Former worker says Bay Pines VA harassed him for not spying
Tampa Bay Online
By Howard Altman
Tribune Staff
Published: August 10, 2015
Keith Hansford says his problems with the Bay Pines VA Police Department began almost as soon as he was promoted to officer in 2010.
Hansford, 52, worked his way up from a housekeeper at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital to a dispatcher. But Hansford said assistant police chief Manuel Morales wanted him to serve as an informant against officers who had sued the department. Hansford said that when he refused, his supervisors began a campaign of harassment against him that has continued even after he resigned in 2012.
The retaliation reached a peak, Hansford said, after he complained to Bay Pines hospital director Suzanne Klinker that untrained personnel were serving as VA police dispatchers and that VA police dispatch records about problems caused by that move had been deleted or never entered.
Hansford made these allegations in a claim filed last week against the VA, announcing he is seeking nearly $5 million as compensation for lost income and benefits as well as pain and suffering and loss of consortium, a legal term for the loss of marital relations. The claim says Hansford suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as the result of how he was treated.
The claim is the first step in filing a lawsuit against a government agency, allowing the agency 180 days to settle, reach a compromise or take no action.
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