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PUBLIC NOTICE PAGE 6

 

 

  

 

NO

e+ |PARKING

—

ANY

 

 

 

3

ommendations. If we'd written down everybody's
specifics, we'd of had a hundred page report. Even
our report can't cover what we found out, And what's
killing me is, after it’s all over, I am finding out
more charges now against the Police Department than
I did when I was on the investigating committee.

I had coffee the other night with and five
other policemen. And they were sitting there talk-
ing about charges andI said, "What?" And they
said, 'Did anybody bring this up, blah, blah, blah,"
andI said, ''No, how come you didn‘t bring it up ?"’
And they said, "I'm not gettin in that crap." You
know, people are scared, There again, who's not
scared ?

I: Who were the difficult people to deal with when
you were on the investigating committee, and what
do you think their motives were ?

D: Sanitation. I'd say Sanitation and the Police.
I: They just refused to come before the committee ?

D: Oh, a lot of them. A lot more would have testi-
fied if it'd been under different circumstances. Bu-
ford admitted he knew who testified in front of the
committee. So what do you do?

B: Yeah, I think it became apparent to a lot of
people that while I personally believe all 6 mem-
bers of the committee had the best intentions in pro-
tecting anybody who testified, I think there was still
doubt in some people‘s minds that while, perhaps,
they would like to protect everyone's identity, they
wouldn't be able to,

D: When it came time to investigate management,
the superintendents, Buford Watson, it really wasn't
an investigation. —

 

P. Bohlander

D. Smith

I: Who was your most defensive interview with ?

D: I'd have to say Dick Stanwix (Chief of Police). He
seemed to be the most nervous, the most defensive,
AS a matter of fact, after we interviewed him he
drove straight from the Community Building right out
to the two Commissioner's houses, the ones that were
on the investigation committee. . .he drove right out
there and talked to them after that meeting.

I: Who was the most open?

D: The fire chief. He's open, above board, and
places a lot of faith and trust in his men. He treats
his men as individuals, not as numbers. He treats
everybody on an equal basis.

The chief in the Fire Department even admitted that
the union has gone along with him and so anybody
who's got enough nerve to sit down and listen to his
own people's complaints and gripes and take action
on them has got to be O.K. with me. It shows me
that he doesn't care about the power structure. He
cares about his people. I don’t think that's true in
the other departments, They don't want to rock the
boat, like Phil said. They just want to shut you up
and treat you like dogs, and then you go up to City
Hall...you know, Buford called me up there about
that meeting...

I: What meeting?

D: About three weeks ago Buford Watson called down
to the Sanitation Barn and said, "I want to meet with
Dennis Smith at 2:30 in the afternoon, in my office.”
And I'd just come in and somebody hollered down to
me, "Dennis, you've got a meeting in Buford Watson's
office at 2:30.'' AndI said, "What's it about ?"’ And
he said, ''I don’t know, but the whole City Manage-
ment Staff is gonna be there." AndI said, 'By my-
self?" Andhe saia "Yeah." AndI said, ''I’m not
goin‘. I resent that. '' So he called back up there.

I talked to Don Purdy andI said I want a witness up
there and he said no, AndI said canI have Phil there
and he said no. Attorney ? No. Press? No. SoI went
to the meeting. And the room was arranged ina real
nice fashion, so that I had this special chair. I
walked in the door andI was gonna play dumb and I
started to sit on the couch and George Williams (pub-
lic works director) grabs me around the shoulder

and said, "Oh no, sit over here in this chair. '' So

I had people in front of me, on both sides of me, and
behind my back. And they browbeat me for over two
hours.

I: Who was your most humorous interviewee? Who
seemed to take the whole thing with a grain of salt ?

D: I think Lyle Sutton from the Police Department,

I think he had a good view about the whole situation.
You know, everybody was talking about favoritism on
his shift. But his theory is that the top patrolmen

in his department, or on his shift, or the one who has
top seniority, or the man with the dead-end job, he
gives them preference as to what district they want
and what days off they want, to give them a kind of
bonus when they can’t go any further. I think that’s
alright. Some patrolmen think that that's favoritism,
I don't feel that way. I think that's recognition of a
person who's: been there and doing a job well. So

I think he generally had a good view of everything.

I: Isn‘t it true that the Sanitation Department has the
highest rate of injuries of any City department ?

B: Yes. Fifty-one per cent of all municipal acci-
dents are sanitation injuries. Ona national

level, sanitation work has a 900 per cent higher
accident rate than industry.

I: What do you as workers do to insure that you
don't throw a rider, say, or back over him, or some-
thing like that ?

