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Sunday, January 14, 2007
Loganville Fire Department’s personnel and personality issues
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terry Pilcher can thank his whiny brother for a career as a firefighter.
Years ago, Benny Pilcher complained about the need for volunteers at the Loganville Fire Department. Younger brother Terry listened with sympathetic ears. “I said, ‘OK, I’ll help you out,’” Terry Pilcher said.
“And that was the beginning.”
Today, Terry is Benny’s boss.
He became Loganville’s fire chief in 1988, when the city established a full-time force. He oversees 23 firefighters and three deputy chiefs.
Since June 2005, though, Pilcher has supervised from a distance. He’s had to move his office from the fire station to Loganville City Hall. He has to stay 500 feet from nearly half of the town’s firefighting crew — even at a fire, unless a witness can attest that Pilcher treated the responders with respect.
The conditions are part of a restraining order that stem from a case involving 10 firefighters. They have accused Pilcher of threatening them, cussing them and even picking on one he considered overweight.
Senior Superior Court Judge Marvin Sorrells imposed the protective order, saying the allegations amounted to stalking. The Georgia Supreme Court will decide whether Sorrells erred in his decision. It will be interesting to see what the high court says about this one.
Name any company or business. No matter how well it’s run or efficient it is at doing whatever it does, some in-house discord exists.
By no means are firefighters, who bunk together for many hours over a set number of days, exempt from mistreatment by peers or managers who bully and belittle.
Pilcher may indeed be overly abrasive. He may not. The complaints may or may not be just, though in this case the firefighters have been granted court protection.
Let’s say the firefighters are right on the money, and are due recourse. If so, the courts should order that they be compensated.
If they’ve endured incidents of physical assault (during a game of hoops) and suffered repeated incidents of intimidation, harassment and abuse, the courts ought to force City Manager Bill Jones to nip the abuse in the bud.
And if the chief is this obnoxious, Jones should fire him. Or Pilcher should bow out like other metro Atlanta agency heads (think DeKalb police chief Louis Graham, who resigned last year after he was taped using racially inflammatory language ) have done when mired in controversy.
The Loganville case is steeped in managerial, personnel and personality issues. A restraining order doesn’t resolve any of them, so keeping it active accomplishes little.
Even with it in effect, Pilcher still comes and goes as he pleases. He told me he holds staff meetings every few months, and sees ranking department officers weekly.
When he’s around firefighters, he has an administrative assistant or deputy chief with him, as required by the protective order.
“I’m not having any trouble with [the complainants],” he told me, “and they are not having any trouble with me.”
Pilcher says he can’t say much about the case but has dismissed most of the allegations as overblown. The firefighters’ attorney, Paul Rosenthal, declined to be interviewed by an AJC Gwinnett News reporter last week, citing a gag order issued by Sorrells.
Benny, the brother who persuaded Pilcher to join the agency, still works as a firefighter for the city. He’s not part of the complaint.
“He better not be,” the chief joked.
Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875 or e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com.
Mayor Jim Hinkle calls Grayson the best kept secret in Gwinnett. Rick Badie, your AJC Gwinett News columnist, plans to see what he’s talking about. Rick and the mayor will team up in Grayson for the Badie Tour at 10 a.m. Wednesday at City Hall, 475 Grayson Highway. From there, Hinkle takes over the wheels. Read all about what they see and do online and in print in Thursday’s AJC.
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