Fired Canton Cop Requests Hearing

In a letter formally appealing his termination as the city's assistant police chief, Todd Vande Zande asked that the Canton City Council assign a hearing officer "who does not report to the City Manager" to oversee the appellate process.

City clerk Susan Stanton released the letter this morning, one day after the council went into executive session to discuss "possible litigation" against the city. The council did not return from that closed session to make any formal statements to the public.

Previously, the city's attorney has denied that City Manager Scott Wood had any involvement in Vande Zande's termination.

"It is my understanding that the City Manager had no input or role in deciding to terminate Mr. Vande Zande, and therefore the purported basis for any legal claim would not be true," Bobby Dyer wrote in an email on Aug. 6.

But Vande Zande has always refuted that.

"In my tenure and personal experience as an assistant department head with the City of Canton, the city manager has been involved in personnel decisions including the decision to terminate employees," Vande Zande wrote in the new letter, dated Aug. 10. "His insistence that he be consulted on any decision to suspend or terminate an employee was unequivocal. The notion that the City Manager was not involved in the decision to terminate my employment as an assistant department head is contrary to the standing practices at the City of Canton."

He claims that Wood fired him him because he refused to comply with the city manager's alleged order to run "an illegal background check" on community service worker Bill Bradley.

During the 10-minute public input period of the March 15 council meeting, Bradley accused Wood of being dismissive when he reported public works director Dave Cangemi for alleged misconduct.

"I was met with hostility," Bradley told the council at the meeting. "I was asked what I did for a living so this man could gauge my personality and my character. There was no empathy. There was nothing. I was dismissed and I was told I was looking for a lawsuit, which is ridiculous."

Wood, who gave Cangemi a letter of reprimand for calling Bradley a 5-letter expletive and an employee gay, said the "matter was addressed professionally, authoritatively, and conclusively immediately upon my learning of it on December 29, 2011."

Not so, according to Vande Zande, who claimed the city manager requested he violate "state law and my oath of office," and run a background check on Bradley.

Georgia law authorizes the dissemination of someone's criminal history for non-law enforcement purposes, John Bankhead, the spokesman for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, told Canton-Sixes Patch in April when Vande Zande first leveled the allegations against Wood.

While he could not comment on Vande Zande's claims specifically, he said: "The request to run a criminal history is not illegal. What can be a felony crime under Georgia law is the dissemination of criminal history record information that is not a public record.

"I guess a city official could ask, but running a criminal history would have to be for law enforcement purposes only unless it (is) for a felony conviction which is a public record."

The Wood-Vande Zande partnership was an acrimonious union that played out on television in April when WSB-TV aired a report about a March 15 traffic stop involving Wood.

Until that news report, the city said nothing about the stop, which led to the voluntary resignation of the officer and disciplinary action against Wood. The officer who stopped Wood turned off his microphone during the last portion of the stop, a violation of department policy.

After the story aired, Vande Zande defended the officer, but criticized Wood, who has oversight of the Canton Police Department. He said the city manager requested what Vande Zande believed to be an inappropriate meeting with him and the officer after the traffic stop. 

At the time, he was one of eight finalists for police chief. He later questioned the integrity of the search for a new chief after he overheard a meeting between Wood, Cherokee County Sheriff Roger Garrison and resident John Rust about the candidates for police chief. They were talking about Vande Zande. Garrison said there was nothing unusual about the meeting. Before Woodstock selected Calvin Moss as its police chief in February, City Manager Jeff Moon went to Garrison.

But Vande Zande took his concerns and others to the city council, which voted in April to place Wood on six months probation "to evaluate his effectiveness" as city manager. 

A few weeks later, Wood named Merchant, who had recently retired as chief of the Altamonte Springs, FL, Police Department, as Canton's new top law enforcement official.

Since Vande Zande's termination, Wood has referred all questions to Dyer because of the potential for litigation.

Lance LoRusso, Vande Zande's attorney, said he would "immediately seek injunctive and other relief through the Superior Court of Cherokee County against the City of Canton and individually against Wood and Merchant" if his client were fired.

So far, nothing has been filed with the court.

Related content

• Vande Zande Formally Appeals Termination
• Canton's Assistant Police Chief Fired
• Attorney: Vande Zande, Canton's Interim Police Chief, Given Ultimatum
• FL Cop Named Canton's New Chief
• Henley: Chief Will Do Anything for Job
• Canton Manager Gets Probation
• Chief Questions Integrity of Search
• Chief: Good Officer Took Beating
• Officer Resigns, Council Calls Meeting
• After Stop, Chief's Phone Rang
• Mayor: Stop Created 'Air of Suspicion'
• City Kept Quiet About Traffic Stop
• For Naked Photo Claim, a Warning
• City Official Reprimanded
• 36 Apply for Police Chief
• Calming the Waters
• Questions Surround Chief's Resignation
• Poll: Did Canton's Chief Have to Go?
• A Snapshot of Canton's Interim Chief
• A Scathing Review
• Canton Police Chief Resigns After Probe Finds Problems in Jorelys Rivera Search

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