A Montgomery County police officer ignored an emergency alert about an armed robbery on the same block where she was sitting in her patrol car, according to court records.
But when the chief of police sought to give Cpl. Nancy Swandic a one-day suspension for neglect of her duties, she rejected the punishment, triggering a police union lawsuit that is still ongoing.
Swandic doesn’t dispute that she was in her patrol car outside a Bethesda police station on Aug. 26, 2006, when she heard “part” of the call from emergency dispatch that a gas station on the same block had just been robbed, her attorney said during a circuit court hearing.
The officer’s attorney, however, did dispute during the hearing that she was “obligated” by department policy to respond.
But Circuit Judge Terrence McGann said he “can’t imagine” that a police officer wouldn’t understand that it was his or her duty to respond to an armed robbery. “To me it’s just basic,” McGann said.
Swandic, who is still on the force, hung up the phone when called at home Monday and Tuesday. Her attorney, Margo Pave, did not respond to requests for comment.
In court transcripts, Pave did not give a reason why the officer did not respond, but said Swandic was off duty when she got the call and saw other officers heading toward the scene.
Top county police officials said Swandic was duty-bound to respond to the robbery call.
“You heard the ‘alert tone’ and part of the call and were obligated to respond,” Police Chief J. Thomas Manger wrote in a memo to Swandic. “You failed to respond to the robbery call.”
Assistant County Attorney Chris Hinrichs, who works for the police department’s internal affairs division, said in court that Swandic confirmed the department’s version of events during a taped interrogation.
The offer of a one-day suspension came after a six-month internal investigation followed by a series of reviews by senior police officers, court records show.
Marc Zifcak, president of Montgomery County Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 35, said he didn’t know whether Swandic — whom he did not identify by name — ignored an emergency call. But he said the officer had not had a chance to present her case to a review board and new facts could emerge there.
Now, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals is considering a case filed on her behalf by the Fraternal Order of Police, which challenged the department over which hearing board should review her case.
The Court of Special Appeals is expected to rule soon on the lawsuit between the union and the police department.
Swandic and her union want a hearing board made up of a police officer picked by the union, an officer picked by the chief of police and an agreed-on neutral panel member to hear her side of the story. The department wants a board picked solely by Manger.
