By Patrick Anderson
Staff Writer
February 23, 2009 05:45 am The Police Department computer hastily thrown in a Dumpster by officers around the time of an internal investigation of a lieutenant's broadcast cell-phone threat did not contain any information that would have been lost with the unit's destruction, according to city officials. The computer, at least five years old and probably older, was seized by police in a sting operation years ago and not purchased by or registered with the city. But at the time of its disposal, the city did not have a policy requiring all computer equipment to be inventoried or stamped by the Information Technology Department, Mayor Carolyn Kirk said, so the city has no plans to take any action specifically stemming from its disposal. "(The police) attempted to dispose of it in an improper manner," Kirk said. "The IT Department has now drafted tighter policy controls over city assets." The new policy includes having all computers — even those acquired outside the normal purchasing process — to be brought to Information Technology workers, given a stamp and checked out by technicians. The computer, which was located in the watch commander's office in the police station, was used for keeping track of shifts worked by officers in order to schedule road detail assignments. In the early-morning hours of Dec. 23, the computer was thrown into a Dumpster, reportedly because it had stopped working. The watch commander that night was Lt. Michael O'Hanley, who at the time was under investigation for a bizarre incident Nov. 26, when in a conversation with a family member he said he wanted to hire someone to "bust out" the windows of his daughter-in-law's car. The conversation was accidentally broadcast over police radio, recorded and sent to a television station. The week after the computer was trashed, O'Hanley was placed on paid leave and later was suspended five days without pay for the radio threat. The disposal of the computer drew questions about whether it was connected in any way to the O'Hanley investigation. The incident came on the same day that O'Hanley was served with a temporary restraining order sought by his daughter-in-law. The order meant that O'Hanley was blocked from handling any firearms; a Woburn District Court judge, however, later declined to extend the temporary order to permanent. City Councilor Jason Grow, focused on the potential misuse of city resources, requested a full accounting of circumstances surrounding the computer's demise. Grow said he had not received a response from the Kirk administration yet. The morning after the computer ended up in the garbage, the police recovered at least part of it and alerted the city. The IT Department took possession of the hard drive for analysis. IT Director Mike Wells said Friday that tests revealed the hard drive was working and not responsible for any failure of the computer. He said, as far as he could tell, there was no information on the machine that was not backed up somewhere else or would have been lost if it had been taken out with the trash. Keeping with standard operating procedure for retired computers, the hard drive will be stored for a period of time, usually several months, until the chances are remote that anything on it could be needed. The rest of the old computer had been thrown out, he said. Since the new computer policy has been put in place, the police have brought in one computer to IT that they also seized in a raid, Wells said. Patrick Anderson can be reached at panderson@gloucestertimes.com
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