In an unusual move, the Town of Hopkinton released a statement today regarding the Select Board’s decision to take no action on police chief Joseph Bennett. The board was scheduled to discuss placing Bennett on administrative leave pending the outcome of a criminal investigation.
>> RELATED: Select Board takes No Action on Chief
This is the full text of the release:
On March 16 (sic), the Select Board met in executive session to discuss the Police Chief. During that session, the Select Board took no action or vote on the matter. The Select Board chose this course of action due to the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office announcement that it is undertaking a review of the events at issue and that it is targeting the release of a report with findings in early May. The District Attorney’s Office has requested that the Town refrain from conducting its own investigation until such time as that review concludes. The Select Board will respect that request. It will refrain from any investigation or from drawing any conclusions about the nature of the error, or who may have been responsible, until after it has the benefit of those independent findings. The Select Board will review the report promptly after it is released and act accordingly at that time.
It is not typical for the Select Board to issue a public comment about executive session discussions. In spite of tremendous public pressure on the board to act, this statement leaves open the possibility that Bennett will continue to serve at least until the District Attorney’s investigation has concluded in May.
The investigation is being led by Steven Gagne, First Assistant District Attorney out of the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office in Northampton. HopNews contacted ADA Gagne, who confirmed the accuracy of the statement.
At least the board is transparent on “something”….even if it’s just to pass the buck.
This isn’t transparency. This is CYA, pure and simple, putting bad news out late on a Friday so it gets lost over the weekend. Anybody who has ever worked in PR knows this is standard practice to bury bad news. This Board has absolutely no shame. They’re just trying to keep the Chief on board for the Marathon, not to mention his retirement benefits that get activated in June, and they’re looking for any excuse to achieve those goals.
To quote:
“The District Attorney’s Office has requested that the Town refrain from conducting its own investigation until such time as that review concludes.”
Nothing in this dollop of PR drivel says that the DA asked them not to suspend the Chief pending the outcome of the investigation. The DA only asked that the town not conduct its own investigation until such time as the DA’s office has completed its investigation.
Yet again, these not so artful dodgers of transparency are trying to finesse their way around tackling the hard truths so ably documented by Chair Kramer in the Chief’s performance review: that Joseph Bennett has repeatedly been derelict in his duties as the Chief of Police, and is not fit to serve as the top law enforcement officer in this town.
The precedent was set in the Porter case: if you’re under investigation by the DA, you’re suspended pending the outcome of that investigation.
But it seems that precedent doesn’t apply to Joseph Bennett.
This isn’t as clarifying as one would hope. This makes it seem as if releasing the victim’s PII is the only reason he should be put on leave and fired, but it is not. If the outside investigation says that he was not solely responsible (which it likely will), that is NOT reason to keep him. He should certainly be fired for releasing the victim’s PII because even if he was not the only one involved in the release, he still did it and it caused irreparable harm and will cost the town millions. But even if that had never happened, he should still also be fired for all of the reasons Muriel Kramer read about how terrible he is at his job, his lack of leadership, failure to produce documents and comply with what is asked of him, the letter of no confidence from all his Sergeants, driving away 14 officers etc. He should ALSO be fired for putting Sgt Brennan on leave for “policy violations” that didn’t even hold up immediately after Brennan helped author a letter of no confidence in him, which is clearly retaliation both for that and for getting his buddy indicted. When they finally do “take action,” it is imperative that Amy Ritterbusch recuse herself (or be forced to) from the matter since she also posted the same documents, so she cannot be impartial when deciding about Bennett. This chief will never be able to regain the trust he has lost. He should resign. Since he won’t, he needs to be fired.
Cowards. Nothing but a bunch of cowards.
This article is an example of the value of real local reporting. So much “reporting” these days has been reduced to simply repeating 2 sides of a story with little investigative work or context for readers. I appreciate that HopNews digs deeper. That is a real service that is needed, and I’m sorry to say, has been missing from some other media outlets for some time.
What about all of the other job failings of this Chief? No one in corporate America could so completely fail to meet so many objectives and remain in a position of authority, never mind remain employed. Why have performance reviews that mean absolutely nothing? This board needs to go work in the real world to understand the expectations we have of those that work for us.