Syracuse, N.Y. — A state Supreme Court judge has shut down a fired Onondaga County deputy’s attempt to get his old job back.
Kevin Drumm was fired last June. While employed at the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office, he was involved in two erratic, off-duty driving incidents. One ended with a DWI conviction.
Drumm’s termination letter from then-Sheriff Eugene Conway said he wasn’t qualified to be a deputy because his driver’s license had been revoked and he couldn’t access sensitive department data due to his DWI conviction.
Drumm sued the department in December, saying his punishment went beyond what other deputies faced in similar cases.
In 2017, he sideswiped a car with his truck in Tully before speeding down a road another two miles and swerving into a yard, striking a mailbox. He had four to five beers within a three-hour period before the crash, he later admitted. Deputies did not give him a breathalyzer test and he was charged only with leaving the scene of an accident.
Conway suspended Drumm without pay and asked him to resign, but Drumm insisted on staying. He was reassigned from the patrol unit to the property unit.
Drumm was later awarded $16,445 in back-pay by an arbitrator, who ruled Drumm’s punishment of being transferred at the sheriff’s office was excessive compared to past cases.
In October 2021, Drumm was pulled over at an exit on Interstate 481 in DeWitt after a driver called 911 to report an erratic driver. He was coming back home from a retirement party for a fellow deputy. Drumm appeared drunk that night to deputies and refused a breath test, so he was arrested and charged with DWI, a sheriff’s office spokesperson said at the time.
After the DWI, Drumm was reassigned again, this time to the civil department records unit. Then his driver’s license was revoked in March 2022 for the DWI.
In an affidavit supporting Drumm, Jeffrey Passino, who was the union president and is now undersheriff, gave names of five deputies who were…
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