Liar.
The Senior Coordinator was making me out to be a liar. Anyone who read that preposterous and unconnected response, without having my own email and letter at hand, would gain the impression that I had provided untruthful or inaccurate information. That was certainly the impression given to David when he was asked for information which neither he nor I had ever claimed that he possessed, as he related to me afterwards.
Call me old-fashioned if you will, but I don't appreciate being portrayed as dishonest by a city employee whose generous salary, health plan and pension entitlement I am required by law to furnish. Of course, it was not I who was the liar here.
It should have been a simple matter for an honest city employee to write back to me saying something like:
“I spoke to David, and he told me about some incidents he had seen, but it appears that none of them were considered at the time to be serious enough to complain about.
We have to follow the rules of the disciplinary process, and we can only act when there's an actual complaint, so I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do at this time.”
And that would have been an end to the matter. But unfortunately I was not dealing with an honest city employee.
I never claimed that David had witnessed the attack, so for the Senior Coordinator to imply in that email response that I had done so was a lie, an attempt to create a false or misleading impression in anyone reading that email who did not also have my own email and letter to refer back to. It suggested that I had made a false claim about what David had witnessed.
But whom did the Senior Coordinator intend to mislead with this deliberate mis-statement? I could think of two possible scenarios, one which would be bad for seniors, the other which would be terrible for everyone in our city.
Either, The Bad One:
Did the City Attorney instruct the Senior Coordinator to interview David, and did the Senior Coordinator dishonestly pretend to misunderstand or misread my description of the information to be sought, resulting in an incomplete picture of the situation continuing to be held? That is deception, which would mislead the City Attorney to believe that her instruction had been carried out when, in fact, it had not. A threat to the safety of patrons at our Center would continue uncorrected so that the Senior Coordinator could evade being disciplined for incompetence. If this scenario were true it would be a bad situation, but relatively easy to correct by dismissing the deceiver from the city's payroll. We seniors cannot afford to be placed at risk by the continued presence in a managerial role of someone who is dishonest.
Or, The Terrible One:
Did the City Attorney instruct the Senior Coordinator to appear to go through the motions of attempting to determine a full picture of the situation, but taking care to do so in a manner which would avoid discovering anything which might require a revision of the initial decision, and did the Senior Coordinator collaborate in this charade? That is corruption. It would be a conspiracy between the City Attorney's Office and the Recreation Department to mislead the City in general. Important information which the City administration should possess in order to make correct decisions in matters relating to safety would be covered up, and seniors would be endangered. This would be a terrible situation, because corruption in a civic body is a disease which is difficult to cure from within. It requires intervention from outside.
Or was there, perhaps, another possible scenario, something else which would explain what was happening here, which I had not considered? I'm open to suggestions, dear Reader.
And just in case you have been wondering, I think I understand why the Senior Coordinator didn't care that the lie might be exposed. After all, my own email and letter, if published, would easily refute the falsehood that I had claimed that David had been a witness to the attack. So how come the lie was so flagrant and unsubtle?
I think it may be because the Senior Coordinator, or someone higher up who was directing the conduct of this matter, is a . . . .