2 CITY WORKERS FIRED IN DRUG INVESTIGATION

Two Charleston street department employees have been fired and one of them
was arrested for drug-related offenses, Mayor Jay Goldman confirmed Thursday.

Brian Doughty and David Cossin have both been terminated, Goldman said.
Four city street crime detectives arrested Doughty about 10:30 a.m.
Wednesday in the street department parking lot on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Doughty has been charged with possession and intent to distribute a
controlled substance, said Sgt. Rusty Flowers, head of the street crimes
unit. Police say the substance is hydrocodone, present in the prescription
Schedule III painkillers Vicodin and Lortab.

Det. T.S. Palmer was one of the detectives who arrested Doughty. He said
police did not personally witness Doughty selling the drug, but had reason
to believe that he was involved in a distribution pattern.

Cossin hasn't been arrested, Flowers said, but has undergone an interview.
Others, possibly street department employees, will be interviewed, he said.

"Based on the advice of counsel and evidence he was discharged," Goldman
said of Cossin. "The problem is there and we addressed it. It didn't get
covered up. We're not going to tolerate it."

The firings come after the city's passage of a "two strikes" drug policy
earlier this fall. Upon a positive urine test, employees are entitled to
receive a second urine test, after undergoing a drug treatment program at
their own cost.

This situation does not appear to fall under that policy, said both Goldman
and West Side Councilman David Molgaard, who helped draft the measure.
Molgaard fought especially hard for the "second chance" component.

"You don't need to drug test people when they're doing it on city property
and on city time," Goldman said. "That falls under criminal acts."

Goldman said more drug-related arrests and firings could follow.

Palmer said arresting city employees is "definitely not something we do
every day."

In his five-and-a-half years in street crimes, Palmer said he could recall
only one other similar investigation of a city employee. That case did not
involve drugs. The employee elected to resign rather than be fired, he said.

Palmer said called Doughty's arrest uneventful.