**Also an amusing caricature-type cartoon of him getting booted out the door of the Adrian PD.

When you research you find a lot of similar treatment of employees.

The Huron Township paper – the News-Herald had an article about a female officer who was disciplined much the same way as the nustached officer in STPD. Her hair was touching her shirt collar much to Metzger’s dislike. Apparently, she tried to satisfy him by pulling it up while at work rather than cutting it to the length he preferred. Disciplinary action ensued.

You got that right. It’s screwed up. And it’s the taxpayer and the community that is being screwed along with the police department.

The amount of money the trustees have spent over the last year in grievance procedures, arbitration hearings, pending Unfair Labor Practice hearings and pending trials in Columbus, Ohio, not to mention the hourly lawyer rate spent on the current labor contract which has taken over 12 months to settle and still not signed is ridiculous and irresponsible. The township trustees have hired a law firm out of Cleveland, Ohio – Johnson & Schmidt to represent Sylvania Township and Chief Metzger at every one of these issues, at heaven knows the $$$$ hourly rate.

You can believe it adds up to thousands and thousands of dollars of taxpayer money spent on political foolishness. Selfish police department or selfish politicians??

For any taxpayer who cares – this is all public record. You can see for yourselves how they are really wasting your money.

Ask Dee Liedel, Carol Contrada, or Pam Hanley how much all of this has cost. Will you get a straight answer? No probably more of the same “LONGGGGGGGG explanation.”

As a concerned citizen, I say taxpayers wise up — demand full disclosure of ALL LEGAL FEES.

The Trustees screwed up. Long and short of it – instead of addressing the situation and rectifying it – we’re now seeing the LONGGGGGGGGGGGGG explanation of why it isn’t actually a screw up.

Yeah. It’s a screw up. You can put interviews, you can put all kinds of lipstick on this thing – it’s really a screw up. If you’d have just spent 25 seconds googling this guy – this dialogue wouldn’t be happening. And fyi – alot of us have a hard time with the idea of cops getting their chops busted by a guy with an ego problem. The job they do demands more respect than getting fussed at over the length of a mustache. He’s done this everywhere he’s been. YOU MADE A MISTAKE.

Just fix it and move on. It’s what the rest of us do when we drop the ball.

Dee Dee – Robert Metzger has credibility issues. For police department leadership, that is huge and that is the bottom line.

I don’t care how long and decorated his history is; I understand controversy along the way, but not to the degree of Robert Metzger – his past cannot escape him. When someone is riddled with that much controversy – his word becomes hugely suspect.

A whole police department would not be up in arms if Chief Metzger was only affecting a few people. He is affecting the whole department.

I understand the trustees’ commitment to back up your police chief, to reasonably try to stay out of the way; I understand the desire to avoid the micro-managing game but, unfortunately, you picked a police chief that needs to be micro-managed. Unfortunately, that is what the previous departments found out and, in the micromanaging, Metzger revealed his inability to lead. He revealed his credibility issues.

Those departments made a decision to commit to their officers, their community and pay closer attention. That’s what this department would hope from you – that you could remove your bias, and look at what is going on with a new pair of eyes.

I raise the issue of the background check, again a full and complete background check, because it would have avoided all of this had it been done.

You have never been a police officer. You have no clue how important it is that these men and women can trust their police chief. That trust is severely compromised in this situation. If you think that shady dealings are not going on with that gentleman, if you want to turn a blind eye and stake your reputations on his word alone – then you will have to deal with the fall-out. Robert Metzger’s lies finally catch up with themselves.

My stake in this is simple and clear-conscienced. It is simply advocating for people acting reasonably as people to one another.

I would never have even bothered to begin an investigation of this man if he had not represented himself as someone who blatantly disrespected others, blatantly misrepresented the truth, blatantly listened to falsehoods and hearsay of others, basing his decisions on that, and then took those falsehoods and hearsay to the trustees, misrepresenting people who, ultimately, are dismissed as having any merit to be heard.

The people who work inside that building know a different Robert Metzger than he represents to you. They know someone who is ruthless, someone who undermines relationships, someone who does not use prudent, clear-headed judgment but rather sees in the situation how it will help his cause and his cause alone. They see a person who does not operate within the societal norm of ethics. They see a man who discriminates. These are patterns of behavior that precede him.

I am not one voice, Dee Dee. There is a whole miserable choir singing behind me. My voice and my questioning and concern of this man came long before I even knew there was a choir singing behind me. I was hit in the gut and so my gut went looking to try to understand.

