Lampela requests hearing in appeal of firing by village

PORT CLINTON - Robert “Ric” Lampela, former Put-in-Bay police chief, has requested an evidentiary hearing in the appeal of his firing by village council last year.

In August, the council voted 4-1 to concur with former mayor Margaret “Ruth” Scarpelli’s recommendation, effectively firing Lampela, who prior to that had been suspended following criminal charges.

Lampela, 54, was charged with one count of aggravated menacing, one count of dereliction of duty and two counts of falsification in Ottawa County Municipal Court.

A visiting judge acquitted Lampela of those four charges after a criminal trial in October, but found him guilty of disorderly conduct, a minor misdemeanor. In a separate case, Lampela is appealing that conviction as well.

Lampela’s main attorney in the appeal of his firing, Raymond Vasvari, argued in support of the motion for a hearing that the village council failed to file “conclusions of fact” supporting their decision to remove Lampela and denied him the right to testify on his own behalf because of the then pending criminal prosecution.

During the termination hearing, the village raised seven allegations that their legal representatives argued were independent of the criminal case, any one of which were grounds to dismiss Lampela from his position as chief of police.

Those allegations were:

• Waving a gun around in a threatening manner when questioning an officer about the Second Amendment.
• Not keeping the police department's holding cell properly inspected per state regulation from 2011 through 2014.
• Allowing 13 official police badges to go missing.
• Not turning in both of his badges when asked to do so by the mayor.
• Lack of adequate training of officers within the department as found by Margaret Tomaro of the Ohio Attorney General's Office.
• Duty to avoid casting the village in a negative light via media attention.
• Change in the liability insurance policy because of allegations related to Lampela.

However, Vasvari said that the only document on record purporting to explain the council’s decision is the “Notice of Removal” filed one day after the initial hearing on Aug. 10, which he argues has “absolutely nothing to say as to the underlying factual basis for that decision.”

“No mention of the factual basis for that decision appears on the record,” Vasveri wrote. “This is precisely the sort of appeal in which an evidentiary hearing is proper.”

Other grounds for the evidentiary hearing, he argued, is that the village effectively forced Lampela to choose between his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and his right to defend his job at an administrative hearing.

Vasveri said the village failed to immunize Lampela’s testimony at the termination hearing from use in the criminal trial, and decided not to continue the hearing to a later date after the criminal case was resolve, despite a motion and objection from Lampela’s defense attorney.

As a result, Vasveri argued, Lampela was deprived of the benefit of a “key witness and key evidence,” that being himself and his testimony.

Last week George Wilber, attorney for the village, was granted an extension to Feb. 29 in filing a response to Lampela’s motion for the evidentiary hearing.

jstinchcom@gannett.com

419-680-4897

Twitter: @JonDBN