Niskayuna’s newly appointed police chief, Fran Wall, overcame a mountain of obstacles to become the first woman to lead a police department in Schenectady County.
Chief Wall takes over a department in turmoil, with Chief Dan McManus suspended, rumors swirling around Deputy Chief Michael Stevens - who was noticeably bypassed to be interim chief - and decades of systemic misconduct by the department set to come to light with the repeal of 50-a taking effect.
The new chief is uniquely qualified for the herculean task ahead: she has been working to root out corruption and misconduct within the department for over a decade, and had been subjected to retaliation for doing do.
Punished for ambition
Wall first joined the force in 1986, working undercover at the then-Mohawk Mall before beginning as a patrol officer. Troubles arose, however, when Wall began to show interest in promotion to the rank of sergeant.
Having once been sent for trainings, such as to become a Field Training Officer, by department administrators, Wall’s relationship with management changed, and they began to treat her differently, she said in a 2008 deposition.
When an exam for sergeant came up in 1993, Wall finished first on the civil service list but then-Chief Mark Sollohub refused to recommend her for the position, instead sending male patrolman Leroy Wyman’s name to the Town Board for promotion. The Board declined to follow Sollohub’s advice though, and made Wall the department’s first woman sergeant.
Wall’s promotion only accelerated the harassment of her, however. She soon found herself being called off of patrol, back to the station, or yanked out of line-ups in front of the officers on her shift, on a near-daily basis by then-Deputy Chief Darryl Ostrander.
In the same 2008 deposition, Wall said that Ostrander would do “anything to get my officers to feel as though I had done something wrong, and I had done nothing wrong”. During these meetings, Ostrander would sometimes tell her that women shouldn’t be cops, and that there were plenty of people who wanted her job so she should go work at McDonalds.
Chief Sollohub, who’s office was next door to the deputy chief’s, knew of these incidents but they persisted for nearly a decade, until Ostrander’s 2003 retirement.
A culture of sexual harassment
Chief Wall began her climb through the ranks in a department which did not have any sort of sexual harassment policy until 2006, her 20th year on the force, and where rampant sexual misconduct, including by those of the highest ranks, was often left uninvestigated.
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| Lew Moskowitz, photographed by the Times Union |
From 1995 to 1999, then-Detective Sergeant Lew Moskowitz would routinely follow female officers into their locker room, and refuse to leave until they would show him their bra. Chief Sollohub would often stand outside during this and yell out “Moskowitz are you in there again?” One officer, who had undergone a lumpectomy, had a harassing drawing of a deformed breast appear on her locker and immediately suspected Moskowitz, as only he knew which locker she used due to his routine trespassing.
Despite complaints about the drawing being submitted to Chief Sollohub by multiple female officers and the Union, no investigation was conducted into it or Moskowitz, and Sollohub went on to promote Moskowitz to lieutenant and recommend that Moskowitz replace him as chief in 2005.
Sollohub’s lack of interest in conducting any sort of investigation should come as no surprise, as he himself is accused in sworn testimony of having referred to his secretary as “Betty Kotex”, in reference to the feminine hygiene products, in front of an entire departmental shift.
Promotions denied
In 1999, the Department received funding for two new lieutenant positions. Two provisional lieutenants, including Moskowitz, were appointed pending a civil service exam in 2000. Wall began preparing for the exam, but soon found herself confronted with anonymous threats, and requested an outside agency be contacted to investigate, but nothing was done by then-Chief Sollohub.
Wall ultimately scored ahead of both provisional lieutenants on the exam, but was passed over for promotion, with Moskowitz moving up despite finishing behind her on the exam.
The harassment of Wall took a new form after her first attempt at a lieutenancy. In fall 2001, she was injured on the job, and spent about 6 months on leave while rehabilitating. During this period Chief Sollohub forced her to seek permission from his office every time she left her house, which had never been required of a male officer. This continued even after Sollohub promised the Union that he would stop.
By 2005, another lieutenancy had opened up in a reshuffle caused by Sollohub’s retirement and Moskowitz’s promotion to provisional chief, and Wall again pursued the job. By the time the civil service exam was scored, it was clear that Wall had received the highest score, with Tom Constantine as the only other eligible candidate.
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| Stan Fiminski |
Moskowitz, not wanting to promote Wall and fearful that Constantine would dislodge him as chief (Moskowitz’s appointment remained provisional until the next exam for chief), refused the list, instead opening up the process to promote Stan Fiminski, a sergeant who had not even taken the exam. This was despite the fact that Fiminski had a long disciplinary record, which included domestic violence, harassment of subordinates to the point of a nervous breakdown, falsifying the timesheets of a subordinate civilian employee he was widely believed to be having an affair with, and complaints from civilians that he targeted women for traffic stops and sexually harassed them.
Fiminski was subsequently promoted to deputy chief by Moskowitz before retiring, becoming a major Conservative Party power broker in Niskayuna, and ultimately becoming Deputy Supervisor of the town under Yasmine Syed, a position which he remains in today.
Blowing the whistle
By November 2005, Wall had finally had enough, and filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC’s investigation, which interviewed numerous officers, concluded in September 2006 that Wall had been discriminated against, this unsurprisingly though led to visceral retaliation against Wall.
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| Dan McManus |
In 2007, the position of detective sergeant, which carries a higher salary and better position in the chain of command, became open. Rather than follow the department’s general orders, which required applications to be sought and interviews held for the position, then-Chief Moskowitz bypassed the proscribed process by, on May 25th, directly promoting then-Sergeant Dan McManus to the position. McManus, who is at the center of the current town policing scandal, had only one year of experience as a sergeant compared to Wall’s then-14 years.
In January 2009, Senior US District Judge Thomas J. McAvoy, a former Republican politician and conservative Reagan appointee recommended by Senator Al D’Amato, found that “a reasonable fact finder could conclude that gender-animus motivated the chief’s decision to appoint McManus to the detective sergeant position without interviews or applications from interested sergeants.”
One month after being bypassed for promotion to detective sergeant, Wall experienced much more personal retaliation when Moskowitz attempted to punish her, and tarnish her spotless disciplinary record, for being late for a shift after assisting her elderly mother during a medical emergency, despite it having been cleared with then-Lieutenant John Lubrant in accordance with standard procedure.
When Wall arrived for her shift, after rushing back to Niskayuna from the Albany Medical Center, she was summoned to Moskowitz’s office, where he attempted to issue a formal reprimand and dock Wall’s vacation time. Moskowitz demurred after Wall’s Union counsel suggested that the punishment appeared to be retaliation, but in a fit of anger refused to turn over documents he had prepared for the meeting.
Taking over
Wall remained a sergeant from 1993 until she was finally promoted to lieutenant in May of this year. A popular officer throughout town, many are thrilled to see Wall promoted, but are equally shocked to see it finally occur. With police reform a pressing issue both nationwide and in Niskayuna, Chief Wall has a chance to leave her mark, and move the department away from its long tradition of looking the other way...
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