By NANCY WEST, InDepthNH.org
Lebanon Police Chief Richard Mello denied InDepthNH.org’s right-to-know requests for disciplinary records for three officers, two of whom were placed on paid leave recently with no reasons made public.
Mello denied the request Thursday saying the records of Lt. Richard Smolenski and Senior Officer Paul Gifford who remain on leave were exempt under the state’s right-to-know law despite recent state Supreme Court decisions that were expected to make police disciplinary records more accessible.
Mello also denied the request for Deputy Chief Phillip Roberts’ records, which along with Smolenski’s, have also been sought by Scott Traudt, a Strafford, Vt., man who has been fighting for police records for 13 years in his criminal case.
Traudt, 54, spent a year in prison for assaulting Roberts during a traffic stop and was found not guilty of assaulting Smolenski during the incident.
“It’s par for the course,” said Traudt of Mello’s recent decision. Gifford was not involved in his case, according to Traudt.
The ACLU-NH had also filed a right-to-know request on Lt. Smolenski in relation to the Traudt case and was also denied.
For InDepthNH.org’s three requests, Mello provided the same reasons for denying records for Smolenski, Roberts and Gifford.
The records are “exempt from disclosure because they are confidential information and or part of a personnel file and disclosure of such record would constitute an invasion of privacy RSA 91A:5, IV,” Mello wrote.
Mello cited the same law in which the state Supreme Court overturned its own precedent in the Fenniman decision about an exemption to the right-to-know law on “internal personnel practices.”
The law also exempts “personnel, medical, welfare, library user, videotape sale or rental, and other files whose disclosure would constitute invasion of privacy.”
Mello said he analyzed each record requested by InDepthNH.org with fact specific inquiry, and the exemptions of RSA 91-A:5 IV concerning confidential information and “personnel files.” And whether each was part of a personnel file and or confidential information and whether each record would constitute an invasion of privacy.
Gilles Bissonnette, ACLU-NH’s legal director, said he is considering taking legal action relative to Lebanon police denying his request.
“Here, the Lebanon police department is withholding disciplinary information concerning Lt. Richard Smolenski, who we know engaged in unspecified misconduct on at least one occasion several years ago and is currently on paid administrative leave for reasons the Department will not disclose. The Department is also withholding information concerning why Senior Police Officer Paul Gifford is currently on paid administrative leave,” Bissonnette said.
Withholding this information is both legally wrong and yet another example of police departments in New Hampshire protecting officers who may have engaged in wrongdoing at the expense of transparency and accountability, Bissonnette said.
Keeping officer misconduct secret is a pervasive problem in New Hampshire, which is why advocates are demanding reform with respect to police officer accountability and transparency, he said.
“Police departments’ insistence on secrecy obstructs public trust and defies the role of police as public servants whose foremost responsibility is to the public,” Bissonnette said.
Recent state Supreme Court decisions have made clear that police departments have an independent obligation to evaluate records requests concerning police officer discipline and weigh the public interest in disclosure against any privacy interests, he said.
“Unfortunately, this refusal to disclose misconduct has become a common trend among police departments and will have to be the subject of future litigation,” Bissonnette said.
Traudt has filed in the state Supreme Court where his attorney Jared Bedrick argues that the prosecutor told the jury to believe the officers in Traudt’s case because they didn’t have any disciplinary records when that wasn’t true.
Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Woodcock argued in the state’s filing: “The defendant has provided this Court with a record that is not sufficient to decide the issue that he has raised.”