news-record.com

RALEIGH - A 19-year veteran state Highway Patrol trooper will not be reinstated after an incident in which he sent a state credit union teller a doctored picture with an obscene image.

An administrative court judge ruled to uphold the firing of Ronald Gene Ezzell Jr. for the incident last year.

Ezzell was at the drive-through of the State Employees Credit Union on Vernon Avenue in Kinston on Oct. 28, 2008, when he placed a laminated picture of a young boy naked with an enlarged penis superimposed on his body, along with identification and a check to be cashed, in the canister and sent it to a female teller. Ezzell was in uniform in a marked patrol car at the time.

The patrol dismissed Ezzell in February on grounds that he engaged in conduct unbecoming a state employee. Col. Walter Wilson, the head of the state Highway Patrol, upheld the decision. Ezzell challenged the firing in the state's Office of Administrative Hearings last month.

At the hearing, Ezzell said he meant the photo as a joke, saying he told the teller that the picture was of him at his grandmother's house as a child. Ezzell and the bank's two tellers disagreed about what was said at the drive-through. Ezzell said there was a playful exchange, while the tellers testified that they found no humor in the picture and did not talk about it.

Upon learning that he was being investigated by the patrol for the incident, Ezzell destroyed the picture despite a Highway Patrol policy that requires that he keep such evidence.

Ezzell called his actions an error in judgment but not grounds for dismissal. Ezzell's lawyers argued that dismissal was a disproportionate punishment for a veteran officer who flew helicopters for the patrol and had been recognized several times for outstanding work.

Woody Webb, Ezzell's attorney, said he plans to file an appeal. The next step for the case would be the State Personnel Office and then Wake County Superior Court.

''We think that the patrol acted arbitrarily and capriciously in this decision," Webb said. "There are cases of far more egregious conduct that did not lead to dismissal, and we submitted these as evidence."

Webb added that he and his client believed some of the facts the administrative judge based his ruling on were inaccurate.

At the hearing last month, Wilson said he was a friend of Ezzell's and took into account Ezzell's prior behavior. Wilson recounted an incident several months before the one at the bank when Ezzell, later claiming to be playing a joke, made inappropriate comments to a teenage waitress in Wilson's presence.

''Being a parent of a 17-year-old, that gave me some concern," Wilson said. "I told him that behavior should never happen again."

Fred G. Morrison, the senior administrative judge who heard the case, said he found no error in the patrol's decision to dismiss Ezzell.

''While I may have decided to impose a lesser sanction based upon the maxim 'Justice tempered with mercy' for a veteran trooper," Morrison wrote, "I am not convinced that these officials acted erroneously, exceeded their authority or jurisdiction, acted arbitrarily or capriciously, or failed to act as required by law or rule in deciding to fire Petitioner."