Civil Service Commission Affirms Suspension of Police Officer Who Backed Out of Detail Assignment

Employees generally cannot disobey an order of a superior. Insubordination is a well-accepted ground for discipline and, in certain cases, termination. One exception is when the order presents a health or safety risk to the employee or co-workers. Here, the Civil Service Commission determined that public safety officers cannot necessarily rely upon this exception.

In Alicia v. City of Holyoke, a police officer accepted a detail assignment. He assumed he would be able to use a police cruiser for the assignment. But a severe snowstorm wreaked havoc in Western Massachusetts that day and no cruisers were available for this detail. The officer agreed to use his personal vehicle to work the detail. En route to the detail, the officer felt the weather presented too great a personal danger to him and worried that he would be ineligible for benefits if injured or killed while in his personal vehicle. He notified his supervisor that he was not going to the detail but going home instead. His supervisor ordered him to proceed to the assignment. The officer refused and was suspended for three days. He appealed to the Civil Service Commission.

The Civil Service Commission unanimously upheld the suspension. It found that the officer was unable to establish that officers had an unfettered right to rescind a detail assignment. The Commission also said that the Department's order was not unlawful because it presented a safety risk to the officer. The Commission wrote: "[I]t is clear that an order that entails personal risk to an officer it had a right to order is not de facto unlawful. Many duties of police officers entail personal risk. The order at issue was not unlawful given the circumstances, and was issued to address an immediate public safety need. Mr. Alicea voluntarily undertook a dangerous detail and it was lawful to order him to discharge that duty."