Guerrera’s grievance against the town is expected to be reviewed by the State Board of Mediation and Arbitration later this year.
Guerrera is asking arbiters to award seniority points that would place him higher on the list than some of the officers who’ve already been promoted. That would likely give him standing to seek back pay and immediate promotion.
But the board’s power to resolve the dispute could be nullified if the list is terminated before then, according to the union.
“If the list is allowed to expire prior to his seniority points being added the plaintiff may be irreparably harmed by not being properly considered for promotion and the SBMA losing jurisdiction to arbitrate the matter,” according to the lawsuit.
The union’s attorney, Gregory Jones of the Fazzano & Tomasiewicz firm, said Friday that an injunction would keep the list active until the board rules on the grievance.
“Once it expires the SBMA wouldn’t have any more jurisdiction to address the issue of his placement (on the list),” Jones said.
Guerrera and other officers challenged the initial test results through the town’s Performance Appeals Board, claiming the outcome of testing was unfair. Last summer, the town’s Personnel Appeals Board sided with Guerrera and directed the human relations department to add Guerrera’s name to the list.
Town officials said they had autonomy to put him on the list, but without seniority points that would have raised his ranking. The union claimed that once he was added to the list, the rankings fell within collective bargaining. The union disputed how the town ranked the candidates and filed a grievance on Guerrera’s behalf.
The town is waiting for the list to expire so it can conduct a new round of exams to create a new list.
Mayor Michael Walsh emphasized that East Hartford has full confidence in Guerrera’s ability to be a supervisor and is hoping he will take the next exam.
“We’re looking for him to take the exam and become a sergeant — he’s that good,” Walsh said. “What we’re defending is the integrity of the process.”
The Personnel Appeals Board has been involved in a previous long-running controversy with the fire department’s promotional exam, and there is a proposal on the November ballot to change the town’s charter and eliminate the board. It functions similarly to municipal civil service commissions.
Don Stacom can be reached at dstacom@courant.com
