LPD has come a long, long way - Lowell Sun

IS THE Lowell Police Department perfect? Is it above reproach?

No. Far from it.

The Sun’s news and editorial pages over the last two decades have been full of stories calling out cops for illegal activity and milking the system for personal gain.

But beginning with the appointment of Ed Davis as superintendent in 1994 by then-City Manager Brian Martin, the LPD has become one of the most respected departments in the state. Respected for its partnerships with local businesses and non-profit agencies. Respected for community policing. Respected for its responsiveness.

Davis, who did such a good job in Lowell that he was tapped by the late Boston Mayor Tom Menino to become commissioner in the state’s largest city, was succeeded by Kenneth Lavallee, William Taylor and today’s superintendent, Kelly Richardson.

All lifelong Lowell cops who know what makes the city tick — partnerships, bringing people to the table to resolve differences.

That all seems lost these days, as a group of nonprofits and others wanted the City Council to declare racism a public health threat.

That initiative was narrowly defeated last Tuesday, but no one expects the proponents of the measure to retreat.

“I am shocked and more than disappointed that our community turned on its PD,” Richardson told The Column. “I can tell you I have never seen morale so low in this department.”

The “defund police” movement has focused its attention on police overtime. It was once a huge issue in Lowell, when superintendents would come before city councilors for emergency transfers to replenish overtime accounts.

Richardson notes proudly that in fiscal 2019, the PD was budgeted for $900,000 in overtime. The year just closed, and the account has a $56,000 surplus.

“I know it’s still a lot of money, but we are watching it closely,” Richardson said.

A PD observer noted: “It went from 0 to 60 against the Police Department I believe because of the national rhetoric.”

Richardson doesn’t disagree. He just hopes it’s not too late to start the kind of dialogue that has put Lowell on a higher pedestal than other Gateway Cities.

ABOUT THE only thing City Councilors Rodney Elliott and William Samaras shared in common over the last few years is they both made it to the pulpit — the mayor’s pulpit.

Their politics didn’t jive. They have opposite ways of doing things. Their core supporters are from different political camps.

But Elliott, the elder when it comes to council longevity, and Samaras, the oldest councilor, came together nicely to craft the motion that was narrowly accepted by their colleagues Tuesday evening, 6-3.

Elliott and Samaras vehemently opposed the motion to declare racism a public health threat because of a clause calling for the establishment of an independent civilian advisory committee to monitor and address police misconduct.

Isn’t that the city manager’s job?

The Elliott/Samaras resolution makes a number of pledges, though does not declare racism a public health crisis.

It was supported by Councilors Dan Rourke, Rita Mercier, Sokhary Chau and Dave Conway.

The resolution proposed, among many items, that Lowell “rejects all forms of racism” and “will strive to support health services free from all forms of prejudice and inequalities.”

“Bill and I collaborated really well,” Elliott told The Column. “A lot of thought went into the document to bring all sides together. But they (sponsors of the original motion) wanted nothing less than their demands. Very disappointing.”

Samaras hit on a similar theme.

“Lowell has become a better place to live, work and conduct business because its leaders have always eschewed the ‘my way or the highway’ mantra,” Samaras said. “I share Councilor Elliott’s disappointment on this matter because I believe the resolution that was ultimately approved is more than reasonable.”

FOR PEOPLE familiar with Marisa Shea’s activism, it should come at no surprise that Shea, a Daley Middle School teacher, joined the fray of residents and others asking Lowell City Council to declare racism a public health crisis.

In 2018, Shea was one of the protesters who shut down a Lowell City Council subcommittee meeting where National Grid was expected to give a presentation on a proposed gas pipeline.

Last year, Shea was arrested for allegedly assaulting a Boston police officer during a counter protest of a Straight Pride Parade in Boston. Prosecutors dropped the charge against Shea not long after the arrest.

So fast forward to this week, and Shea had a few words to share with councilors during the public comment session.

“Today you either dig your heels in and try to cling desperately to your white supremaicist ideology,” she said. “Or you can break with the government’s racist past — ”

A male voice broke in asking for Mayor John Leahy to intervene.

“I don’t think it’s out of order,” Leahy said. “It’s something we have to listen to.”

Councilor Rodney Elliott, already upset by an email Shea had sent to the council prior to the meeting, jumped in.

“Control the meeting,” he told Leahy.

