Theresa Chambers - United States Park Police

[cascadiance]

This just came up a week ago where Teresa Chambers, chief of the United States Park Police, is still awaiting an appeal to the October 6, 2004 decision upholding her firing in December 2003, which she has felt was in response to her saying that her agency within the Department of the Interior was underfunded and understaffed, and not adequately resourced to protect landmarks and federal office buildings from acts of terrorism.

From:

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=15591

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Park Police whistleblower still hopeful

By Chris Hamby
First Amendment Center Online intern
07.26.05
Teresa Chambers rose to eminence in 2002 when she was sworn in as the first female chief of the United States Park Police, an agency within the Department of the Interior that protects landmarks, monuments and parks nationwide. Since then, she has attracted the limelight for different reasons — her firing in December 2003 after publicly stating that her agency was underfunded and understaffed, and her ongoing court battle to get her job back.

Chambers awaits the decision of her appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board (a quasi-judicial agency that hears cases involving federal personnel issues and protects employees from partisan political attacks), hoping it will reverse the decision of an administrative judge who upheld her firing on Oct. 6, 2004.

She is also waiting to receive a copy of her 2003 performance assessment by her immediate supervisor, which was prepared just before the incidents that led to her firing. Chambers sued the Department of the Interior in federal district court in February to obtain this assessment. She believes the assessment, which the National Park Service recently said it had found after previously denying its existence, will support her case. NPS has not decided whether it will release the document to Chambers.

“I am the eternal optimist,” Chambers told the First Amendment Center Online recently. “I am hopeful that the full ... dismisses the remaining charges and returns me to my job. If they do not, we are prepared to move to federal court for whatever administrative charges remain.”

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