Gloucester police Chief John Beaudette knew about a senior officer's accidentally broadcast threat days earlier than he indicated in the wake of the incident, an internal affairs investigation of the department's response to the threat found.

The investigation, by the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, found a wide-ranging breakdown of the departmental chain of command and conflicting testimony from a number of officers in the department, but cited only patrolman's union leader Michael Williams for violating police rules.

Williams sent a recording of the threat — uttered by Lt. Michael O'Hanley toward his estranged daughter-in-law — to a Boston television station, according to the report released late yesterday afternoon.

Releasing a police record to the public without authorization is a violation of departmental policy.

Beaudette, who announced his retirement last week, told the Times in January that he had not been informed of the Nov. 26 threat made by Lt. Michael O'Hanley, until Sunday, Nov. 30, four days after it was recorded and listened to throughout the department.

But according to the NEMLEC report, Beaudette was told about the incident by multiple members of the department three days earlier, on Friday, Nov. 28.

In fact, Lt. Jerris Cook, the watch commander during the night shift on Nov. 26, told NEMLEC investigators that O'Hanley had said in a phone call that he spoke with the chief about the radio broadcast at 4:30 p.m. the day of the incident.

Mobile phone records show O'Hanley called Cook at that time, but O'Hanley told investigators he never told Cook he spoke with Beaudette.

O'Hanley, who took a citywide early retirement offer this month, was Beaudette's closest friend on the force.

Beaudette told NEMLEC he never spoke to O'Hanley on Nov. 26, according to the report.

Beaudette could not be reached for comment yesterday.

The report also says that Lt. Joseph Aiello — who told a previous NEMLEC investigation he had not known about the threat the day it happened — told this investigation he might have know about it, but didn't remember. Aiello was the watch commander when the threat was broadcast the morning of Nov. 26.

After interviews with 13 officers, and several city officials, NEMLEC found that officers repeatedly failed to notify their superiors about the incident or file any written report of what had happened.

"It is apparent that the ball was dropped along every step of this incident," the report says.

In a statement released with the NEMLEC report, Mayor Carolyn Kirk said any officer found to break police policy will face disciplinary action. The statement did not say what those sanctions would be.

Kirk could not be reached for further comment yesterday evening.

Calls and e-mails to Williams were not returned.

Williams is listed as the secretary of the Gloucester Police Patrolmen's Association on the union's Web site. He has served as president in previous years.

Williams told investigators that he gave the recording to WBZ-TV on Dec. 1 because, to that point, no action had been taken by the department and the incident had not been made public.

The morning of Nov. 26, O'Hanley, while sitting in his cruiser working a paid police detail, told a relative in a mobile phone conversation that he would hire someone to "bust out" the windows of an unnamed woman's car.

O'Hanley's police radio was accidentally activated and the conversation was broadcast over the airwaves and recorded in the dispatch center, where officers congregated to listen to it.

An initial investigation by NEMLEC determined that the woman referred to in the broadcast was O'Hanley's daughter-in-law and that O'Hanley had not taken any action to follow through with the threat.

O'Hanley was suspended five days without pay.

This second investigation was commissioned by Kirk after the first raised questions about the department's handling of the incident. The investigation report was written by Wilmington Deputy Police Chief Robert Richter.

Other findings of the report include:

Police officers who listened to the threat in the dispatch center Nov. 26 believed Kirk was the unnamed woman referred to by O'Hanley.

The investigation found that no attempt had been made by any members of the department to cover up the O'Hanley incident.

Williams made contact with WBZ-TV in Boston through local activist James O'Hara.

A courier from the television station picked up a copy of the recording left by Williams on Monday, Dec. 1.

A recording of the broadcast was played for O'Hanley, Beaudette, City Chief Administrative Officer Jim Duggan and City Personnel Director David Bain that was of such poor sound quality that the threat was unintelligible.

Patrick Anderson may be contacted at panderson@gloucestertimes.com.