Sometimes, whistleblower cases provide an interesting peek inside of the goings on inside of a company or an organization. In the case of a Virginia police detective who reported to his superiors that he was concerned that a fellow detective had stolen money from a drug bust, the department’s response to his report makes for an interesting whistleblower case. The detective who voiced his concern about the handling of the money got fired for eating candy off of the floor of a crime scene.
The detective documented evidence while he was at the crime scene by taking pictures of the residence and placing several thousand dollars that were inside the home into an evidence bag. As he went about his work, he noticed that there were a few pieces of candy on the floor. He asked another detective who was working with him whether the other detective thought that he would get into trouble if he ate the candy, and the other detective replied that he did not believe so. The hungry detective ate the candy and went along his way, thinking that nothing more would come of it.
Unfortunately, the money that the detective had collected at the crime scene went missing. The detective who had collected the money expressed concern that his supervisor might have taken the money. What happened next was not the appropriate departmental response that the detective was hoping for. The police department claimed that an internal audit had revealed the “missing money” to be nothing more than a clerical error. The department later blamed the theft on the detective who had expressed concern about the missing money, citing the detective’s confession that he had eaten a piece of candy from off of the floor of the crime scene as evidence of theft on the part of the detective, and they fired him. The detective believes that the “theft” charge is not only outrageous but is retaliatory in nature. In his whistleblower lawsuit, he seeks lost wages as well as compensation for damage to his reputation, embarrassment, humiliation, and general emotional distress.
Barrett Law PLLC: A Trusted Ally of Whistleblowers in Mississippi
If you have discussed concerns about potential violations of the law with senior management in your company and you were met with no response or an inadequate response, you may have escalated those concerns to the authorities in the interest of exposing your employer’s wrongdoing. If your employer then retaliated against you in any way after you did that, you could qualify for protection as a whistleblower. Retaliation can take many forms, from termination from your position to being stripped of many of your duties, to harassment, threats, defamation, and other types of economic and emotional harm. The Mississippi Whistleblower Attorneys at Barrett Law PLLC are here to help you. To learn more, please call the seasoned Mississippi Whistleblower Attorneys at Barrett Law PLLC today at 1 (800) 707-9577 to schedule an initial consultation with us.
