Captain Vanessa Coleman is a whistleblower who has been steadily retaliated against since being singled out and made a scapegoat for the Mt. Pleasant apartment fire last year that displaced 200 people. However, as public audio recordings from the fire department show, Coleman was clearly not at fault in any way for the fire or its spreading. Teresa Cusick was General Counsel for the Department, and was transferred to a non-legal position after speaking out about unfair practices intended to cover up a botched investigation. Gerald Pennington was an arson investigator who exposed that the Eastern Market fire investigation was botched by inexperienced investigators, which was then covered up by the top officials at the department.
In our first segment, we interview Coleman, Cusick and Pennington. Each details the struggles they have faced for exposing the information and the retaliation they have faced within a department that is more focused on having orders obeyed than on whether the orders are legal in the first place.
Then, in our panel discussion, we look at the ordering of psychological evaluation as a means of retaliation against whistleblowers. Joining us are Dr. Donald Soekin, a psychologist who exposed the use of psychological evaluations as retaliation towards whistleblowers who have nothing wrong with them, and Richard Condit, GAP Senior Counsel, who speaks directly to this form of retaliation by the Department of D.C. Fire & Emergency Medical Services.
