Irondale, AL Mayor Orders Polygraphs at City Hall

[mrsb]

If y'all only lived here in Irondale, Alabama to see this mess for yourself!  First of all, it's odd how a mayor's city that is so far in debt WAS willing to spend $200 per test per employee just to railroad a whistle blower after laying off over 30 city employees last year.  Second, can you imagine how the federal government would come down on Mr. A. Allen Ramsey if he did take disciplinary action on a whistle blower?

And I'd just like to say for the record that Mr. Ramsey thinks HE is the city, and not the employees and citizens of Irondale.  If there were no such thing as "power," then Mr. Ramsey would have no interest in the position of mayor whatsoever! (Ooops!  Did I say that?)

[George W. Maschke]

mrsb,

As I recall, Russ Fine mentioned to me that he was amazed to learn that the federal whistleblower protection law offers no protection to the person who disclosed the police report (which is a public record that Irondale had improperly, and perhaps illegally, refused to release).

The polygraph witch hunt Ramsey had ordered -- to find a whistleblower who broke no law -- is indeed an outrage. The city council's public safety committee, which has taken over the hunt for the whistleblower, may yet order polygraph testing. If you are in a position to inform any city hall employees about this website, I hope you'll mention it to them. Anyone ordered to submit to a polygraph interrogation would benefit from reading The Lie Behind the Lie Detector first.

[mrsb]

Dear George,

I am very much in a position to inform city hall employees of this website.  But to keep from being marked here in "Mayberry II," I will only contact one and then let that person *network*.  As a matter of fact, I've been trying to contact that particular person since before I even posted the first time.

Yes, this is an outrage!  It's an outrage that Ramsey's top priority is to discipline a truth-telling-whistleblower rather than to make sure his police department is following departmental procedures and policies so that there is no need for whistleblowing!

[George W. Maschke]

mrsb,

If you have the e-mail addresses of any city employees, you could send them a message through an anonymous remailer. This would protect you from being "marked." You'll find a web-based secure, anonymous remailer here:

https://riot.eu.org/anon/remailer.html.en

An alternate technique would be to create a free, anonymous e-mail account with ZipLip. Unlike most email services, ZipLip does not include your IP address in e-mail messages.

[George W. Maschke]

For an update on the Irondale scandal, see:

http://www.postherald.com/me071103.shtml

Here's an excerpt:

Two Irondale City Council members want some answers -- and perhaps an investigation into their own Police Department.

Councilman Simpson Berry said he has received many inquiries from Irondale residents after questions were raised about an incident in which police say they found a city councilman's son with 3 pounds of what officers believed was marijuana. The 19-year-old son has never been charged in the incident, police and court documents show.

Berry, who said the city of Irondale also is being portrayed in a bad light on local talk radio stations, said he wants to put an end to the controversy by getting some questions answered.

"We want the public to have correct information, and we want the correct information," Berry said Thursday. "Sometimes we can be blinded."

Berry and Councilman Jack Boone called a public meeting for 4 p.m. today to discuss bringing in an outside person to investigate the Police Department.

"There might be some things we all need to know and possibly consider bringing some additional experts in to look at this whole affair," Berry said.

"Just from the council, city attorney and the mayor, we need some other people to come in ... and suggest to us some things that we can do and some things we should have done," Berry said. "Maybe some of us are a little too close to the situation."

...

Berry also said he wanted to discuss the demand by Mayor Allen Ramsey that city employees take lie-detector tests after a copy of the police report was leaked to the media, which led to the Jackson incident coming to light. Ramsey wanted polygraph tests to find out who released the report. He since has relented from the demand.