Tag Archives: Joel Fitzgerald

crime news, local news

Ex-Fort Worth police chief wants his old job? Why?

Joel Fitzgerald’s story out of Fort Worth makes my head spin.

He once served as police chief of the Cow Town police department, then he got fired. Now he wants his old job back and is suing the City Council to return to the police department. It’s a request that, to be candid, boggles my noggin.

The council cited sorry relationships the chief had with council members and other senior administrators. So, they issued a vote of no confidence in the job Chief Fitzgerald was doing. Then they fired him.

So, why does a big-city law enforcement officer, one with a good record of accomplishment along the way to the Fort Worth job, want to return to the turmoil he left behind when he got canned?

I don’t know many of the particulars of this parting of the ways. I just find it strange in the extreme that a one-time top cop would seek to return to a job that his bosses determined he was not doing adequately in the first place.

Go … figure.

local news

FW police chief goes from hero to zero … just like that!

Well, as the saying goes: No good deed goes unpunished.

OK, it’s a stretch, perhaps. But on the day that the media were reporting on the miracle rescue of an 8-year-old girl from someone who snatched her from her mother’s arms, Fort Worth Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald — whose department pulled off the rescue — was fired by City Manager David Cooke.

The chief of police touted the department’s community policing policy as helping arrest the suspect.

Cooke said he needed a “change in leadership” at the Fort Worth Police Department. He reportedly canned Fitzgerald without warning and elevated the deputy chief into the acting chief’s role.

My noggin is spinning, man!

There reportedly had been some tension between the chief and the police union. The chief also reportedly had some harsh words with other colleagues and other city senior staff. Fitzgerald also had been in the running to become chief of the Baltimore, Md., Police Department, but recently bowed out of that effort.

The now-former chief of police says he intends to spend time with his family and consult with a lawyer to consider his next move.

This is, shall we say, kinda weird.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2019/05/community-policing-to-the-rescue/