The Tonawanda Town Board has canceled a raise the police chief was due to receive in the wake of the arrests of three members of the town's Police Department since December.
Board members on Monday voted to rescind a 2% raise for Chief Jerome C. Uschold III that was set to take effect on July 1, when his annual salary would rise from $134,933 to $137,631, according to a resolution the board adopted in January.
"Obviously, the Town Board is not totally satisfied with the job performance over the past six months of the chief. That's why we took the action," Supervisor Joseph Emminger told The Buffalo News. He declined to go into specifics, saying it's a personnel matter.
Uschold said he has done his best to address and move forward from the scandals that brought notoriety to his department of 100 officers and 18 paramedics.
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"They're going to put a negative cloud over the department. And the Town Board has every right to be disappointed in the department – and me as the chief of police," Uschold said in an interview.
Emminger and at least one other town official informed Uschold of the pending vote five minutes before the start of Monday's meeting. The session was delayed about 15 minutes from its 7 p.m. start time before Emminger emerged from a room behind the main meeting space.
Uschold said he received permission to leave the meeting right after getting the news about his raise.
"I was concerned. Nobody likes to be told that they don't have 100% confidence from their employers," Uschold said, adding he spent the rest of the night mulling over how to do his job better.
The Town Board approved the $2,700 raise for Uschold at its Jan. 2 reorganization meeting, along with raises and pay rates for all nonunion town employees.
That was less than a week after Lt. Corey Flatau, 37, was arrested on Dec. 27 shortly after the car he was driving veered across a highway in Wheatfield and struck a mailbox, according to the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office. Flatau was charged with DWI after he fell onto the hood of his car during a sobriety test and he was suspended without pay for 30 days.
That was the start of a trying period for Uschold and the department.
Officer Howard M. Scholl III, a member of the SWAT team, was charged with falsifying business records and insurance fraud stemming from a Jan. 19 motor vehicle crash.
Scholl falsely claimed his wife, Aimee, was driving in an initial accident report before filing an amended report 2½ weeks later admitting he was driving. The town has moved to fire Howard Scholl, who is fighting to keep his job.
In announcing the charges in May, Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn was critical of some town police officers who investigated the crash. Uschold previously said the officers at the scene made procedural errors but did not engage in criminal conduct.
Uschold in February suspended the town's SWAT team, saying it was below full strength.
Then, in late March, the town fired two paramedics suspected of taking medication from the drug deposit container at Police Headquarters, where they are based. The terminations of Jon Cinelli and Jeremy Pecoraro followed a hearing conducted by Uschold.
Pecoraro also is charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance, as well as petit larceny and a state public health law violation. Cinelli was not charged initially as the District Attorney's Office investigated.
"There has been a lot going on. In December and January, and again in March, some negative things happened in the department," Uschold said. "And as the chief, I am ultimately responsible for all that. So I get it."
He said he's worked hard to keep up morale in the department he's served for 35 years, and he's not spending his time worried the Town Board will try to fire him.
"I feel I've done a lot," Uschold said. "I have more things that I want to do. If it's not to be, though, it's not to be."
