MIDDLETOWN – A former Middletown city police officer who was terminated in December 2016, has lost her appeal to annul that decision.
Colleen Edwards was found guilty by the city Board of Police Commissioners of charges involving the violation of directives of a superior officer and insubordination.
She appealed that decision and in November 2017, State Supreme Court Justice Catherine Bartlett denied her petition and dismissed the proceeding.
Edwards appealed that decision and in a February 3, 2021 ruling, the Appellate Division Second Judicial Department affirmed the lower court’s decision.
Edwards first challenged her firing claiming the police commission deprived her of her right to due process and abused its discretion by denying her request for an open hearing.
The appellate court ruled, though, “This Court has a limited scope of review applicable to administrative penalties. The penalty must be upheld unless it shocks the judicial consciences, and, therefore, constitutes an abuse of discretion as a matter of law.”
The justices wrote, “That reasonable minds might disagree over what the proper penalty should have been does not provide a basis for vacating a penalty.”
The appellate court said, “In matters concerning police discipline, ‘great leeway’ must be accorded to the commissioner’s determinations concerning the appropriate punishment, for it is the commissioner, not the courts, who ‘is accountable to the public for the integrity of the department’,”
The penalty of termination “does not shock the judicial conscience,” the appellate justices wrote, since Edwards had previously been disciplined for insubordination toward the same superior officer a few months before the incident that led to her firing “displaying a pattern of conduct which is inconsistent with the strict discipline necessary to effectively operate a police department.”