Leahy said he was. Elliott said Shea’s comments were personal insults.

“She is stating facts we don’t want to hear,” Leahy said.

Shea said she has a right to speak under the council rules. Leahy told Shea she could continue to speak for the last 30 seconds of her allotted time.

She did not respond and the meeting moved on.

BUT ONLY for a bit. During the discussion that followed, Elliott brought up Leahy’s stance on a different issue that divided the council.

Last year, the City Council agreed to a federal consent decree requiring the city to change the way the City Council and School Committee are elected. The plaintiffs, a coalition of Latino and Asian American residents, alleged the current all at-large system allows white voters to vote as a bloc, diluting the minority vote.

And, as the plaintiffs hoped, the all at-large system will be replaced for the 2021 local elections and beyond.

Though a number of councilors were unhappy with the agreement, Leahy was one of two councilors to actually vote against the consent decree that set these changes in motion, according to subsequently released executive session minutes. (The other was Councilor David Conway).

This week Leahy, not only supported, but made the motion to declare racism a public health crisis in Lowell.

Elliott, who opposed the declaration, didn’t let this history go unsaid.

“Let’s walk the walk instead of making motions,” Elliott said. “You had an opportunity Mr. Mayor and you still, right to an end, voted against giving minorities a vote in this city.”

Before voting on the declaration, Leahy responded.

“I didn’t want to make this personal, but since you want to make this personal, Councilor Elliott, I didn’t vote against giving minorities the opportunity,” he said. “What I voted against is, I thought, that if people want a voice they need to get out and vote. If people get out and vote their voice is heard.”

Leahy said Elliott knew this was his stance. Elliott cut in.

“I didn’t know that,” Elliott said.

The two shouted over each other.

“If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen,” Leahy said.

Once things calmed down, Leahy expanded on his explanation.

“We represent everyone in the city and when over 2,000 people come to us signing a letter, businesses and individuals alike, I’m going to listen and that’s what it’s about,” he said.

They moved onto the vote, with Elliott repeatedly asking to respond. Councilor John Drinkwater, another supporter of the declaration, moved the question.

“Maybe new members should read the rules,” Elliott said.

Drinkwater doubled down.

“People don’t want to hear the truth, do they Councilor Drinkwater?” Elliott said.

After the meeting, Drinkwater said in a text that he called the question, because every councilor had a chance to speak and the discussion had “devolved into personal attacks and interruption of those who held the floor.”

THE BACK-AND-FORTH earned at least one fan for Leahy: School Committee member Bob Hoey.

Hoey, who is open about his City Council ambitions, often makes strong statements, both flattering and, well, not so flattering. Midway through a School Committee motion on requiring anti-racist training, Hoey sang Leahy’s praises with more than a dash of Lowell political history.

“I’m going to tell you Mayor, your father would be the proudest guy on the planet,” Hoey said. “I knew your father pretty well and I thought you hit a home run — not a grand slam — a home run.”

Leahy’s father, Daniel Leahy, served as both a city councilor and state senator. He died in 2016. Hoey then started discussing phone calls he had received about the Tuesday night City Council meeting.

“I got one from Ed Kennedy telling me how great you did,” Hoey said. “Someone who didn’t even want to make you the mayor at one time. Isn’t that funny, the way the world turns?”

Kennedy, a former councilor and current state senator, was a pivotal vote in selecting the city’s mayor in 2018. Accounts vary on whether Kennedy pledged Leahy his vote, but when it came time to decide, Kennedy supported Councilor William Samaras for the seat. Samaras was named mayor in a rare split vote.

At the beginning of this year Leahy was voted in as mayor in a 9-0 vote.

Hoey then brought up state Rep. Dave Nangle. Earlier this year, Hoey attended a rally to re-elect Nangle, whose candidacy was in question following a federal indictment in February. Nangle is also Leahy’s cousin.

“Another one was my friend Dave Nangle — and I know both of those people. One was yelling at you a  little bit,” Hoey said. “You know one of them, not Kennedy. He said, hey, why did he make people from out of Lowell, why did he let them speak? I said, well that’s what your cousin does. He lets us speak. You haven’t gaveled me — maybe once I think you might have stifled me?”

Leahy, who chaired the School Committee meeting, said “thank you” and made acknowledging noises throughout Hoey’s remarks.

