By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org

Commissioner Robert Quinn and top staff at New Hampshire’s Department of Safety are embroiled in another legal mess, as a new lawsuit alleges sexual harassment, cover up, and retaliation.

Danielle Cole, a former investigator in the New Hampshire Fire Marshal’s Office, was fired for reporting that she was being harassed by a supervisor who happened to be friends with Quinn, the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit, filed this week in Rockingham Superior Court, claims Quinn intervened in the internal affairs investigation of Cole’s allegations to make sure his friend, then Deputy State Fire Marshal Max Schultz, wouldn’t be punished. Schultz is now the Assistant Director at the New Hampshire Police Standards and Training Academy. 

Tyler Dumont, spokesman for the Department of Safety, declined to comment citing the pending litigation. Quinn, Schultz, and former Fire Marshal Paul Parisi are all named as defendants in the lawsuit, along with the Department of Safety.

Cole claims in her lawsuit the Fire Marshal’s Office is rife with sexually inappropriate behavior by the male-dominated staff. For example, Schultz routinely called a female civilian Department of Safety employee “Tits and Tats,” according to the lawsuit.

Cole is a veteran state trooper who transferred to the Fire Marshal’s Office in 2011 as a fire investigator. She excelled in her role, and by 2019 she rose to become Deputy State Fire Marshal II, Bureau Commander at the age of 36. She was the only female among the five senior command staff to achieve that rank, according to her lawsuit.

Cole did her best to ignore the rampant misogyny in the Fire Marshal’s Office and focus on her work, the lawsuit states. But when Parisi was promoted to Fire Marshal in 2018, Schultz’s behavior toward her took an alarming turn, she claims.

“Schultz’s conduct towards (Cole) grew increasingly aggressive and offensive during their telephone conversations, emails, and in-person interactions. The unwarranted hostility in Defendant Schultz’s demeanor towards (Cole) perplexed and frightened her,” the lawsuit states. 

After Cole’s 2019 promotion, Schultz is alleged to have spread the rumor she only got her position by engaging in an inappropriate relationship with Parisi. According to the lawsuit, Schultz began sharing the false story about the relationship with superiors, including Quinn. During this time, nothing was done to address Schultz’s actions, the lawsuit states.

In a frightening story recounted in the complaint, Schultz closely followed Cole through the DOS parking lot to her car and refused to stop following her when she asked him to stop during the Nov. 17, 2020 incident. Schultz continued to act aggressively towards her while she was clearly trying to get away from him, the lawsuit states.

Parisi allegedly witnessed Schultz’s parking lot intimidation of Cole, and yet did nothing to address the behavior, the lawsuit states. Instead, he told Cole to try and avoid Schultz. 

While Schultz’s aggressive harassment of Cole continued to amp up, Parisi engaged in his own inappropriate conduct, the lawsuit states.

“Rather than curtailing the offensive, sexually aggressive male conduct in the workplace that was directed against (Cole) and others, Defendant Parisi himself, 15 years (Cole’s) senior, inappropriately kissed (Cole) on one occasion when they were working together,” the lawsuit states.

In early 2021, the Department of Safety initiated an internal investigation into Parisi, and Cole was interviewed as a witness, though she was not told what was being investigated, according to the lawsuit. During a Feb. 2, 2021 interview, Cole was asked numerous questions about her relationship with Parisi and her 2019 promotion. 

During the Feb. 3 interview the investigators asked Cole about her relationship with Schultz. When she began explaining the aggressive and frightening behavior Schultz exhibited toward her, Cole was told she would not need to provide any documentation about Schultz. 

The lawsuit alleges that Cole disclosed sexual harassment by Schultz to the investigators during the Feb. 3 interview, and they took no action. Cole was not referred to the employee assistance plans, or given information about employee safety, or given the option to file her own complaint. Instead, she was asked if she could change the way she interacted with Schultz.

During a followup interview on Feb. 10, Cole gave the investigators a copy of an inappropriate email she got from Schultz, a document detailing his inappropriate behavior, as well as a report she wrote to Parisi about Schultz. Still no action was taken, the lawsuit states.

Over the next week, Schultz began wearing his gun to work again, after not having worn one for years, the lawsuit states. In the meantime, Cole was not being offered any information about a safety plan or told what her options were for dealing with the increasingly unsafe work environment, the lawsuit states.

