NY corrections officers disciplined for fighting over bag of chips

NY corrections officers disciplined for fighting over bag of chips

Officer Lawrence Mule will serve a 60-day suspension without pay; Officer James Conlin will be suspended without pay until he retires

By Matthew Spina
Buffalo News

ERIE COUNTY, N.Y. — Here's how the chips fell Monday with two Erie County corrections officers accused of fighting while on duty, apparently over a bag of potato chips:

Officer Lawrence Mule will serve a 60-day suspension without pay. He has signed a "last-chance" agreement stating he can be fired for any additional misconduct. He must complete an anger-management program, and he waives his right to take his discipline to arbitration.

Further, when he returns from suspension, the Sheriff's Office can assign him to other housing units aside from the Yankee Building, where the fight occurred. Officers at the Erie County Correctional Facility are allowed to bid on their preferred assignments based on seniority.

*Officer James Conlin will be suspended without pay until he retires in late June. He will not return to duty at the County Correctional Facility in Alden, Undersheriff Mark N. Wipperman said.

"We are confident that the timeliness and level of the discipline administered in this case will send a clear message that this type of misconduct will never be tolerated in the Sheriff's Office," Wipperman said after a disciplinary hearing Monday with the two officers and their union representatives.

"We hold the public's trust and confidence in the highest regard, and we will do whatever it takes to maintain it. This incident was extremely embarrassing and upsetting," he said.

Other corrections officers had speculated the two would be fired, but the Sheriff's Office has been losing such termination cases in arbitration hearings.

Arbitrators want to see "progressive discipline" as employees are punished for wrongdoing, and the bizarre episode involving Conlin and Mule had apparently been rare for both men. Wipperman called the disciplines appropriate for the circumstances.

A fight, or what some called a shoving match, erupted between the two April 21 in the Yankee Building, which houses inmates but is across the street from the main county Correctional Facility campus in Alden.

Officers who asked to remain unidentified said a bag of chips somehow sparked the fight. In another bizarre twist, an inmate who told internal investigators that he didn't want to see the men fired was injured trying to break up their encounter.

Wipperman had refused to confirm that potato chips were at the center of the confrontation but agreed the men started arguing over "the dissemination of food products." Still, he promised swift discipline and after the hearings Monday said it was time to move on toward continued improvements in the county's Jail Management Division.

Both Conlin and Mule declined to comment publicly when contacted by The Buffalo News in recent days. Joan Bender, the head of the union that represents the officers, Local 815 of the Civil Service Employees Association, confirmed that the men surrendered their right to arbitrate the discipline but also said she felt media reports had blown the matter out of proportion.

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