Hoey said he was trying to keep his comments respectful for the School Committee meeting, but planned to say more on City Life on LTC this Tuesday.

LAST MONTH, Lowell School Committee member Mike Dillon Jr. offered to give up his entire $12,000 stipend and urged other members to do the same.

However, that $12,000 wasn’t exactly money in his pocket. Both Dillon and Lowell Public Schools confirmed Dillon, a Lowell firefighter, has not received his School Committee stipend. Though there are some exemptions, under state law, employees are generally barred from being paid for two jobs in the same municipality.

Last month, Dillon told The Sun he believes he should receive this payment. He said he has been in communication with the City Solicitor’s Office on this issue.

The School Committee agreed to reduce its stipend by $1,000, as proposed by another committee member, but not the whole amount.

SOME HAVE compared it to a fox watching the hen house. But the record now reflects that U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan did not violate campaign finance laws, ending a saga that has dogged her campaign since she took office.

The decision by the House Committee on Ethics broke late Thursday.

“The respected House Ethics Committee — made up of Democrats and Republicans — investigated this matter thoroughly and has now unanimously confirmed what I’ve always maintained: that my campaign acted ethically and that these baseless accusations were just politics,” Trahan said in a prepared statement.

The first-year rep would not speak with The Sun.

At issue was a roughly $300,000 loan Trahan’s campaign received from a joint checking account Trahan has with her husband David Trahan.

Several organizations filed complaints alleging that loan was an illegal campaign contribution from David Trahan. Spouses are typically barred from contributing more than the usual limit of $5,000 to a campaign.

Trahan also took heat on the issue from Dan Koh, now an Andover selectman who is the former top aide to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. Koh lost to Trahan by just 145 votes in the 2018 primary. He has also reportedly considered challenging Trahan again in part because of the campaign finance questions.

Trahan argued in a 17-page response to the House Committee on Ethics that the funds were her personal funds because a premarital agreement signed years before with her husband.

The bipartisan committee cited the prenuptual agreement in a 29-page report published on Wednesday that says Trahan did not violate any laws or regulations.

“Representative Trahan’s prenuptial agreement with her husband established clear delineations as to the couple’s income and assets and rights to their income and assets during their marriage,” the report states. “Based on the prenuptial agreement, the Committee found that Representative Trahan’s loans to the campaign were from her personal funds, not excessive contributions from her husband, and therefore did not violate House Rules, laws, regulations or other standards of conduct.”

Koh has blustered since he lost the election, essentially saying Trahan cheated.

He still feels that way.

But two attempts to get Koh to comment on what obviously is a big win for Trahan were unsuccessful.

For all his hullabaloo, Koh’s silence is deafening.

“IT’S GOING to be interesting over the next week to see what the fallout of July 4 has been,” Billerica Town Manager John Curran.

Curran, who recently tested positive for COVID-19, said he saw a lot of people waiting to be tested when he got tested a few days ago and heard of long lines at several testing centers.

Curran advocated for people to remain vigilant in taking precautionary measures such as wearing masks and social distancing.

He called it a constant battle.

“As we open up the economy again the virus isn’t going to go away. We have to continue to stay on top of it,” Curran said.

DEB BUSSER remains uncontested in her quest to become the Democratic candidate to challenge Sheila Harrington as the representative for the First Middlesex District. Judging from the endorsements she’s racked up lately, that momentum doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

The Massachusetts Chapter of the Sierra Club announced its endorsement of Busser on Tuesday. This comes nearly three weeks after Busser received an endorsement from the Environmental League of Massachusetts Action Fund.

“Deb Busser has been a strong advocate for protecting the environment,” Jenny Lau, chair of the club chapter’s Political Committee said in a press release. “Busser’s knowledge and passion in the State House will help Massachusetts address climate change and ensure access to clean drinking water.”

The Sierra Club is a national organization focused on celebrating and protecting the environment. The club’s Massachusetts chapter has over 100,000 members and supporters looking for the state to transition to a clean energy economy, offer clean transportation, reduce pollution and have zero waste.

“I am honored to receive the endorsement of the Massachusetts Sierra Club”, Busser said in the release. “The Sierra Club has been a leading advocate for equitable environmental change in the Commonwealth, fighting for 100% renewable energy, working to protect our waterways from toxic pollution, and calling for improvements to our public transportation systems. I am excited to get to work on Beacon Hill alongside environmentalists from across the state as we move Massachusetts toward a greener and more sustainable future.”

