Beaudette blames 'liars and cowards'

The dysfunction in the Gloucester Police Department identified by a recent internal affairs investigation was caused by "liars and cowards" within the force willing to sabotage the department for personal gain, Police Chief John Beaudette said yesterday.

Personal grievances and opportunities for advancement fueled the behavior of at least three officers, Beaudette said, including union leader Michael Williams, who publicized threatening remarks by a superior officer to ruin the careers of those above him.

"What they did was self-serving to take people down," Beaudette said. "They destroyed careers for no public good."

Williams, who broke police department policy and law enforcement "in-house" ethic by leaking a recording of Lt. Michael O'Hanley's accidentally broadcast comments, is facing disciplinary action based on the findings of the investigation of the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council.

Yesterday, Mayor Carolyn Kirk said a punishment for Williams was "imminent," but not yet final or official.

Although Williams was the only officer identified in the report as having broken departmental policy, Kirk said disciplinary action against other officers was still possible.

The NEMLEC report, which outlines findings from the regional law enforcement collective's probe of the Gloucester Police Department of the O'Hanley open microphone incident in November, describes a force rife with lying, opportunism and factionalism.

With Beaudette set to retire next month and an upcoming public safety audit expected to usher in a transitional period in the department, debate among police and city officials yesterday turned toward whether Williams' behavior was that of a whistleblower or vindictive malcontent.

Williams told NEMLEC investigators that he delivered a copy of the O'Hanley recording to WBZ-TV because he feared for the safety of O'Hanley's daughter-in-law, the subject of the threatening remarks, and thought no action would be taken by the department on the issue.

But according to Beaudette, Williams leaked the tape in retaliation for disciplinary action taken against him years ago for being caught on camera sleeping on the job. For that infraction, Williams was ordered back to patrolling the streets, instead of office duty, Beaudette said.

If Williams had really been concerned about O'Hanley's daughter-in-law, the chief said, he should have written a report or gone up the chain of command, instead of going to the media.

Reached by phone yesterday, Williams said union lawyers had advised him not to comment. Attempts to reach Gloucester Police Patrolman's Association legal counsel yesterday were unsuccessful.

In addition to Williams, Beaudette included officer Michael Quinn and recently retired Lt. Jerris Cook in the group of police who had betrayed the department.

Quinn copied the O'Hanley transmission to a laptop computer the day of the incident and then later provided a copy for Williams. Quinn told investigators that he was concerned that there would be a cover-up of the threat because O'Hanley was Beaudette's best friend on the force.

Cook told NEMLEC investigators that O'Hanley had said in a phone call the night of the incident that the chief had spoken with him and was upset. Both Beaudette and O'Hanley have denied having that conversation.

Cook and Beaudette have clashed before, including an incident where Beaudette allegedly "belly bumped" Cook in an argument over assignments.

Although measured, Williams received some support from City Councilor Jason Grow, who was featured in the NEMLEC report because of his attempts to alert the Kirk administration about the incident — and for talking to Williams about it.

"I certainly think it could have been handled better (by Williams), but I would have felt worse about what he did if I thought there was a credible command structure in place," Grow said. "It is a shame that this secondary investigation was about who to pin the blame on rather than identifying the underlying problem of why this was allowed to get out of control. Pinning the blame is the wrong way to fix the department."

The findings in the NEMLEC report contradict Beaudette's early accounts of when he learned that O'Hanley had been recorded saying he wanted to "bust out" the windows of his estranged daughter-in-law's car.

As for when he learned of the threat, Beaudette yesterday acknowledged that he had received calls from officers about an incident involving O'Hanley that would threaten his job two days earlier than he initially said.

But he said that kind of "scuttlebutt" from officers was common and he did not take it too seriously. It was only on Sunday, Nov. 30, that he actually heard a recording of the threat.

Beaudette announced his retirement last week and said yesterday that he had always been planning to step aside after 32 years on the job. The scrutiny from a pending internal investigation or from the mayor had not pushed him out the door, he said.

Other Gloucester officers featured prominently in the NEMLEC investigation include Sgt. John McCarthy, who was the shift supervisor at the time of the O'Hanley threat and was singled out in the initial investigation for listening to a playback of it in the dispatch center.

McCarthy, who years ago launched a legal challenge to O'Hanley's appointment as lieutenant, was cited by NEMLEC for not filing a written report of the incident.

But his statement that he told his superior, the watch commander Lt. Joseph Aiello, about the incident was confirmed by other officers' testimony.

Aiello, who denied ever having known about the incident during the first investigation, changed his story in the latest probe to say that he "may" have been told, but hadn't thought it was "any big deal."

Through all of the conflicting stories catalogued in the investigation, one officer, Patrolman Stephen Lamberis was highlighted for telling investigators that he was totally unaware of the O'Hanley threat, despite evidence to the contrary.

"Although unrelated to the outcome of this investigation, Officer Steve (sic.) Lamberis' testimony was in direct conflict with the testimony of others he was working with on the evening of Nov. 26, 2008," the report said.

Lamberis, not long after Beaudette's appointment in 2005, was accused by the department of ignoring an emergency call. He fought the charge, plunging the city into litigation.

In the end, Lamberis was never formally disciplined, but spent 17 months on paid leave and eventually received a $25,000 settlement.

NEMLEC assisted the Gloucester Police Department in that investigation.

In its final passage, the NEMLEC report, penned by Wilmington Deputy Police Chief Robert Richter, gives a cumulative impression of the author's experience examining the GPD.

"This investigation was made difficult in large part to a lack of cohesion within the Gloucester Police Department and a lack of clarity and substance in the rules, regulations, policies and procedures which govern the Gloucester Police Department," the report says. "It appears there are several different factions within the department who are moving forward with their own agendas. The department lacks any direction as an organization."

Patrick Anderson and be reached at panderson@gloucestertimes.com.

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