Corporal retroactively promoted, to get compensation

A POLICE corporal who missed out on being promoted to the higher rank of sergeant because he was on suspension will now be retroactively elevated and receive compensation by the State.

In a ruling on Wednesday, Justice Eleanor Donadson-Honeywell declared the failure of the Police Commission not to promote Cordell Salandy was unfair, irrational, and unreasonable and the failure not to invite him to attend the promotion exercise to sergeant was founded on irrelevant considerations.

In ordering the commissioner to promote Salandy to both the rank of corporal and sergeant retroactively as well as pay him $60,000 in exemplary damages.

Salandy, assigned to the legal unit of the Court and Process department, should have been promoted in 2010, the judge ruled.

She also said because of this, he was deprived of an opportunity to be promoted to sergeant in 2016.

Salandy was put on suspension arising out of an altercation he had with another officer in May 2006. He was found guilty of the assault charge but reprimanded and discharged by the magistrate in September 2010, and resumed duty.

His suspension was lifted and he was fined by the Police Service Commission.

In 2019, he filed his claim maintaining he qualified for promotion in April 2010, which although it was at a time during his suspension, having not been allowed to participate in the exercise the commissioner acted without lawful authority by imposing on him an additional penalty and breaching promotion policies and the rules of natural justice.

In her ruling, the judge said the commissioner’s main argument that the policy that after an officer’s suspension was lifted when charges are dismissed, he/she would be promoted retroactively did not apply to Salandy because he was found guilty, was flawed.

“According to the defendant, that means the charge against him was not dismissed so he is not similarly circumstanced to those officers returning from suspension after charges were dismissed. I disagree.”

She pointed to the Summary Courts Act and said a reprimand and discharge was akin to a dismissal. She also said the PSC, by imposing a fine, also acted accordingly but there was no evidence where officers, after being reprimanded and discharged of an offence, were to be treated differently when it came to promotions.

The judge said the commissioner could have introduced such a policy but there was no evidence one was implemented.

“Additionally, there is merit to the claimant’s submissions that, in the employment context the claimant having been disciplined by a fine of two months’ pay, there was no lawfully exercised authority or procedurally fair basis to further punish him by depriving him of promotion and six years of seniority,” she ruled.

Salandy was represented by attorneys Phillip Wilson and Jonathan Alexis while the commissioner was represented by attorneys Keon Gonzales and Adita Ramdular.