Male Mayor In Women's Lingerie Case Takes A New Twist With Police Layoff Threats

From The Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 8
EAST CLEVELAND, OH – East Cleveland-

Mayor Eric Brewer said Wednesday that he will cut 19 Police Department employees in an attempt to slice a $981,000 shortfall.

The layoffs mean the 84-member department will shrink 23 percent, a move the mayor says is needed to cover a drop in tax revenue. The cuts will take place in a month, in accordance with the union contract.

Brewer stressed that the police union can prevent the cuts if its members vote to take two furlough days a month. But he said the "vote will have to occur immediately."

The Fraternal Order of Police said the cuts are the mayor's retaliation against its members after Brewer accused police officers and elected officials of releasing photos that showed him in women's lingerie. The photos attracted national attention in the days before Brewer's unsuccessful re-election bid last month.

The union denies any involvement.

"The mayor is lashing out at anyone and everyone whom he believes helped him lose his job," said Michael Piotrowski, the union's lawyer. "This is a lame-duck mayor who seems [interested in] getting revenge before he goes."

Brewer said in a prepared statement that he is laying off a lieutenant, two sergeants, three dispatchers, four community policing officers, four full-time patrol officers and five part-time officers.

He said other employees in the city have agreed to take furloughs. He called the police union selfish, as its members "sacrifice the jobs of those with less seniority while members at the top of the seniority list fill their pockets with the overtime."

Union leaders said the only way they would consider the furloughs is if Brewer would show how the cuts would benefit the city and guarantee that there would be no layoffs.
The police union offered concessions to avoid cuts this summer, but the mayor never responded, Piotrowski said.
In the statement, Brewer blamed the cuts on mayor-elect Gary Norton, who defeated Brewer in the Democratic primary. Since there is no Republican in the race, Norton becomes the mayor Jan. 1.

Brewer said Norton played politics with the city's finances. He said the city knew in July that it faced the shortfall. But the mayor said Norton, as the City Council president, led his colleagues to vote for pay raises for some employees to gain the police union's endorsement for mayor.
Norton denied the claim.

"It's a scorched-earth tactic by someone leaving office," Norton said. "I got the endorsement based on his four years in office."

The union said the workers who received the raises are dispatchers, and they are not part of the local lodge that made the endorsement.