A suburban Seattle city will pay more than $1.5 million to settle a dispute with a former deputy police chief who was reprimanded for posting a Nazi rank insignia on his office door and making jokes about the Holocaust.
Former Kent City Assistant Police Chief Derek Kammerzell, who had been with the department for nearly three decades, was initially given two weeks of unpaid leave after the 2020 incident.
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Outraged residents and members of the Jewish community pressured Mayor Dana Ralph to put Kammerzell on paid administrative leave and demand her resignation.
The city's attempt to discipline Kammerzell a second time led to a dispute between his attorneys and city officials that appeared to be headed for litigation.
But the local government's acting managing director, Arthur "Pat" Fitzpatrick, who is also the city attorney, said Friday that the matter had been resolved through negotiation, The Seattle Times reported.
Officer Derek Kammerzell City of Kent Police Department
Ralph, calling for Kammerzell's resignation in January, acknowledged that the decision to review the disciplinary issue would likely "come at a high cost."
The city said Friday that he will pay her $1.52 million to resign.
According to authorities, if the city had simply fired him, he likely would have gotten his job back due to federal and state labor laws.
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An internal investigation concluded that Kammerzell knew the meaning of the badge he put on the nameplate on his office door in September 2020.
It was the symbol used to be worn by an "obergruppenführer," a high-ranking official in the Schutzstaffel, or SS, a Hitler paramilitary organization that was responsible for the systematic murders of millions of Jews and others in Europe during World War II.
The badge was withdrawn after four days when a detective from the investigation office, which commanded Kammerzell, filed a complaint.
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Kammerzell was also known to joke about the Holocaust, according to the internal investigation.
Both Kammerzell's lawyer and the Kent Police Officers Association did not respond to requests for comment.
The authorities say they "have had a number of conversations with representatives of the Jewish community in the region" who had been harshly critical of the city's failure to acknowledge the outrage at Kammerzell's actions and fire him.
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"Communities have supported the city's desire to learn and grow from this experience and have offered assistance in this regard," officials said in a statement.
"The city has been vigilant in its responsibility to Black, Indigenous and people of color, and this incident exposed the need for growth in other areas," the statement said.
Hitler's Third Reich not only attacked Jews, but also murdered hundreds of thousands of homosexuals and disabled people, among other people the Nazis considered inferior.
With information from The Associated Press and
The Seattle Times