Posted on 06/11/2022 7:08:56 PM PDT by algore
A city in Washington will pay more than $1.5 million to settle a dispute with a former assistant police chief who was disciplined twice for posting a Nazi rank insignia on his office door and joking about the Holocaust.
Former Kent Assistant Police Chief Derek Kammerzell, was disciplined last July for hanging the insignia of Schutzstaffel Opergruppenfuhrer - one of the Third Reich's highest ranks - on his office door in September 2020.
Kammerzell, who had been with the department for nearly three decades, was initially given two weeks of unpaid leave after the incident.
Outraged residents and members of the Jewish community prompted Kent Mayor Dana Ralph to demand a resignation from Kammerzell.
The city's attempt to essentially discipline Kammerzell a second time, by placing him on paid leave and asking him to step down led to a dispute that appeared headed for litigation.
Ralph, in calling for Kammerzell's resignation in January, acknowledged that the decision to revisit the discipline issue would likely 'come at a high cost.' The city said Friday it would pay him $1,520,000 to resign.
Had the city simply fired him, officials said, he likely would have won back his job through arbitration due to federal and state labor laws.
Kammerzell told investigators the insignia was related to the The Man in The High Tower, a TV series that examines what the world might have been like if the Nazis had won the Second World War.
He said he adopted the nickname 'Obergruppenfuhrer' after colleagues began referring to him by the German name that translates into 'senior group leader.'
Kammerzell claimed that at the time he hung the image, he didn't know it was a Nazi rank and instead thought it represented his position as a high-ranking cop with German lineage.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Make that the west coast must be a hotbed of Nazis.
Only thing keeping me in CA is inflation stuck in hell for now.
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