The senior officer who recommended the transfer of former Sergeant Ian DeAllie testified the recommendation was based on the officer’s attitude and not his weight.Acting Deputy Commissioner Paul Wright spent virtually the entire day before the Human Rights Commission discrimination hearing in Magistrates’ Court.The transfer off the crime desk to a uniform post in Somerset in June, 2006 came after Mr DeAllie returned to work following three months on leave.On his return, then Superintendent Wright said the officer “hadn’t answered his phone for four days”.“As Acting Superintendent in charge I told him it was unacceptable. The meeting quickly turned sour, he became disrespectful and very aggressive,” said Mr Wright.“I recognised this was a disproportionate response in my view, I didn’t appreciate it and I took notes which he didn’t appreciate. Those are the notes I refer to seven years later to recall the incident.”The meeting was called to discuss Mr DeAllie’s work performance, Mr Wright said he “terminated” the meeting “to reflect on what happened”.“I met with him later that same day and told him I could not tolerate that attitude and that he should go work somewhere else. His manner was really insubordination and I wrote up the transfer for that reason,” said Mr Wright.Mr DeAllie was scheduled to leave the Island the following day to take his son abroad for medical reasons. Mr Wright said he was “left with no choice but to recommend a transfer on the eve of his flight”.Lawyer Alan Dunch, who is representing the Police Commissioner, asked: “Did you tell him why?”The senior officer replied: “Yes, I told him it was directly related to work and that his attitude was inconsistent with my expectations.“It was the most difficult meeting I’ve ever had on a minor matter in my entire career with the Bermuda Police Service. I’m currently in charge of discipline and I’ve had difficult meetings,” he said.He said he had to “write notes during the first meeting because it was clear that some action was going to have to take place”.Mr Dunch referred the witness to a letter to police sent by Mr DeAllie’s lawyer that said Mr DeAllie “was the victim of a concerted campaign to remove him from the intelligence desk and humiliate him in the process”.“There was no campaign, that’s not what I was there for. I was very concerned generally dealing with that level of serious crime,” said Mr Wright.“The officers in that division suffer from sleep depravation, they have problems with their marriages, their health, there’s internal staff jealously. There’s all sorts of problems with the officers in that division.”Mr Dunch said: “But the crux of his complaint is this perceived disability.”Mr Wright replied: “My reasons are quite pragmatic, it all comes down to his stated work-to-rule position and the way he stated it with an attitude that doesn’t sit well for a man in his position.”Commissioner Judy Panchaud White asked the witness if after seven years did he think he could have dealt with it differently. She suggested he could have put the transfer on hold “until after he returned from his trip considering he was taking his son abroad for medical reasons”.Supt Wright replied: “It’s a perfectly valid question and I am a reflective person and after seven years I’m bound to look back and think how I could have handled it differently.“But it was his aggressiveness against the backdrop of what I have to deal with; 70 hours a week is a lot of hours on the job.“I couldn’t tolerate it for another day, we need a team ready to deploy and he left my office on the offensive and told me my shortcomings as a manager. There was no stepping back after he filed a grievance against me for my alleged bad behaviour and at that point things were set on course.“If he came back and said after the first meeting that his reaction was emotional due to stress and asked to work it out, that’s one thing. He was certainly a different man that day than I had known him to be previously,” said Mr Wright.“So yes, if he had an about-face perhaps we could’ve worked through that but he didn’t do that. I haven’t spoken to him since that day because of not knowing how it would be interpreted which could have been deemed as harassment.“It was a 20-minute meeting that set us on a course to where we are now and none of us are happy about it.”Commissioner Wendall Hollis asked if anyone ever said to Mr DeAllie to “lose 200 pounds in the next two to three months or you won’t be able to stay”.Mr Wright replied: “No, we talked about a lot of issues, his weight was never one of them. It was never an issue in the recommendation for a transfer out of the unit.”The case continues with legal arguments.