PORTLAND, Ore. — A police officer fired for driving drunk in
an unmarked police car while off-duty has filed a $6 million lawsuit against
the city of Gresham, the police chief and others, alleging his rights were
violated under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The lawsuit filed in Portland alleged the officer, Jason
Servo, was suffering from alcoholism, a recognized disability under the act,
and shouldn’t have been dismissed.
The suit also alleged Servo was denied due process, and the
police union failed to represent him adequately.
“Just as with any type of disability or disease, they should
have made some kind of effort to accommodate that, or some kind of effort to
work with him, and not simply sever all ties,” said Shawn Kollie, one of
Servo’s attorneys.
Police Chief Craig Junginger was out of the office Friday.
City spokeswoman Laura Shepard said officials would not discuss the case
because their policy is to not talk about pending litigation.
Servo, 43, was arrested in January 2011 after he crashed
into a ditch while off-duty. The lawsuit said that Servo, a detective who was
the department’s lead firearms instructor, had taken the police vehicle to a
firearms training session in the nearby city of Troutdale. He later joined
fellow officers for dinner and drinks.
“This was a common practice among (Gresham) officers and had
become an inherent part of the culture,” according to the lawsuit filed late
Thursday.
Servo was alone when his vehicle veered into a ditch and he
was not hurt. Though Servo refused to take breath or field sobriety tests, the
Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy who arrested him later testified before the
state Department of Public Safety Standards and Training that Servo was
probably one of the top 10 most intoxicated people he had arrested in almost 15
years of drunken-driving investigations.
Two months after the accident, Servo pleaded guilty to
drunken driving and entered a diversion program. He fulfilled the program’s
requirements and the DUI was dismissed.
Servo also voluntarily entered an in-patient program at a
Serenity Lane drug-and-alcohol treatment center, where he was diagnosed as an
alcoholic.
“There were times where I went home and I couldn’t get crime
scenes out of my head; I went to drinking for that and there are other officers
that do the same thing,” Servo said Friday, adding that he has now been sober
for 818 days.
The lawsuit alleged the chief fired Servo to save money,
ignoring the known disability of alcoholism.
“I know it sounds kind of like a conspiracy theorist’s
claim,” Kollie said, “but we do believe there was a funding issue in the
Gresham police department at the time.”
It could not immediately be determined how common it is for
alcoholics to claim their rights have been violated under the Americans with
Disabilities Act. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in a fact
sheet, provides an example of how an alcoholic can justly be fired, and it’s similar
to the Servo case.
In its example, a federal police officer is involved in an
accident for which he is charged with drunken driving. About a month later, he
gets a termination notice stating that his conduct makes it inappropriate for
him to continue. The officer says the arrest made him realize he is an
alcoholic and that he is obtaining treatment. According to the EEOC, the
employer may proceed with the firing.
The example, of course, is not precise because Servo’s crash
happened while he was off-duty.
“The ADA has provisions in it, across the board, to not
require employers to subject other people to unreasonable risk to accommodate a
disability,” said Bob Joondeph, executive director with Disability Rights
Oregon.
Joondeph said he couldn’t comment on any specifics in the
Servo case, but generally accommodations for an alcoholic might include letting
the worker attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings — not allowing them to drink on
the job or drive drunk.
Separate from the lawsuit, Servo is appealing the
standards-and-training agency’s decision to strip him of his police
certification.
Servo is currently working as a private investigator.