Dozens of police officers at a small town police station in New York near the Canadian border have been fined for allegedly taking part in a fraudulent labor attack during a snowy stretch this winter.
The union described the fine as retaliation and abuse of power denying the legitimate proceedings of officers.
One officer says the allegations are not true. He went to work, took part in training at Duty, and stopped driving “everyday” drunk when it snowed.
“They got mad that we didn’t make enough money for them and met their perceived ticket allocation,” Andy Thompson said. Tonawanda police Officers and department union president, Tonawanda Police Club.
After the awards ceremony in March, Tonawanda Police Chief James Stauffiger was involved in the film. The local police union is seeking his expulsion after members are accused of unauthorized strikes. (Tonawanda Police Station Town)
Tonawanda Police Chief James Stauffiger said the union is asking town residents to oust them, Thompson’s allegations were “no merit.”
“I stand behind the charges raised against the Civil Service Relations Committee and the union with individual officers,” he told Fox News Digital. “The process needs to be fair and thoroughly rolled out.”
Thompson is one of nearly 50 officers accused of striking without being allowed in a nine-day stretch, and docking two hours of wages that day, according to a letter signed by Tonawanda town supervisor Joe Emiminger.
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“We didn’t attack. We went to work every day. We worked every day,” Thompson told Fox News Digital. “We didn’t write enough tickets and didn’t put enough money into the town’s financial resources.
He said ticket allocations are illegal under New York state law and workplace retaliation is illegal.
Between late January and February, the town had received so much snowfall, road salt was gone, and police calls increased. Additionally, officers had to provide forced training with guns issued by all departments after seven officers retired or left at the beginning of the new year.
Tonawanda Police Station Headquarters (Google Maps)
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This year, Tonawanda Police issued 123 tickets, according to a submission to the New York Public Employment Relations Committee. Between 2021 and 2024, the division was published between 439 and 653 over the same period. Town leaders wrote that the decline was the result of an unauthorized attack in violation of the state’s civil service law.
“It’s unprecedented,” said Mike O’Meara, president of the New York Police Council, the state’s largest police union. “They’re making this up as they go.”
He calls the town’s labor complaints against Tonawanda officers “unprecedented,” and the fines are fined.
“It may be somewhat unprecedented to argue that reducing the issuance of traffic tickets constitutes a strike,” said Jerry Cutler, author of “The Legal Guide to Human Resources,” and a lecturer at Columbia University. “But the key question from a legal perspective is whether employees refrain from performing their duties in the usual way.”
Andy Thompson is the chairman of the local police union, the Tonawanda Police Club, and has been accused of taking part in an unfair strike. (Andy Thompson)
Experts say feud aside, they will be summarised by those with more persuasive evidence.
“Reducing ticket volumes could point to coordinated efforts to disrupt an employer’s business, in which case the lawsuit would prove to constitute an illegal strike,” Cutler told Fox News Digital. “Or alternatively, the evidence may suggest a valid reason for reducing ticket volume. This means that this is not a proper measure of comparison. This will lead to a finding that the law is not infringed.”
Department leaders say they took a strike to protest the disciplinary measures taken against Tonawanda Officer Bikramjit Singh, a US Army veteran who was accused of falsely proofing the evidence while investigating potential drug deals.
“He was wearing a body camera. He opens this bottle of water, and there’s a bag there,” Thompson said. “He looks at the bag. … He says it’s trash. He wraps it in his gloves and disposes it.”
However, a drug dealer and suspected drug user later told police that there was drug in the bag, and department officials told them they were fired because Singh dumped it, Thompson said. The suspect’s drugs were never recovered, but Singh resigned because he was fired and may have sacrificed his law enforcement qualifications, Thompson said.
Tonawanda supervisor Joe Emiminger will speak in his town speech on February 7th, 2025. He is involved in an ongoing conflict with local police. (Tonawanda Town/Facebook)
Tensions have already simmered between Rank and File and Stauffiger, the Emiminger appointee, who has accused Singh of unfairly enforcing him and withholding documents that could find new employment in law enforcement in another department.
A 30-year member of the department, Stauffiger was appointed chief five years ago as part of an effort to eradicate corruption from the department. Thompson also represents the new leadership and has been chairman of the coalition for over a year.
“There’s no legitimate procedure. All of this was done between the supervisor and the law firm representing the town. On behalf of the town, we donated a lot of money to the town’s supervisor campaign and the Tonawanda Democrat town campaign.” “So it’s more like a witch hunt than anything.”
Emminger did not respond to requests for comment. The same was not true of the town’s law firms either.
Thompson believes he will argue that this is the first time the state’s civil service law has been used to punish police officers for failing to meet “allocations” after the town said it lost money due to a reduced traffic citation issued during the snowfall.
“This will be a case law by the time this is over,” Thompson said. “This has never been done by a police union before.”
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The union has launched a public campaign urging residents to request local leaders to withhold “basic gear,” including winter coats, and eliminate local leaders who accused them of withholding them.
The union says the officials are on strike, but the department still made seven drunken arrests, issued more than 300 tickets and responded to about 2,000 service calls over the same period, with fewer than 14 officers.
“The real losers are the residents of the town,” Omiara told Fox News Digital. “They say, ‘Tag the people of this town.’ ”
