Attorney Robert Torres said: “Bringing grievances to disclose these acts [in Superior Court] thus stands as a bulwark to protect the public interest. Without the acts of Sgt. [James] Deleon Guerrero and those [25 officers] like him who stand up to protect and serve, who will watch the henhouse when the fox is running amuck?”
He added, “In this economy, everyone loses when one person is elevated high above his rank to assume a position for which, on paper, he was not qualified, and at a salary to which he was plainly not entitled. On top of that, those who have the moxy to challenge such unfairness will suffer and continue to suffer until such manifest injustices are corrected and their efforts rewarded to avoid further financial losses.”
All undisputed facts confirm, as the CNMI government admitted, that DPS has restricted promotions under the guise of austerity measures when, in actuality, it either “reallocates” existing personnel or resorts to “provisional appointments” and “probationary employment” to bypass merit system protections and restricts DPS civil service employees from promoting to higher positions, Torres said.
The demotion of Officer Alfred Celes “did not bring DPS into compliance with the [Personnel Service System Rules and Regulations] regarding the competitive selection process,” the lawyer said.
To this day, Torres said “DPS’ endorsement of personnel practices that disregard and undermine competitive selection process continues.”
“As reflected by the flood of grievances that just keep on coming, however, DPS cannot be trusted to refrain voluntarily or even at the behest of a gubernatorial directive from cherry picking who gets promoted and who receives pay increases,” Torres added.
“He said the Fitial administration and DPS “have made no effort to recover fees it wrongly paid out to Alfred Celes.”
DPS had not responded to the inquiries of this reporter.
Torres is asking the Superior Court to void the promotion of Celes as well as the hiring of Paul Ogumoro and Vicente Tagabuel and declare these as violations of the Personnel Service System Rules and Regulations, the Civil Service Act, and the Commonwealth Salary Act.
Torres is also asking for an injunction restraining the DPS commissioner, “as the disbursing officer,” from making any payment of salary or compensation to any person whose appointment or employment has not been made in accordance with the Civil Service Act or the rules and regulations implementing its provisions.
All reasonable costs and attorney’s fees incurred in prosecuting this action were requested by Torres and the complaining police officers.
