Eureka Police Chief Garr Nielsen was fired this morning. Initially reported on the Humboldt Herald blog, Nielsen’s termination was confirmed by the former chief himself in the Times-Standard.
“It’s completely out of the blue,” he told the T-S. “It caught me completely off guard.”
Nielsen had been in the running for the chief of police position in Bend, Ore., but he found out Thursday that he didn’t make the final cut, the T-S reports.
Update, 2 p.m.: City Manager David Tyson confirmed that he notified Nielsen of his termination, effective immediately, this morning at 11. Tyson said firing Nielsen was his own decision but added that he could not discuss any details or identify the reason(s) for that decision since it is a personnel matter.
Captain Murl Harpham has been named interim chief. The process of recruiting and hiring a new chief will likely take about six months and will begin with asking the council and the public what they want in a chief of police, Tyson said.
This article appears in Agonizing Over Apartments.
wha?
is it true Nielsen is the new NCJ editor?
Tyson wants feedback? How about this: hire Nielsen back with an apology and then tender your own resignation. And this time don’t withdraw it.
I agree with “By Just A Guy” What do I want in a police chief? Hire Nielsen back and DO NOT PUT HARPHAM in charge. OMG. Get Manager Tyson out of his office!!!
If the public only knew the details, they would be thanking Tyson. Should have been done long ago. Nielsen took a lot of credit but did little except cost the city money. Look at how much was paid out for his little exploits, and still more to come.
Boy do you have your facts exactly backwards!
I think you must have Neilsen confused with Tyson and the cowardly proprietors of the loathsome “Above the Law” blog. It was Tyson who cost the city taxpayers a lawsuit payout of $200,000 for allowing the harassment of a city employee by other city employees to continue, and Tyson who just cost taxpayers another huge sum, because he fired Nielsen “without cause,” which will require the City to keep paying him for six months.
TRA – how much did Garr pay you to post that?
Not a single penny. The truth is priceless.
And of course your pathetic response only goes to show that you’ve got nowhere to hive when the undeniable facts are layed out there for you.
And the undeniable truth is this: Tyson is the one who has cost the taxpayers multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars because of his gross mismanagement, and now he’s adding tens of thousands more for firing the Chief without cause. Quite a track record. His sycophants on the City Council must be so proud of their boy.
I wish more facts were forthcoming, it’s a shame to see all the speculation running rampant. But, TRA – please explain to us re: Tyson, how BROADENING a complicated investigation that obviously spanned a large group of people, could be characterized as covering up or blocking an investigation.
And, the 6-month severance is part of Nielsen’s deal, fairly paid in order to protect him from abruptly losing his livelihood. There’s nothing unusual in that – and I am sure the same is true of Tyson’s contract.
Unfortunately TRA, I do know the facts, and all I can say, is you are as far off base as you can possibly get. The ignorance of this community will never cease to amaze me.
Sick-of-Humboldt sounds like a fount of enlightenment. Perhaps he can explain why Mr. Tyson chose to fire our chief without cause, costing us $150,000, when he could have simply let him serve out the term of the current contract.
Sick-of – you’re sounding rather truthy this morning. If you’ve got facts, please provide them.
But please realize that spewing the same bile that’s been deemed unfounded and without merit by the Grand Jury doesn’t count. They aren’t facts. They’re baseless accusations.
So you claim to know some facts that justify Nielsen’s firing, but you don’t share these alleged facts, and then complain about the ignorance of those you don’t share the alleged facts with. Yup, that makes a whole lot of sense.
I dispute the premise of your question, that the investigation needed to be complicated and that a large group of people were involved.
In practice, “broadening” the investigation meant not “deepening” it when it came to investigating those who were actually at fault and taking them to task in a timely manner. It was a way to divert attention from those at fault, to dilute the investigation, and it had the effect of stalling and allowing the harassment to continue.
Apparently the lawyers for the city and its insurance company believed that there was a very high probability that court would agree that this “broadening” was intended to stall, divert, and allow the harassment to continue, otherwise they wouldn’t have agreed to a payout of $200,000,
Did my comment not come through after I hit “post”, or did it get moderated out?
just wondering…
okay, I’ll try again
Here’s how I’ve seen it. The worst of the SWAT-loving, uniform-wearing, murderous, psychopaths, including EPD’s Terry Liles and Rodrigo Reyna-Sanchez, have been trying to get rid of Garr Nielsen. In fact, it seemed as though EPD’s remorseless teenage killer and harasser, Terry Liles, began a cop blog against him. Murl Harpham is probably the oldest psychotic “not-so-good-ole boys” of EPD who thinks he can do, say, arrest (or have someone else arrest for him), steal and ruin the property of, and lie to -anyone he wants. Check out the website he made about himself where you can see that he has been doing nasty and corrupt things for so long, he thinks it’s cute talking about vulnerable people, murder, and his general corruption -with a grin. Murl Harpham is NOT an “honorable man” as murderer Terry Liles called him while begging the Eureka City Council not to hire Nielsen on for 5 more years, a few years ago. Murl Harpham, along with Quigley, Sanchez, Jones, Bishop, Laird, Guy and others, should be retired- probably to one of those cages he put so many people in over the years. I believe in the abolition of prisons and police (We can do things in a much better way), but keeping Harpham and them unarmed, off the streets, and away from people they hurt- would make us all safer.If those guys want to change, cool, but I’m not seein’ it. In fact, they teach more people, people in and out of uniform, their violent, mean, dishonest, creepy ways. Harpham gives these guys pats on the back when they do nasty painful things to people- like he does.
Real glad the EPD stopped its killing spree when it was murdering people EVERY MONTH OR SO between Fall of 2005 through summer of 2007. Real glad that Nielsen disbanded SWAT.
David Tyson is a wannabe “not-so good ole boy,” so it’s no surprise he fired Nielson on behalf of the worst gang in town.
Harpham and Tyson- there’s a bagman in there somewhere.
Nielsen is no saint (the uniform assures us of that). He lied to cover-up for the EPD beating to death murder of Martin Cotton, for instance. He’s allowed the cops to steal, throw out, bulldoze and destroy houseless peoples’ survival gear- ONLY survival gear… But the set up of Harpham to take his place and the knowledge of who from EPD doesn’t like Nielsen -is telling. All in all, the Eureka city government has NO care for most of the people of Eureka.
“SWAT-loving, uniform-wearing, murderous, psychopaths”? That’s the perfect introduction to a lunatic rant. Saves us the time of having to read the rest of it.
Yeah agreed Joel,not such a great intro there,but if you have seen the website of Murl’s she refers to,you have to agree that it is at best bizarre.I’ll take a sec when I can to see if it’s still around.There was a pic taken of Murl making an arrested guy lay on the ground and eat maggots.But it’s a while since I’ve taken a gander at the site,so I’ll see if it’s still around.
Leave it to the two most brilliant observers, Joel Mielke and Mresquan to attack the messenger and NEVER answer any issue.
Ummm…Joe….Ummmm re-read what I wrote,as you seemed to miss most of it the first time you read it.
Thank you, Joe Blow, but I never attempt to “answer any issue.” Sounds messy (and ungrammatical).
I hope Joe will use his inferior intellect to teach us how to answer an issue.
Personal/Personnel???The citizens of
Eureka pay the bill–They have the
right to know