PORT TOWNSEND –Police Officer Eric Franz was fired due to “ongoing and serious instances of misconduct and breaches of duty,” Chief Kristen Anderson said Tuesday.
Franz claims he was fired by the city because of his union activities.
Port Townsend city officials partially fulfilled a public records request Tuesday that sought documents detailing Franz’s termination Nov. 28.
Franz, according to allegations made by the city, ignored a domestic violence situation in May that involved man possibly armed with a gun.
Franz maintains that the department overlooked his side of the story.
The report says emergency 9-1-1 dispatchers called Franz at the police station May 14, 2003 to relay information from a county mental health official.
Franz thought the dispatcher was giving him information rather than sending him to the call, he said Tuesday.
“It didn’t come over the radio like I’d usually expect it to,” he said.
Anderson insists that Franz failed to respond to a potentially volatile situation and there is no way the call could have been mistaken as merely information.
No reports on the incident were filed, and Franz apparently told the dispatcher that he would consult a supervisor.
Franz said he talked to Anderson about the incident the following day.
Anderson said that nobody at the department knew of the incident until a Jefferson Mental Health officer later followed up on the issue.
“Luckily, no harm came from Mr. Franz’s failures here,” she said in a statement released Tuesday.
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The rest of the story appears in Wednesday’s Peninsula Daily News Jefferson County edition.
