This isn’t Watergate. It’s about Lincoln’s police department.

And yet city officials are treating our questions as if they’re guarding a national secret.

We’ve tried hard the past two weeks at The News Messenger to find out whether Lincoln Police Chief Brian Vizzusi was being quietly and unexpectedly fired by the city manager.

An apparently not-so-simple question, judging from the hostile reactions of several city representatives, but nonetheless a crucial question.

The News Messenger has been inundated with rumors being called in about Vizzusi, i.e. his receiving a vote-of-no-confidence from his officers, being a fall guy for budget cuts last February and taking the blame for a wrongful-termination lawsuit.

Unfortunately, reporter Stephanie Dumm and I have been stonewalled while checking out the rumors with city officials, i.e. the city manager, the mayor and City Council members.

We can’t help but think something fishy is going on when, for instance, the city manager tells us the police chief is on vacation yet our reporter finds the city manager and police chief meeting a few hours later at City Hall.

Or by Mayor Tom Cosgrove again telling us the police chief is on vacation, even after we told Cosgrove the two met Jan. 22 in City Hall while Vizzusi supposedly is on vacation.

It hasn’t been a party the last two weeks at our office as we’ve repeatedly called city officials and City Council members, asking if Vizzusi’s job is on the line, only to be yelled at or hung up on.

One City Council member even told me it was a personal issue and then loudly slammed our front-office door after we said sources told us that wasn’t the reason why Vizzusi is not lately at his desk.

But when the city releases a statement, as it did Jan. 22 saying that Vizzusi requested additional leave time “in order to attend to some difficult family issues which have affected his relationship with his staff,” that means it’s a public issue.

How a police chief works with his staff, and just as importantly, if we even have a police chief we can call on a daily basis, are issues affecting the public every day.

After we broke the story online Jan. 22 that Vizzusi was not on vacation but on paid leave, I received a call from a furious City Manager Jim Estep.

He accused our reporter of “accosting” him because she saw him outside a downtown restaurant at noon Jan. 22, where she asked him about Vizzusi’s whereabouts. She followed him inside for clarification because he ignored the question.

As I told the city manager, she would not have gone into the restaurant if he answered his e-mails and phone calls from Dumm the day before and that day, asking him about Vizzusi’s status with the city.

Estep also angrily told me his staff and City Council didn’t appreciate the reporter calling city representatives to see if someone would say something different, when he’s the one to ask.

If Estep took a few minutes to talk to the reporter in the first place, however, then she wouldn’t have had to go through her Rolodex looking for other sources.

Again, it’s our job to find the truth.

Kathy Dorsey, one of our advertisers, overheard the reporter and me grumbling about this story and the unwillingness of those in charge to talk. We’d much rather be writing stories about more pleasant subjects, like Lincoln being named the safest city in Placer County like we did last August.

“As our Fourth Estate, I believe that you should repeatedly ask City Council, city manager and other officials about what is going on in our city until you receive complete and satisfactory answers,” Dorsey said.

“Please know that both my husband and I hold Chief Vizzusi in the highest regard and have complete confidence in his capabilities,” Dorsey added. “The fact that Chief Vizzusi has taken leave concerns us greatly. We can only hope that he is receiving the full support of the Lincoln Police Department and the city of Lincoln.

With that said, Dorsey, like us, was also puzzled with the city manager’s answer to where Vizzusi is and when he will return.

“These should not have been difficult questions for him to answer, particularly when it concerns the individual who is responsible for our safety and security,” Dorsey said. “I do not believe that ‘family matters’ rises to the level of a state secret that threatens our well being. So why didn’t the city manager level with you? One is left guessing.”

On Jan. 22, Estep said in a statement released by his public information officer that he would meet with Vizzusi again in two weeks.

Estep has not answered e-mails or phone calls about a meeting he had Monday with Vizzusi or about their next scheduled meeting set to happen in the next week or so.

But we’ll keep asking the city manager and mayor to report on the results of these meetings. We hope they soon answer.

We think readers want to know.

Carol Feineman can be reached at

774-7972 or at carolf@goldcountrymedia.com.