Unfairly Accused of Sending Unprofessional Emails

My question involves labor and employment law for the state of: Tennessee

Hi!

I am a court clerk, and my responsibilities are to prepare warrants for court, enter bonds, take payments of fines, etc. Some of my warrants are cited by local police and certain officers do not check their calendars. They often cite people to appear on weekends and holidays. Yes, I have seen many citations set for Christmas of all holidays. I am forced to work overtime to fix their mistakes and mail letters to defendants. I spoke to my supervisor about the high volume of cited warrants with first appearance dates on unavailable dates. I asked her verbally and by email to email officers on this problem. The email included a list of unavailable dates and to contact the defendant. My supervisor gave me permission and sent an email confirmation of this. She also gave me an official email to send to officers. I only need to edit the dates, charges, and defendant's information.

The emails were sent for eight months. Some officers ignored the emails and continued to issue citations on holidays. Other officers gave positive responses and contacted the defendants. However, this would so change. I sent an email to an officer and this person responded with a thank you for the information. An officer and the person's sergeant filed a complaint. Then, they claimed the email was disrespectful and inappropriate. Nothing rude was stated to them. The officer was informed of the issue with the date and asked to contact the defendant. My supervisor and the person above her wrote me up. The sergeant stated that I should not speak to officers and was told to stop contacting law enforcement.

I am the only male clerk in my office. There are female clerks who contact local police with the same problem. Local police has not filed any complaints against them. My supervisor has given them permission to contact local police after threatening to fire me. Sometimes officers will meet with them in person to discuss any problems. Can this officer, sergeant, and my employer deny me access to speak to local law enforcement and allow my female counterparts to speak to local law enforcement?

Just other day a higher ranked supervisor without knowledge of the complaint asked me to contact an officer because the documents lacked key information to prepare for court. I told her law enforcement does not want me to speak to them. She seemed perfectly fine and asked me supervisor to contact them.

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Can this officer, sergeant, and my employer deny me access to speak to local law enforcement and allow my female counterparts to speak to local law enforcement?

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Obviously they can, because they did. I'm not sure I see any illegal discrimination here if that's what you are asking.

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Quoting adjusterjack

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Obviously they can, because they did. I'm not sure I see any illegal discrimination here if that's what you are asking.

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Yes, I am asking if this is discrimination. All of my coworkers of equal or higher level are allowed to speak to the local law enforcement. All of them are women. I am the only man and I handle a lot of paperwork from local law enforcement and they demanded that I do not speak to them. How can they legally demand a minority the right to speak to them and allow the majority of equal or higher status to communicate to them?

There does not appear to be anything clearly indicating unlawful discrimination. It may be an issue of demeanor or manner and not of race or gender.

If your supervisor does not want you contacting law enforcement officers directly, then seek clear direction how these matters should be handled in the future and address it that way. If it means sending the info to your supervisor to follow up on, so be it. If it were me, I would ask for direction in wiring (such as via email or written directive) so that I would not later be accused of not doing my job.

Where I have worked, there is a records clerk or supervisor that is the contact point for the court. The court clerks do not contact the officer or supervisor directly, they send the info back to the department liaison/contact and THAT person contacts the officer or the officer's supervisor (or both) for the matter to be corrected. As a supervisor I want to know that my officers are fouling up so it's important to have a protocol to be adhered to rather than individual contact with the court clerk by the officer alone.

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Quoting cdwjava

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There does not appear to be anything clearly indicating unlawful discrimination. It may be an issue of demeanor or manner and not of race or gender.

If your supervisor does not want you contacting law enforcement officers directly, then seek clear direction how these matters should be handled in the future and address it that way. If it means sending the info to your supervisor to follow up on, so be it. If it were me, I would ask for direction in wiring (such as via email or written directive) so that I would not later be accused of not doing my job.

