Alarming misconduct in Family Court

The fear of being fired is a powerful motivator in the private sector. Inadequate performance puts your job in jeopardy. But if you screw up badly — and especially if you treat customers terribly — you’ll be canned in no time.

All too often, that same level of accountability is absent from the public sector. Government workers enjoy far greater job security (to say nothing of their above-market salaries and benefits) than the taxpayers they serve. And even when a public employee engages in misconduct that creates potential liabilities for taxpayers, the public too often can’t find out whether anyone has been held accountable, and whether any steps have been taken to prevent similar failings in the future — assuming the structure to address misconduct exists in the first place.

The standard line from the government you pay for: It’s a personnel matter. Your business is none of your business.

The latest textbook example of the public employment racket involves Clark County Family Court and Steve Rushfield, who oversees its marshals. This month the Review-Journal revealed serious misconduct allegations at Family Court, and Rushfield is at the center of them.

In one incident, in 2010, a marshal told the Review-Journal’s Jeff German, Rushfield strapped a 23-year-old woman in a chair and choked her, saying “You’re in my house, bitch. Shut the (expletive) up.” The woman, Crystal Williams, was attending a Family Court hearing to support a friend and had been confronted by marshals about using her cellphone. Before an internal investigation was launched, Rushfield gathered witnesses to “get the story straight,” the marshal said.

In another incident, in 2011, Rushfield was accused of aiding a cover-up when another marshal was accused of assault. That marshal, Ron Fox, ultimately was fired (hallelujah) for groping and fondling 28-year-old Monica Contreras under the guise of a search for drugs. Fox had tried to get Ms. Contreras, who was in court for her divorce, to recant her complaint. When she refused, she was arrested on suspicion of making a false complaint before an indifferent hearing master, and Fox initiated the process of sending her daughter to Child Haven.

Marshals “simply intimidated and bullied the complainant in a way that is shocking and almost incomprehensible, using the complainant’s own freedom and custody of her 3-year-old child as threats,” Assistant County Manager Ed Finger wrote in a blistering report upholding Fox’s firing.

Bob Bennett, the court’s security director, recommended firing Rushfield over his treatment of Ms. Williams, but Rushfield somehow kept his job.

So has Rushfield at least been disciplined? Has the working culture of Family Court marshals been changed? Is there a current investigation? And was Rushfield’s “voluntary” demotion a quid pro quo to end any inquiry or block potential discipline? Court officials won’t say. It’s a personnel matter.

Rushfield is demoting himself to a rank-and-file marshal position effective April 8, when he will start work in the courtroom of Family Court Judge Frank Sullivan. How fortunate for Rushfield that he has been allowed to free himself from his supervisory duties. His base salary will drop from about $80,000 (according to transparentnevada.com), but he will once again have the opportunity to collect a tidy amount of overtime and other pay to make up the difference — and then some. And because he has about 24 years of public service under his belt, he can retire next year and begin drawing his pension if he buys (or has already bought) five years of service credit from the Public Employees Retirement System of Nevada.

In other words, Rushfield will be moving on to greener pastures very soon regardless. Don’t concern yourself with the fact that a man accused of abusing and enabling the abuse of women will be working in a courtroom that hears cases on abuse and neglect. Nothing to see here. Move along.

“He (Rushfield) walks around like he’s untouchable. ... People’s rights are being violated in Family Court,” the marshal told Mr. German. “They have their own rules and regulations. There is no accountability. None.”

How many more instances of wrongdoing have occurred in recent years? The public’s best chance of having an open airing of such misconduct is, unfortunately, civil litigation. But local governments usually are quick to settle such cases — on your dime — to make the plaintiffs go away.

The marshals, through their union, want to be classified employees of the county, not the courts. They say the court has no written procedures for investigating misconduct, as required by law. If the court does in fact conduct investigations — a spokeswoman says Family Court does — it doesn’t appear that administrators act on them. The District Court administration’s reaction to all this, from Chief Judge Jennifer Togliatti on down: No comment. How appropriate.

Family Court most certainly is not Rushfield’s house, and it is not a jobs program. It’s the public’s house. It is where they go to seek justice and preserve their rights, not suffer injustice and violations of those rights. The public deserves employees who remember that.