D: WellI can speak only for myself. WhenI geta
new man on a truck and we first go out on the route,
the first trash can we come to on the route I stop the
truck and get out, I go tothe back of the truck, I have
him stand there, I pick the can up, I show him how to
lift, I get on the truck, 1 show him how to stand, I
show him how to hang on, and then I have to rely

for the rest of it on his ability to be alert, to watch
for limbs, to hang on tighter when you go around a
corner, to be sure your feet are planted pretty
sturdy, so you don't slide under the truck ‘cause
it'll kill you pretty quick. SoI do that with all my
new people. I do it on my own because I figure that
is my responsibility, I'm responsible to those two
men on the back of my truck.

On the management level, when I think about safety

I think more about equipment, about the Sanitation
Barn, about work clothes. The superintendent, as
busy as he is, wouldn't really have time to take a
man aside and show him how to lift a trash can. So

I figure the drivers have to have some responsibility.

I: How long has the city had a safety officer ?

D: I think for about two months, I think they got
one when this all came up.

I: Isn't it only a temporary position though ? Funded
by a federal give-away program ?

D: Yeah, that's pretty funny, because I really didn't
even know we had one until one day the safety direc-
tor came down to the barn and I found out he was
federally funded by the CETA program, and one of
the recommendations of our report is to keep that
man because, in my personal opinion, he is a wonder-
ful person with a lot of good ideas, and I think if they
give him the freedom and power that he should have
he'll correct a lot of these safety problems that we
have.

  
  

  

Ri \ A
I: How often do you get to see him ?

 

D: Once a day.
B: Who's this ?
D

Roger Martin,

B: He comes down to Sanitation a lot, I guess be-
cause we've got most of the accidents and he's been
driving around on routes and talking to workers and
asking them for their suggestions for ways to make
things safer, He's really getting into it,

I: Do you think he's doing a good job?
Bs Yeah.

D: I don't think he's qualified but I think the man’s
got enough pride in his work that he’s gonna do the
best he can to find out what he can do as quick as he
can. I don't know what his goals in life are but
everybody he seems to talk to seems to have a lot
of...he’s just respected,

B: I think people are aware that while he is not
trained as an official safety man he's got the intell-
igence and the research skills to figure out what he
has to know. es

D: Yeah, I think the reason the men feel. .for him
is that he doesn't come there as a power symbol but
he comes down there as a person trying to help them.

B: He just gathers information, there's no value
judgment, there's no intimations that somebody's no
good, he's just strictly gathering information to
figure out ways to improve working conditions to
make them more safe. He gets that across really
easily, so that I have yet to run into anybody who is
suspicious of him.

I: You know, one of your allegations is that super -
visor Don Purdy is too much of a cut-up, too much

one of the boys, Can you document that? Where did
that come from ?

D: That's his way out, that’s his way out of the
allegations made about insulting people's wives. That's
the easy way out. When it comes right down to it

he'll say yes, I did say it, but I was just joking. That’s
the easy way out for anybody. He'll say, Hoye Cah el

said I wanted to screw your wife, but I said it ina
joking manner at seven in the morning, so what?"

I: Why shouldn't a supervisor be "one of the boys ?’'

D: It's O.K. to be one of the boys. You can talk
about fishing or camping, but when it comes down

to personal family problems, when it comes down

to your wife or profanity, *'you son -of-a -bitch, "'

and worse, that's not being one of the boys. It's
O.K, for two laborers to come up and say, "Boy

you got a nice looking wife," or something like that,
but a manager, no, I've never worked in a place
where a boss will come out and say he wants to screw
my wife.

B: Yeah, being "one of the guys" means you're in
the same peer group. Obviously a superintendent
is not in the same peer group as a laborer, And so
you can't really be one of the guys. That's just
common sense.

D: He'd be one of the guys when he zot together with
a group of superintendents.

B: Yeah, if he was sitting there with George Osborne,
(parks department supervisor) and Wiley and Stanwix
having a beer, and they were joking around, he could
be saying things to them that he souldn‘'t be saying to
people under him. It’s like the old phrase, 'Don't
call me boy." IfI go up to Dennis and say, "Hey boy,
I'm gonna slap you, " that's a whole lot different than
if Don Purdy goes up to him and says, "Hey boy, I'm
gonna slap you."

See, if I said that to Dennis he could grab me by my
shirt and say, "If you slap me I'll knock your head
clean off, '' and he couldn't grab Don Purdy and say
that.

D: I got on the commissioners tonight about that
because they kept relating to us as kids, What'd
they call us Phil?