Frank Wilkins joined the Redwood City Police
Department as a patrol officer on April 25, 1988. He progressed through
various positions in that department and was promoted to sergeant on
February 3, 1992 (the fastest promotion to sergeant in the history of
the Redwood City Police Department). During seven of the nine years
Wilkins served with the Redwood City P.D., he served under the tutelage
of Chief Anthony Guardino. In approximately November 1994, Chief
Guardino retired and was replaced by present Chief Carlos Bolanos. In
addition to being placed in charge of the Investigations Bureau for the
department, Wilkins was made acting captain in October 1995, when
Captain Granucci (now chief of the San Carlos Police Department) was
assigned to the F.B.I. Academy in Washington D.C. for training. It
appeared at that time that qualities which were assets in his career
under Chief Guardino now became liabilities. Once praised for being able
to bring up sensitive issues and voice his opinion at staff meetings,
these same qualities of character were now "too assertive."
In January 1996, when Wilkins’ tenure as acting
captain ended, he returned to his position as the day shift Patrol
Division watch commander. During this period, after January 1996,
Wilkins was advised by three separate people that he was under
increasing scrutiny from the chief, and was even told by a person in
upper management to be careful of what he said in private, because
persons that Wilkins had heretofore trusted were relaying his comments
to the chief, who encouraged their efforts. At a Team Building workshop
for upper management, Wilkins was outspoken (the purpose for a Team
Building workshop). Later he was described by the leader of the Team
Building workshop as "articulate and well spoken," however,
his evaluation, which followed the workshop, listed the same conduct as
"emotional, highly critical and an inappropriate outburst."
Just prior to October 1996, Wilkins was advised that
his father’s esophageal cancer had metastasized to his brain. In
response, Wilkins went to Washington state and consulted with his father’s
doctor on October 7, 1996. The doctor told him that his father’s
condition was deteriorating and estimated that his father had between
three-to-six months to live. Wilkins decided that he would take family
medical leave to help care for his father. While initially in Washington
state for four days, Wilkins spent a great deal of time with his mother,
who had been plagued by pernicious anemia for years and was in the
hospital, gravely ill. Wilkins returned to work on October 9, 1996, and
was advised 10 days later (October 19, 1996) that his mother had passed
away in her sleep. He flew his entire family (wife and eight children)
to Washington for the funeral and took a week off on funeral leave,
returning to work on October 30, 1996.
The pressure at work from Chief Bolanos had
continued, which resulted in a complaint by Wilkins to the city manager
on October 21, 1996, of "hostile working environment." In that
complaint, he cited inaccurate and unfair performance evaluations,
hypocritical public versus private persona of Chief Bolanos, and
increased focus on his activities, the warnings received by staff
members, and the label given to him by the chief as not being a
"team player." Wilkins’ complaint was later substantiated,
in part, by the E.E.O.C. investigator, but ignored by the city manager,
who found no evidence of a hostile working environment.
Wilkins packed up his entire family and left for
Washington state on November 9, 1996, to care for his dying father.
The daily routine of life for Wilkins after that was
anything but routine. A three-month blur of hospice visits, his fathers
morphine ups and downs, getting little sleep and watching his father
approach his inevitable death, all took its toll. Wilkins’ father
passed away on Saturday, January 18, 1997, followed by a Thursday
funeral. Wilkins packed up his family and left for the Bay Area on the
following Saturday, since his family medical leave had expired and he
was expected back to work on February 1, 1997.
Before even getting unpacked, Wilkins was back to
work. He felt disoriented and couldn’t concentrate. In the afternoon
of his first day back at work (February 1, 1997) he called Captain
Granucci and told him he would like a few more weeks to
"decompress." He had found out from a co-worker that city
employees had donated over 400 hours of vacation time to him in his
absence. Captain Granucci said he did not see any problems with this,
but to put his request in writing, which he did, and then left work for
the balance of the weekend.
On Tuesday evening, February 4, 1997, at
approximately 5:00 p.m., he received a call from "Beverly" at
Human Resources, who called to say that his leave request had been
denied and that he was due back at work the next morning at 6:30 a.m.
The message was that "The emergency was over when your father
died." This message was given to Wilkins’ wife, who relayed it to
him, when he returned home at about 6:00 p.m. Wilkins then called
Captain Granucci, who repeated the same information, basically
"that the emergency was over when (your) father died." Wilkins
then called Chief Bolanos for assistance and was told, in essence, that
the chief believed that the only reason Wilkins was seeking to take two
weeks off was because when he came to work on Saturday, February 1,
1997, he had found out about the donated vacation and wanted to take
advantage of it. In response to this treatment, Wilkins wrote a letter
to City Manager Ed Everett on February 5, 1997.
