A nine-year police officer was fired on a 3-0 vote Monday after the chief said he was goldbricking.

Police Chief Tommy Moffett said after the vote of the Vicksburg Board of Mayor and Aldermen that Gevon Smith was fired because he was &#8220not accountable to the public anymore. This officer was supposed to be in a certain area responding to calls,” Moffett said. &#8220But he misrepresented the truth about his location and was slow getting to his calls.”

Employment numbers continue to be a challenge for the department, which has remained 10 to 15 sworn officers short of its 80-officer complement for most of Moffett’s tenure. In response, Moffett says he’d rather be shortstaffed with working personnel than overstaffed with officers being paid, but not working.

He said Smith left his beat Feb. 12 to go home, but did not inform a supervisor or announce his location to dispatchers. Five days earlier, he did not answer a call to which he was dispatched, Moffett said.

&#8220Not only did he not have permission to go home, but he didn’t give dispatchers his location. He said he was at a location that put him closer” to the origin of the call.

Smith’s attorney, Richard Dean, said he will appeal the city’s decision to the Civil Service Commission, a three-member panel charged to keep politics out of firings, hirings and promotions.

&#8220We definitely will appeal this one,” Dean said. &#8220The mayor said you have to get permission to go to the bathroom. They fired him for going off his beat, and they didn’t agree with the route he took on a call.”

Smith said he had permission from his supervisor, Lt. Davey Barnette, to leave his beat to take a break. But Moffett disputed that claim.

&#8220It’s my job as chief to hold officers accountable,” he said. &#8220It’s evident Gevon Smith isn’t accountable to the public or anyone else. The citizens of Vicksburg deserve better than an officer being paid and not patrolling.”

On April 10, the city fired 31-year officer Rudolph Walker after it said he ran out of leave time and had not cooperated with its requests for medical documents showing whether he was able to return to work after being on leave for nearly a year.

Walker, a brother of former Vicksburg Mayor Robert Walker, was injured Jan. 4, 2006, when the police car he was driving was struck from behind while stopped at U.S. 61 South and Grange Hall Road. He has since received medical care in his back, knee, hip and wrist.

Walker, a patrolman, was working from 3 to 11 p.m. when the accident happened. He said he returned to that duty following the wreck but continued to be treated by doctors in Vicksburg and Jackson.

It was later determined by one or more of those doctors that Walker’s injuries made him unfit for duty as a patrolman, and he left work under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act in May after city officials declined to move him to a desk job.

That decision was appealed to the Civil Service Commission, but the panel refused to hear arguments in the case, saying the matter was not theirs to decide.

Moffett has been chief of the department since October 2001. The budget for this year is $6.2 million with slots for 83 officers.