Busser’s Democratic primary is set for Sept. 1 with the general election scheduled for Nov. 3

THE JOB search Chelmsford Town Manager Paul Cohen agreed to back in early March isn’t going so well in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

At the March 5 meeting where the Board of Selectmen granted him a one-year extension of his contract through June 2021, Cohen told the board that would be plenty of time for him to look for and secure a new job, according to meeting minutes released in April.

But that was before the pandemic caused massive closures and delays of town government functions around the state, and put many municipalities on precarious financial footing.

Cohen said his expectation had been that once Town Meeting and budget season ended in the spring, the normal attrition and turnover that happens in towns would occur and allow him to search for a new job. But two main reasons have changed that schedule, he said.

“COVID hit, and it froze everything, delayed Town Meetings, budgets and town elections,” Cohen said. “The other thing is, there has not been a single town manager opportunity at the level that I’m at, that’s become available in the area.

“Basically, where I’m at today, I’m on the first two weeks of a new employment agreement but I’m not an applicant anywhere, because there are no positions to apply to,” he added.

Cohen also said he believes he’s done a good job responding to these same COVID challenges in Chelmsford.

This all comes as Chelmsford’s Assistant Town Manager Mike McCall is about to leave to become town manager of Southbridge, a town not too far from the Connecticut border in southern Worcester County.

It’s one of the only town manager jobs that’s opened up recently in Massachusetts. Cohen said he did not pursue the job himself because it wasn’t a good professional opportunity that matched with his level of experience: Southbridge is half the size of Chelmsford, and it would have meant about a $50,000 pay cut.

With two children in high school, Cohen also said he has no plans to relocate his family. He said he’ll keep his eyes open for whatever opportunities may open nearby.

The impending departure of both Cohen and McCall raises the question of what institutional knowledge will remain in Chelmsford town government — and what other department heads may also leave as a result.

PRESENTED RECENTLY with a handful of things that are a bit out of the ordinary for a Republican governor — being sued by conservative groups, coming under fire from the right, polling better with Democrats than with the GOP — Gov. Charlie Baker said he thinks the people of Massachusetts understand his style of politics even if a traditional label doesn’t apply.

“I think the criticisms about, about my politics are, are just that, they’re political criticisms and people, I think, in Massachusetts — I mean, I’ve been in this job now for five years, many of them have seen me on TV more times than they probably care to — and I think they’ve got a pretty good sense of what my brand of Republicanism is about,” Baker said during a  recent interview with Jon Keller on WBZ-TV.

Keller had asked Baker, “aren’t you, right now, the very definition of a RINO, Republican in name only?”

Baker referenced two Republican governors he learned from — Govs. William Weld and Paul Cellucci — and said he believes in “a pragmatic approach to governing, wherever you can, relying on the best data, and the best advice you can get and then making the decisions you think make the most sense.”

As the interview ended, Keller asked Baker — who did not vote for President Donald Trump in 2016 — whether he would consider voting for Democrat Joe Biden in this fall’s presidential election.

The governor declined to say whether he would consider voting for Biden.

“I’m worrying about what matters most to voters here in Massachusetts right now and what worries most voters in Massachusetts is jobs, the economy, and the virus, and the civil justice stuff and that’s really been where our focus has been,” he said.

BETH LINDSTROM has a new role on the Beacon Hill Institute’s board of trustees.

A longtime figure in Massachusetts government and politics, Lindstrom served as state secretary of consumer affairs and business regulation under former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney.

She also worked at the Massachusetts State Lottery for seven years, during which she became the agency’s first female executive director.

Lindstrom, a Groton resident, managed former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown’s successful special election campaign, and in 2018, she ran in the Republican primary for the Senate.

Most recently, Lindstrom has worked as an adviser to the estate planning company Gentreo. She joins BHI’s board with experience as a board member for Fitchburg’s Applewild School and on Northeastern University’s Board of Visitors.

This week’s Column was prepared by Reporters Elizabeth Dobbins in Lowell; Alana Melanson in Chelmsford; Meg McIntyre in Dracut; Jon Winkler in the Nashoba Valley; Emma Murphy in Billerica; the State House News Service; and Enterprise Editor Christopher Scott.

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