Where I have worked, there is a records clerk or supervisor that is the contact point for the court. The court clerks do not contact the officer or supervisor directly, they send the info back to the department liaison/contact and THAT person contacts the officer or the officer's supervisor (or both) for the matter to be corrected. As a supervisor I want to know that my officers are fouling up so it's important to have a protocol to be adhered to rather than individual contact with the court clerk by the officer alone.

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Hello,

Thank you for your advice and experience. Our office is very different than your office. Any clerk except for me now is allowed to contact officers on problems. My supervisors know this as fact. A higher supervisor who is unaware of this complaint asked me to contact an officer about a different problem (I stated this in the original post) and I politely said local law enforcement does not want me to speak to them. It is clear standard for all clerks except for me can speak to local law enforcement. My supervisor has given permission to all female clerks under her to contact law enforce if it is necessary and told me not to for now on as law enforcement directly requested for me to to speak to them. I am first man to work in our office in over a decade and law enforce did not file any complaints about contact from any clerk until I was hired. Law enforce allowed the previously lady in my position to contact them on a regular bases and officers could get in trouble for ignoring important emails.

Yes, I read that. This is why you need to seek clear direction and follow it. You are either permitted or required to make the contact, or you are not. All because you may have different directions than your co-workers does not automatically mean you have been unlawfully discriminated against in some manner. As I mentioned, it may be an issue of performance and attitude and not at all to do with gender or race. Before you start screaming things that could get your employer worked up and defensive, you might want to step down a bit. Get direction on doing your job and follow it. If you feel there is something untoward occurring, contact your union rep. and/or consult a labor law attorney. I suspect, however, that you may be creating more trouble for yourself than it is worth, but that it is your issue to work out.

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Quoting cdwjava

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Yes, I read that. This is why you need to seek clear direction and follow it. You are either permitted or required to make the contact, or you are not. All because you may have different directions than your co-workers does not automatically mean you have been unlawfully discriminated against in some manner. As I mentioned, it may be an issue of performance and attitude and not at all to do with gender or race. Before you start screaming things that could get your employer worked up and defensive, you might want to step down a bit. Get direction on doing your job and follow it. If you feel there is something untoward occurring, contact your union rep. and/or consult a labor law attorney. I suspect, however, that you may be creating more trouble for yourself than it is worth, but that it is your issue to work out.

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I do not have poor work performance or attitude. This is the only complaint from anyone has filed against me at my office. The only other complain was from someone upset because I do not like their football team, and that is irrelevant. My emails to law enforce were not disrespectful. All of these emails were drafted by my supervisor and I was told to just change the basic information on the case. I have not attempted to contact law enforcement since their discriminatory complaints. There are other women who handle paperwork from law enforcement and law enforcement is perfectly fine with these ladies contacting them about problems with paperwork. None of those ladies are supervisors. They are all equal rank to me and I have seniority over one of them.

I have not filed any official complaints at work. I have retain all emails with permission from my supervisor prior to the complaints and continue to record any possible legal violations.

"if it is necessary".....I have to wonder if maybe you were sending too many emails rather than ones that were more important. Honestly it kind of surprises me that it would be the officer's duty to contact the defendant about a court date change even if it was the officer who made the mistake. I do understand different courts/localities are different. But I have to wonder if the other clerks ARE just calling them and correcting them rather than sending them to the officers. To me, I just don't see where this should be an officer's duty and it is possible they don't either.

Maybe it's just the business I am in, but I've found that you can try to correct a specific issue and at some point, if it doesn't get corrected then you have to decide (1) how important it is and (2) whether you should just correct it on your end rather than trying to go back to them. I correct a lot of issues and while I do train on those issues, I've stopped fighting them. So it truly may be an attitude that comes across as "fighting" and you just may not realize the difference.

Since you are being restrained from acting on the request of those you were contacting it would not be unlawful discrimination. Your employer is simply acting to comply with the request of an outside party.

I suspect there is something you are missing in the equation. Speak with your supervisor about the matter.

Attitude is often in the eye of the beholder.

That you did not intend to come across unprofessionally does not mean you were not perceived as such.