Michael Campion, the psychologist who has screened
Springfield police and firefighter candidates for more than a decade,
claims that he lost his contract because of his political and religious
views.
In a three-page letter sent to aldermen, Campion said
that he had chosen not to sue the city, even though an attorney he
consulted assured him “that I have a strong case for
litigation.” Instead, he simply asked aldermen to review the contract
process “so that others will not be treated as unfairly as I believe
I was.”
City Council coordinator Joe Davis says that, to his
knowledge, no alderman has responded to Campion’s June 29 complaint.
Campion didn’t return e-mail and phone messages from Illinois Times seeking
comment.
In a commentary published about a year ago, IT revealed that Campion has
served on the board of the Illinois Family Institute since 1999. IFI is a
conservative nonprofit organization promoting religious freedom and
rallying its members against abortion, stem-cell research, gambling,
pornography, civil-rights protections for gays and lesbians, and needle
exchanges for drug addicts.
In his letter to aldermen, Campion cited (and
misquoted) a May 19 IT news article as evidence that religious beliefs were the
reason his contract was not renewed. In that article, Ward 1 Ald. Frank
Edwards, a former Springfield Fire Department chief, stated that his
personal review of Campion’s evaluations left him puzzled. “The
people I thought would’ve been squashed, he passed. I’m just a
novice reading this, but if a guy had a beer, he was out,” Edwards
said.
In that same article, Ward 2 Ald. Frank McNeil
supported Campion’s right to hold conservative views but said that
those views shouldn’t be used to measure police and fire candidates.
“I think a number of recruits may have been
unfairly excluded because of his subjective review,” McNeil said.
Campion also complained that the council gave the new
contract to St. Louis psychologist Dr. Paul Detrick, who “works
primarily in the schools as a school psychologist.” However, city
officials say that Detrick was chosen largely because of his track record
screening recruits for St. Louis-area police departments.
This article appears in Jul 21-27, 2005.
