Dear Mr. Khumalo and Select Board:

Please immediately add an item to the Select Board’s meeting agenda.

For weeks now – in fact, during the last four Select Board meetings (1/30/24, 2/6/24, 2/13/24, 2/20/24) – and in letters to the Select Board, in letters and comments on HopNews, in complaints filed with the local police department and the Middlesex D.A.’s Office, and in complaints filed with the local criminal clerk’s office, residents of the Town of Hopkinton repeated their desire for accountability for the criminal and unethical release of a certain rape victim’s Personally Identifiable Information (PII) (and that of her minor children). 

Despite hearing about and reading all of those things, this Select Board has failed to act.  This Select Board failed to take the necessary proactive steps to add to its agenda any discussion about investigating and disciplining Chief Bennett.  

However, one of the current Select Board Members recently advised a resident about how any resident in this Town can get a specific topic added to the Select Board’s agenda.

With that, and in following said advice, I hereby submit this request to you, pursuant to the Town of Hopkinton Select Board Rules of Procedure Section 5:3 (approved on October 14, 2009 and revised on December 1, 2020).

I realize that the aforementioned procedural rule required me to submit this request to you by this past Wednesday in order for the topic (i.e., the Chief’s suspension) to be added to the Select Board’s agenda for tomorrow’s Select Board hearing.  For several reasons, I ask that you please use your discretion as the Town Manager to waive that timing requirement in order to get this item onto the agenda for the February 27, 2024 Select Board meeting.  

First, this topic is not new.  In fact, voices all over Hopkinton, and in these meetings, have beaten this dead horse for weeks.  People want the Chief suspended pending a criminal investigation.

Second, the Select Board itself has been intimately connected to and aware of this topic since January 19, 2024.  Other than the Chief, the Select Board is comprised of the persons with the most first-hand knowledge about the Chief’s criminal actions and longstanding track record of supervisory ineptitude and unprofessionalism.

Third, the sooner this matter is added to the Select Board’s agenda, the sooner it can be dealt with; thus, any delay by you in adding this topic to the Select Board’s meeting agenda surely will appear even more suspicious.  

Fourth, this topic is uniquely pertinent to another agenda item already scheduled for discussion by the Select Board during the agenda for February 27, 2024 – and that is the Select Board’s mid-year review of Chief Joe Bennett.  No doubt residents witnessing this particular Select Board hearing will wonder how the Select Board could, in good faith, entertain its mid-year review of the Chief without addressing the very obvious elephant in the room. That elephant is the Chief’s criminal, reckless, and hurtful exposure of the rape victim’s, and her young children’s, legally protected confidential identification information.  

Finally, due to the incredibly sensitive and important nature of this topic, that is, the legitimacy of Chief Joe Bennett’s leadership, this Select Board should want to add this topic to its agenda as soon as possible.  To allow this topic to remain outstanding any longer simply will expose the Town to even greater liability.

With that, I humbly submit that the following agenda item be added immediately to the Select Board’s agenda for the February 27, 2024 meeting, and that it be entertained during the Select Board’s related discussion about the Chief’s mid-year review:

Police Chief Suspension. Chief Joseph Bennett should be suspended immediately, pending the outcome of an exhaustive criminal investigation into several crimes allegedly committed by the Chief (and by others in Town management), which investigation reportedly is being handled by the State Police Detective Unit stationed at the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office.  On or before the conclusion of that criminal investigation, this Select Board should entertain disciplinary actions against Chief Bennett.

If the timing isn’t feasible to add this agenda item to the February 27, 2024 BOS agenda, I ask that Chief Bennett’s mid-year review be put on hold until the requested agenda item can be added to the agenda for contemporaneous discussion during said mid-year review.

Thank you for your attention to my request for this topic to be on the Select Board’s agenda.

Sincerely,

Karen Crum, Hopkinton