Thereafter, Wilkins was granted the two-week leave
requested, but on Tuesday evening, February 18, 1997, at 5:00 p.m., he
was contacted by Captain Vermeer, who told him he need not come to work
the next morning. The reason was that the department was now
"concerned" that Wilkins had been under so much stress that he
needed to be evaluated by a psychologist for his fitness for duty, and
he was ordered to show up at the City Library to be tested the following
Friday (February 12, 1997).
The psychological evaluator was Charles Galbo, Ph.D.,
from San Diego, California (apparently there wasn’t a psychologist
between the Bay Area and San Diego available), who subjected Wilkins to
two hours of testing and a 2 ½ hour interview. Galbo announced that he
had previously done "work for Carlos" (Chief Carlos Bolanos),
when Chief Bolanos was a captain in Salinas, California. Dr. Galbo is
now deceased. Needless to say, Dr. Galbo did not find Wilkins fit for
duty.
Wilkins was then subjected to yet another series of
psychological tests and evaluations. Two weeks after the Galbo
evaluation, on consecutive Saturdays, Wilkins was ordered to see doctors
Louis and Diana Everstine. It is undisputed that there was contact
between the members of the Redwood City Police Department command staff
and these doctors prior to their evaluation of Wilkins, and the command
staff shared with the Everstines’ information from Dr. Galbo’s
evaluation.
Because of Wilkins’ lengthy absence from the
department, the president of the Redwood City Police Officers
Association, and its Board of Directors, conducted a survey of all of
its members (approximately 60 sworn officers), with some of the
questions on the survey coming directly from the purported results from
Drs. Galbo and Everstines reports. On April 24, 1997, Officer Erin
Hogan, president of the Redwood City Police Officers Association, sent a
letter to Chief Bolanos, along with the results of the survey, finding
in favor of Sergeant Wilkins and contradicting any assertion that he was
not fit for duty as their supervisor.
Despite the efforts of the association, Wilkins was
sent a certified, return receipt requested letter on June 3, 1997,
saying that he had been "separated from service." Apparently,
the letter was posted on the bulletin board of the police department on
the same date it was written (two days before Wilkins received it), and
a fellow employee of the department called and told him what it said.
Apparently, the whole department knew about his "separation from
service" before he received the letter.
On July 4, 1997, Sergeant Wilkins was "separated
from service." The city attorney’s position was that since
Wilkins was not being disciplined, but merely "separated from
service," he had no right to any Skelly-type hearing nor any
appellate review. Over Wilkins’ and his counsel’s objections, the
city submitted a Request for Disability Retirement to PERS on behalf of
Wilkins, to which his attorney responded by advising PERS that Wilkins
denied that he was disabled and insisted that he was fit for duty.
After winning a Writ on Mandate in the San
Mateo County Superior Court, the city agreed to allow Wilkins a hearing
under the Administrative Procedure Act on the issue of whether or not he
was or was not "substantially disabled." The hearing took
place before Administrative Law Judge Ruth Astle over a five-day period
during the months of October and November, 1998. Wilkins’ expert
witness, Robert Flint, Ph.D., of Concord, California, testified that
even the city’s own test results on the MMPI-II, for both doctors
Galbo and Everstine, supported Wilkins’ theory that he was fit for
duty. Further, Dr. Flint testified that Dr. Diana Everstine, who
testified for the city, had sent all of the prior MMPI-II’s (Galbo’s,
her own and Flint’s) to a company called Behavior Data, Inc., for
scoring. Dr. Flint discovered that Behavior Data, Inc. was (1) owned
solely by the doctors Everstine; (2) used a normative sample that was
outdated (1969), and not recognized by the test originators in
Minnesota; and (3) this normative sample produced unscientific results.
The administrative law judge ruled in a written
opinion that Wilkins was "not substantially disabled from
performing his usual duties as a sergeant for the Redwood City Police
Department," the magic language. In order to resolve the matter
without Wilkins returning to work at the department, the city paid
Wilkins all back pay and benefits from June 4, 1997, through February
28, 1999, and an amount well in excess of $100,000.00 over and above the
back pay and benefits.
