I know most readers judge their elected officials by political persuasion. Me? I care whether they follow the law.
In East Lyme, I have to say I had my differences with the prior first selectman, Mark Nickerson, a Republican. We pressed him pretty hard a handful of years ago with our coverage of plans to renovate the new police station. But I can’t recall a single time Nickerson or his staff flouted Freedom of Information law, or even stonewalled us for documents. Nickerson could be prickly, but he picked up the phone. He answered questions. He handed over public documents.
I wish I could say the same about the current first selectman, Dan Cunningham, a Democrat. Facing a growing scandal in the local police department – the police chief on paid leave, the department under investigation for turning a blind eye to the domestic violence, a rogue officer – I think we can say that at this point — caught bungling a felony kidnapping case, a police commissioner texting photographs of his genitalia to the teenager involved – the town’s response? Levying fees on the release of police documents. Heavily redacting records of the town’s spending on legal fees – that’s a first for any town in our experience.
More troubling, Cunningham and town lawyers are breaking the law, in claiming a blanket exemption from Freedom of Information law and refusing to release the personnel file of East Lyme Police Detective Mark Comeau, at one time the investigating officer in the kidnapping case.
Has Comeau been disciplined or reassigned? Does the detective have a history of complaints, or of bending departmental procedure or the law? Who knows. Cunningham isn’t answering questions or returning calls.
In doing so, the town’s first selectman is abetting, and has made himself and the town complicit in actions by a member of the local police department that I believe, when revealed, will shock the conscience of East Lyme residents – Democrats and Republicans alike – and convince any fair-minded jury that the town should pay through the nose. It should.