The municipality of Heerlen has put a boa (special investigating officer) on the street who, during a catering check in November last year, took two beers and lit an e-cigarette in the pub he checked. He also allegedly made discriminatory remarks. Then he got into the service car with alcohol. And those were not the first incidents.
Earlier, the 50-year-old official already put the official car in a parking space for the disabled, right in front of the Jan Linders supermarket. That earned him a final warning from the municipality. According to various testimonies, he also ridiculed colleagues and was unfriendly in telephone conversations with citizens or even refused to speak to them.
The subdistrict court in Maastricht, who had to decide on the lawfulness of the dismissal, was quite adamant in the verdict published this week: ‘You were already warned’ and ‘you had no eye for the exemplary function of boa’. The employment contract is immediately terminated due to non-performance.
The man joined the municipality in 2017. In October 2022 he was given a role in the Cluster Intervention Team Subversion and Crime. In this capacity, the boa in civilian clothes took part in a nightly catering inspection. The aim was to check whether entrepreneurs complied with the rules. In the first catering facility, the civil servant had a beer in the presence of his colleagues. That happened again in the second pub, the judge concluded.
Accounts studied
The man himself claims that it was non-alcoholic beer and later a cola zero. But a research agency commissioned by the municipality has extensively studied the accounts of the pubs and, based on the prices, concludes that they must have been real draft beers. Non-alcoholic beer was served in bottles and the boa stated that he only held a whistle (glass). In the second pub, no Coke Zero was even sold at all.
The boa admits that he lit an e-cigarette. But in his own words, he did so because visitors also did so out of sight of the staff. By smoking himself, he hoped to check how the patrons would react. The judge found that to be unconvincing. “There is no question that this is behavior that a boa should refrain from.”
The civil servant hoped that the judge would reject the municipality’s request for dissolution and demanded fair compensation of more than 50,000 euros. But that didn’t happen; the boa does not receive any compensation and must pay the costs of the proceedings.
Check out our most viewed news videos in the playlist below:
Free unlimited access to Showbytes? Which can!
Log in or create an account and don’t miss a thing of the stars.
#Boa #takes #beers #lights #ecigarette #catering #check #dismissal