His background is not just one of a man who has been a police chief and “ticked off” some people. His background is one of playing people against each other for his own gain. His background is one of simply negating others and their worth.

No one likes to have their reputation trampled on. No one likes to work all their lives at their chosen profession to have it wiped out in the blink of an eye. No one.

Do you honestly think anyone would be having issues with this man if he had come into that department and operated on fairness, on the matured, sound leadership, the level of leadership he should have reached in the number of years he had been a police chief.

“Metzger’s level” of leadership is not leadership at all. He is what has come to be known as toxic leadership. A leader who is passed along from one unwitting department, one after another–each one “allowing for a neutral reference” and, thereby, allowing for that toxicity to spread and bleed into the next unwitting department.

Metzger took the police chief position in Adrian PD and lasted 2-1/2 years (not 3 years) when they asked him to leave for the very things he is doing in Sylvania Township – but – what’s really sad – is that what he is doing in Sylvania Township is by far worse than what he did there. The difference – the Adrian administration demonstrated a reasonable and prudent sense of impartiality – they had a respectful sense to look out for their police officers – they did not give Metzger the keys to the kingdom and turn their backs. They had the sense to look into things when they became aware of Metzger’s subjective leadership practices; practices they wisely knew would disrupt a police department; practices they knew would elevate distrust in a police department; practices they knew, if continued, had the potential to ruin a police department.

You tell me Dee Dee Liedel – where could a police officer or a public employee go to report an ethics violation without fear of retaliation?
Who amongst Dee Dee Liedel, Pam Hanley, Carol Contrada, Hugh Thomas, Chief Robert Metzger, or even Deputy Chief Robert Boehme – who could they rely on fully, without question, to carry them through with the belief they would still have a job in that township, that they would not be facing retaliation and retribution in the aftermath. Who in that group could possibly offer them a safe place to land?

Why do you think employees grieving to the union has gone up in numbers? They have nowhere else to go. Some of them don’t even grieve to the union because they see what has happened to the ones who have. They see how long the grievance process is dragged out and are unsure if their coping skills could carry them through. Those people remain silent, remain fearful; they work in a state of stress and distress.

That is what they have been subjected to in a Chief Metzger leadership. That is what they have been subjected to in a Liedel, Hanley, Contrada administrative leadership. Unless you show them differently. That is why I harp on the goodness of those employees – because, apparently, you all have forgotten that.

Rather, I think it is time to ask direct questions and hope for direct answers.

I’m looking for the direct questions and I don’t see any, although I’ll repeat myself in making a few comments.

Those officers were concerned about information gathered in a quick internet search of this candidate, and that’s all it took, one quick Google, to produce enough brow-raising elements of controversy to raise more than one red flag. In fact, they wanted you to slow down, to hold off on any offer until a complete and thorough background check could be performed—which, again, Nate Ford offered to do.

Comments were made about a situation we already knew about. What more was there to investigate? If you think people of Metzger’s level (or any high ranking public official) doesn’t have issues in the past or recent past because of POLITICS … that’s just not reality. yes, Ford offered to do a background check. But did he really think one needed to be done? No, because he understood as did we how politics and the media plays in to stuff like this.

Reality is that a few police officers came to us wanting to control the hiring of a new police chief just like they have controlled and manipulated the separation from service and hiring of numerous past police chiefs resulting in 6 chiefs in 10 years.

… irresponsibly decide to simply not do a serious background check? To just take him at his word?

As I said, a background check was done on him. If someone wants to come to us with something that we didn’t know about that negatively affects his performance or negatively reflects on the township, give me that. But that’s not what we’re talking about, we’re talking about a situation that we knew about.

And I have to add, the church situation that MT mentioned in #3? Give me a break; he was doing his job – enforcing the law. It was the decision of the trustees (or whoever the elected officials are in Michigan townships) to go after the issue with the church; Metzger was just enforcing the court order. That’s not a power trip, that’s doing his job.

Lives have been tumbled upside down, longstanding reputations and careers have been carelessly tarnished. …
There are still arrows in my quiver I have not taken out. They still need a little encouragement.

You’ve been threatening these other arrows for a while now; if you have something make it public. As I said, our officers have the ability to keep personnel issues private. But if someone wants to make this stuff public, I have no problem responding to it with all of the information available.

I am not going to dance around words. Rather, I think it is time to ask direct questions and hope for direct answers.

Dee Dee Liedel said: “So many arrows flung at us, let me respond to a few.”

