An Oregon high school soccer coach says the school fired him from his position because he is a sergeant with the Portland Police Department.
What are the details?
Sergeant Ken Duilio, who began coaching the soccer team at Cleveland High School in 2019, said the school let him go after he reportedly bowed to critics for his position in the department.
According to The Oregonian, Duilio, who has been in force for the past 23 years, said activists pressured the school to remove him as a coach through flyers detailing two incidents of use of force that allegedly took place ago. more than two decades.
A 2001 incident featured a gang related attack on Duilio and two fellow officers. The attack resulted in the hospitalization of two other police officers. Duilio was not injured in the incident.
A second incident, which also occurred in 2001, saw Duilio mistakenly shoot a man he believed to be a suspect. It turned out that the man was a good Samaritan who had managed to disarm a man with a gun at a local store.
The victim survived the shooting and received a settlement of $ 200,000. Despite the accident, a Multnomah County grand jury found no criminal wrongdoing regarding Duilio’s actions.
Apparently, the flyers garnered enough attention that the district was forced to call him to a conference to discuss the incidents mentioned in the flyers.
Duilio said that when he appeared at the conference, it was evident that the administration had made a decision regarding his future with the soccer team, and was only looking for it as a formality.
He said the district told him that “they did not see a way forward because of the pressure they are receiving” on the flyers and their comments in June.
Resign or be fired?
The district reportedly asked Duilio to resign twice, but said he refused both times.
Last week, the athletic director of the Portland Public Schools, Marshall Haskins, told Duilio that the district would not renew its coach contract at the high school.
Haskins told the media that Duilio’s statements or that he was a police officer had nothing to do with the decision: it was as simple as the district deciding to “go in a different direction.”
“We do not make decisions based on pressure from parents or outsiders,” Haskins insisted in a statement to the newspaper.
Duilio, however, asks to differ.
“It is unfair of whoever is leading this,” he told the outlet. “[Portland Public Schools] I still had a role in it. They could have faced them. ”
“I’m speechless, frankly,” he said. “I love working with children … Potentially, one day I will return.”
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