Wednesday, October 28, 2020

It is 2020 and Paula Stitz, ex-cop fired for corruption, still runs the Arkansas Sex Offense Registry


"Once upon a time there was a Police Chief in the tiny backwater village of Eureka Springs named PaulaStitz(kin). Paulastitzkin was fired from her police chief job and she sued to get her job back, claiming of all things, "sexual discrimination." PaulaStitzKin failed in her lawsuit. What kind of job could a disgraced crooked cop do? That is when the kingdom of Arkansas offered PaulaStitzKin a new job working on the state sex offender registry. After all, the kingdom could care less about their peasants and figured a crooked cop made a perfect fit."

I told this fairy tale way back in 2012, and yet here we are in 2020 and Paula Stitz, disgraced corrupt ex-cop, STILL has a job. I guess Arkansas just has no standards whatsoever. 

https://katv.com/news/local/homeless-sex-offenders-sometimes-hard-to-manage-in-arkansas

Paula Stitz has been the sex offender registry manager at the Arkansas Crime Information Center for 20 years.

“There are groups of people that say that sex offenders don’t re-offend any more than any other group I disagree,” Stitz said. She said the biggest issues facing law enforcement right now are homeless sex offenders or those who are truck drivers and cross state lines.

“A sex offender person who declares himself homeless is a very difficult person to manage,” Stitz said.

There are over 300 local law enforcement agencies and 75 county sheriff's department in Arkansas. Stitz said she talks with dozens of them a day.

“When I’m talking to law enforcement there are more that declare they are homeless when they really are not because they don’t want you to know where they are living,” Stitz said. “They will come out from prison or come from another state and say ‘I don’t have any place to live I’m sleeping on this particular bench,’ when they’re actually living with mama and mama doesn’t want that community notification done in her neighborhood so he’s not going to tell anyone that he’s living there.”

Stitz said there are over 17,000 sex offenders on the registry. About 10,000 actually live among us in Arkansas. Records show that 166 sex offenders have declared they are homeless and 115 of them live in Arkansas. Out of those 115, 29 of them are not in compliance.

https://www.lovelycitizen.com/story/1206194.html

Stitz case against city dismissed

Thursday, January 17, 2002

By Bill King

The federal sexual discrimination lawsuit against the city of Eureka Springs, first filed more than five years ago by former police chief Paula Stitz, is over. Paul Bogas, administrative law judge for the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC), ruled in favor of the city and dismissed all complaints in a 20-page decision dated Jan. 4, and received by city officials Monday.

Stitz's suit alleged she was terminated Aug. 13, 1996, after eight years as police chief, because of her gender. It further claimed that after the firing, when she first filed a gender-bias suit, the city retaliated by not sending her an employment application for the police chief job; reopening an unsolved homicide investigation; and opening an investigation into missing parking meter money that occurred under her administration.

At the time she was fired, Stitz was the only female city department head. She was fired by a woman, former Mayor Barbara O'Harris, who became her boss when she took office in January, '96.

"I'm very pleased," O'Harris told the Citizen after hearing of the ruling. "They [the court] saw it wasn't sexual discrimination."

O'Harris testified Stitz was fired because of poor job performance, low morale and lax discipline in the police department, and fallout from the department's handling of the 1994 Blues Fest "riot." She made the decision to terminate on her own after discussing Stitz's job deficiencies with her on several occasions, the former mayor testified.

Stitz pointed to her employment file where she had been evaluated as "exceptional" and "outstanding" just a month before her termination by O'Harris's administrative assistant, Don Young. Young had only been on the job two months at the time of the favorable review.

Stitz's attorney, Steven Wood of Rogers, contended "all roads in this case lead back to Don Young - the sexist administrative assistant who could not abide to work for a city which had a female chief of police, and who quickly became the power behind O'Harris' throne."

The judge acknowledged that Young, whom O'Harris fired in 1997, may have been a sexist, but he didn't believe O'Harris' decision was influenced by Young. "By all accounts, Young proved to be a poor selection for the position," the judge wrote. "He had a confrontational, opinionated, impatient style that others found off-putting... he was known to make inappropriate remarks." Several instances of such remarks were referenced.

O'Harris, however, was her own woman and fired Stitz in spite of Young's glowing review, the judge found. "I found O'Harris a credible witness... During questioning she conveyed a forceful, confident, even willful personality that was inconsistent with the portrait the Complainant attempted to paint of a weak female mayor controlled by her male administrative assistant. This was no shrinking violet who did not know her own mind."

"They tried to portray me as a wimp," O'Harris told the Citizen. "I couldn't have survived four years in that office as a wimp."

According to the judge, the only evidence presented which would rebut O'Harris' testimony that Young wasn't involved in the firing was given by former police secretary Anna Epperly, who testified she heard O'Harris tell an officer, the late Bobby Weber, and an unidentified person at Holiday Island, that Young could not work with Stitz and she was forced to choose between the two. The judge listed several reasons for finding Epperly's testimony uncredible and biased.

The judge also dismissed the retaliation charges Stitz alleged. While acknowledging the advertisement for applications for police chief was vague and confusing, he noted that five other applicants who responded as Stitz had were treated exactly the same. Further, he wrote, "The notion that the mayor would have considered the Complainant to succeed herself as chief, had she not filed a complaint of discrimination, borders on fanciful."

He also wrote there was nothing unusual or retaliatory in calling in the state police on an unsolved homicide or conducting an investigation into missing meter money.

While dismissing the charges, the judge did find fault with Stitz being fired without explanation. O'Harris had testified she gave no reason on the "advice of counsel. I had given warnings and didn't feel I owed her anything more."

Bogas acknowledged the mayor was under no legal obligation to state a reason, but "In my view, the Complainant was shabbily treated. Common courtesy would dictate that a 16-year veteran of the police department with eight years as chief was entitled to be formally presented with the reasons why discharge was being contemplated and [given] a chance to respond." He blamed the counsel's advice to withhold reason as being partly responsible for the protracted litigation. "However, shabby treatment is not necessarily discriminatory treatment."

Former Alderman Sheila Seratt, who was the lone council member to attempt to override O'Harris' decision and who testified for the former chief, agreed Stitz was treated shabbily, " My whole objection was the way it was done," she said, "and the way it continues to be done today."

"Personally, I think Paula is a wonderful person," O'Harris said Monday, "I just didn't think she was doing her job. We tried to be as fair as we could and help her. We gave her two or three months severance and vacation pay - we didn't have to do that.

"It's wonderful that righteousness came through. I'm glad the city won't have to pay a lot of money." No monetary damages were stated in the suit.

Stitz now works for the Arkansas Crime Information Center in Little Rock. She said she just learned of the decision and had not had time to absorb it or talk with her attorney about possible recourse.

Stitz speculated two factors lead to her dismissal: that she arrested O'Harris' son on an alcohol related charge, and "the fact that Don Young hated women in any shape or form." She said last week's firing of the fire chief without explanation shows that people will continue to lose their jobs without cause as long as Arkansas remains an "at will employer" state.

"It's like anti-climactic now," said the former police chief. "I always say the best revenge is living well, and I'm doing that."


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