In response to the arrow flinging comment—those flying arrows came from the township initially. I am just playing catch-up.

Therefore, in defense of my own arrow flinging, it is simply self defense. I am tired of the politics. I am tired of the politicians staging what they want the public to know and hiding behind politically correct phrasing to hide what they don’t want them to know.

I quickly or, not so quickly, realized I was playing on an unfair playing field—one in which you, the township administration, have had a free-range freedom of speech to catalogue your battle in public – namely one Toledo Blade. All along it has been nothing but “chalk one up for the township.”

Therefore, I had to take my battle to the blogs and, fortunately for me, I too have a few arrows in my quiver, most of which are not meant to wound people but more to take aim at righting a wrong.

Dee Dee Liedel said: “To make the Ford report sound as if everything was glowing except for low morale is disingenuous…”

There was really nothing at all “disingenuous” about my pointing out the portion of Nate Ford’s report aimed at his discovery of the kind of employees that worked, and still do work, for the Sylvania Township Police Department. I did not in any way misrepresent his “glowing” comments about those police officers and employees.

Furthermore, I never claimed to offer up a full representation of the entire Nate Ford report. I did what I did because the employees were being misrepresented in the press, in a way I found lacking truth and therefore, disingenuous.

I know there were other issues that needed attention, all noted within the body of that report and even that the department was not glowingly perfect, but I also know it didn’t require a stick of dynamite to fix what needed to be fixed.

Which brings us back again to that word—“disingenuous,” and a concerning statement you made in your blog that requires further questioning.

Dee Dee Liedel said: “The union presidents unanimously came back to us supporting Metzger as their choice.”

That statement is simply not true.

Do you recall at least two of the officers coming to you with serious reservations about Chief Metzger? Do you recall your adamant response? There was no unanimous endorsement of Chief Robert Metzger. Those officers were concerned about information gathered in a quick internet search of this candidate, and that’s all it took, one quick Google, to produce enough brow-raising elements of controversy to raise more than one red flag. In fact, they wanted you to slow down, to hold off on any offer until a complete and thorough background check could be performed—which, again, Nate Ford offered to do.

You, Dee Dee Liedel, said, “No.” (That was your vote.)

Then, Pam Hanley said, “No.” (That was her vote.)

In fact, Pam Hanley even went so far as to say she would “not subject him to a background check.”

Not subject him to a background check???

Is it disingenuous to say she barely knew the man?

Apparently, this man that you barely knew, at some point, separate from the officers’ ears, told you a story you could believe and that was simply good enough. And, for whatever reason, his stories have been simply good enough ever since.

When you preach concern of safety for the Sylvania Township community, which I might remind you, your peacekeepers take very seriously, how is it then that you can bring a man into the community to take the highest level position in the police department and, in the end, irresponsibly decide to simply not do a serious background check? To just take him at his word?

A limited amount of “Googling” for a person with limited amount of investigative skills yielded an awful lot in the negative column for Chief Robert Metzger back in 2006/2007. It’s a little buried now, but if you know where to look you can find it.

In the end, though, you hired a police chief with compromised credibility because you voted not to do that serious, righteously and prudently reasonable background check when uncompromised credibility should have been the highest priority in your selection of police chief.

A police chief with no credibility IS a stick of dynamite.

Lives have been tumbled upside down, longstanding reputations and careers have been carelessly tarnished. I took such strong issue with being misrepresented to the public as so many “bad apples” because I have seen a real representative of law enforcement laid out in unethical treatment at the hands of the real bad apple.

All because you “refused to subject him to a background check.”
We deserve those answers and not in so much political round-about talk that you try to talk us right out of knowing what you really did, how you really did it and why you really did it.

The arrows are coming your way because your actions have been suspect and we need answers.

There are still arrows in my quiver I have not taken out. They still need a little encouragement.

I would attribute this comment to Chief Metzger. If there are any ‘bad apples’ in the Sylvania Township PD, why haven’t charges been filed?

Chief Metzger has a history of conflict which he’s bringing to Sylvania Towhship. Moreover, involving union officials into the hiring practice is not the same as having the applicant meet and interview with the officers in the department.

They really let their constituency down. And it was an irrational conclusion – what is it that this man could have said to overcome the elephant(s) in the room during the interview process?

The sad part is that the Township – correct me if I am wrong – has not been a criminal hotbed. So if it’s not broke what in the world are these Trustees doing trying to turn the Police Dept’ in the Township into an ‘urban’ force?

Ridiculous.