Franklin County sheriff forced to rehire a deputy he fired twice

A former Franklin County deputy won a victory in a battle that has stretched on for more than four years.

In a Tuesday ruling, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Stanley A. Bastian said George Rapp should be rehired as a deputy three years after an arbitrator ruled he had been fired without cause.

Bastian’s 13-page ruling is clear that the former deputy should get his job back, resolving one of the major questions in the now year-and-a-half long lawsuit after his second firing.

“Presented with all the evidence, the arbitrator found in the plaintiff’s favor and found that defendants lacked just cause to terminate him,” he wrote. “They cannot re-litigate the events leading up to the termination or the arbitration before this court.”

It’s a ruling that Rapp’s attorney George Telquist said will depend on Sheriff Jim Raymond, who has dragged his feet on giving Rapp his patrol deputy job back after first firing him in May 2016.

“George loves being a cop and he was good at it,” Telquist said. “If Raymond persists, George can’t be a commissioned officer.”

Raymond declined to comment Tuesday on the decision, and referred questions to the attorneys representing the county.

The federal lawsuit continues to head to trial, said Telquist. Now, it will be decided if the county owes Rapp money for the way he was treated.

Problems with sheriff

Rapp was hired by longtime Franklin County Sheriff Richard Lathim in 2011. Over the next five years, he was reprimanded six times, none ended in a termination hearing.

The incidents ranged from speeding so he could help a fellow law enforcement officer to appearing to fall asleep in his patrol car.

Two years after Raymond won election in 2014, Rapp faced another disciplinary action, and that time he was fired based on all of his past reprimands.

However, the deputy’s union contract doesn’t allow all of the reprimands to be put together into a single case and used as a reason to dismiss someone, Telquist said. Each one needs to be handled individually, according to court documents.

The arbitrator found the sheriff also didn’t seek out all of the evidence or order a psychological evaluation, according to court documents.

After he was fired, Rapp challenged the decision through arbitration and won.

But when his union attorney was negotiating with the county attorneys for his return to work, Rapp was told by the sheriff’s office that he wouldn’t get his old deputy job back.

“It is important that Mr. Rapp understands that win, lose or draw, he will not work as a law enforcement commissioned employee,” according to a letter from Franklin County’s attorney Janet Taylor.

It took another two years of fighting after the September 2017 decision for Rapp to get a position as a corrections officer in the control room at the county jail in 2019.

Once he was there, he claims he was mistreated. This included being punished for leaving the control room to get a soda, and not given the resources he needed to do his job.

Telquist said the county eventually found a reason to fire him again.

County denied retaliation

The county’s attorney, Andrew Cooley, painted a different version of events during a 2019 interview with the Herald when the initial case was filed.

He said the difficulties started in January 2016 when Rapp received a “mildly” critical evaluation and ended up hyperventilating and enraged.

The undersheriff sent Rapp home and placed him on administrative leave.

After he was taken home, Rapp reportedly wasn’t able to immediately turn in his county-issued M16 rifle, according to attorneys.

They claim an independent investigation also found that Rapp conducted an unauthorized investigation in January 2016 into a burglary. As part of that, he videotaped the inside of a suspect’s house without permission and didn’t have a signed a consent form required by state law.

In court records, the sheriff said he made the decision following the independent investigation and following recommendations from his command staff.

“Rapp had at least five written reprimands and a two-day suspension between 2011 and when he was terminated in 2016,” Raymond said in a declaration. “No other deputy that I am aware of has that history of documented misconduct.”

He argued the arbitrator wasn’t concerned about whether Rapp was fit to be an officer, but was more interested in whether the proper notice was filed and if Rapp had a psychological evaluation.

But Bastian, in this week’s decision, wasn’t swayed by the county’s arguments, and instead sided with Rapp.

Whether Rapp was “a good cop or a bad cop is immaterial to the court’s resolution of the narrow issue of whether he was reinstated pursuant to the arbitration award.”

The arbitrator already decided that the sheriff’s office didn’t have enough of a reason to fire Rapp, the judge said.

This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 5:00 AM.