Cole contacted the Department of Safety’s Human Resources office on Feb. 16 to report her concerns about Schultz’s gun, but again, no action was taken. On Feb. 17, Cole emailed Human Resources a nine-page report about Schultz that was seemingly ignored.

On March 3, with still no response from Human Resources, Cole went to Deputy Fire Marshal Keith Rodenhiser with her concerns, telling him “that she no longer felt comfortable coming to the office, that she had been subjected to Defendant Schultz’s aggressive behavior towards her, that she was fearful of what Defendant Schultz might do to her, and that she was afraid that Defendant Schultz had inappropriate feelings for her.”

That finally got a response from the administrators, according to the lawsuit. On March 4, New Hampshire Division of Personnel Investigator Gene Marchese called Cole to set up a March 5 interview about her complaint. Unknown to Cole at the time, Quinn was intervening in the investigation already for Schultz, according to the lawsuit.

“Prior to and immediately after Plaintiff’s March 5, 2021 interview, Defendant Quinn and Marchese conferred by telephone during which Defendant Quinn made it known to Marchese that Defendant Schultz was someone he had known for a number of years,” the lawsuit states. “Thus, Marchese proceeded with his investigation of Cole’s sexual harassment and hostile workplace environment complaints with the clear understanding from the top that loyalties belonged with Defendant Schultz.”

Marchese denied Cole’s request to have a lawyer present for the March 5 interview. And despite telling Cole that none of her statements made in the interview could be used against her, her answers were later used to create an excuse to fire her, the lawsuit claims.

Marchese betrayed an obvious bias in favor of Schultz, during the interview, according to the lawsuit. At one point, he told Cole, “It sounds like (Schultz) has been a real staple over in that agency for quite some time.”

It was later learned that Marchese did not look very hard into Cole’s allegations, according to the lawsuit. For instance, Marchese failed to review the parking lot security camera video of the Nov. 17, 2020 incident in which Schultz allegedly followed Cole.

Cole’s lawsuit calls Marchese’s investigation a “token.” Despite finding that Schultz’s conduct toward Cole was contrary to the Respect and Civility in the Workplace Policy at the Department, no corrective action was taken against him.

But, three days after the investigation into Schultz closed, Cole found herself the subject of an internal investigation. The grounds for this investigation came from Marchese finding one of her answers “slightly less than credible.” Again, Marchese told Cole she would not need a lawyer for their interview since none of her responses would be used against her, according to the lawsuit.

State Police Sgt. Justin Rowe was initially assigned to investigate Cole, but was removed after he was accused of sexually harassing a Department of Safety civilian employee. Sgt. John Kelly was then put on the case. Both Kelly and Rowe would deem the accusation against Cole unfounded.

The troopers informed Assistant Commissioner Eddie Edwards the accusations against Cole were unfounded in May of 2021, but she was never told that the case was closed and she could return to duty, the lawsuit states. Edwards sat on the “unfounded” conclusion and then pressed Kelly to keep digging, the lawsuit states.

“Edwards subsequently confronted Sergeant Kelly about his conclusion that Plaintiff was honest in a transparent effort to unduly influence Sergeant Kelly to reach a different conclusion in the Internal Affairs investigation against Plaintiff and ordered him to listen to the interview tape again,” the lawsuit states.

At Edwards’ suggestion, this subsequent review focused on Cole’s initial answer about the unwanted kiss from Parisi. Cole first denied Parisi had kissed her when asked due to her embarrassment, but quickly corrected herself and acknowledged the kiss, according to the lawsuit.

That was enough of an excuse for Quinn to suspend Cole and then fire her in July of 2021, according to the lawsuit. The whole time, according to the lawsuit, Quinn and the Department of Safety used the investigation into Cole’s complaint about Schultz to find a way to silence her.

“The actions of Defendant DOS by and through its employees during this ‘investigation’ of the Plaintiff were a thinly veiled attempt to use the imprimatur of an Internal Affairs investigation to dismissively disregard her workplace gender discrimination and hostile work environment complaints,” the lawsuit states.

Parisi would go on to retire as Fire Marshal, but was able to get a new job as a municipal fire chief with the help of a letter of recommendation written by Quinn, the lawsuit states. Schultz got the job with Police Standards and Training without any blemishes on his record, the lawsuit states.

Quinn was recently reappointed to another term as commissioner amidst controversy over his alleged illegal use of the state’s Gun Line system. Quinn allegedly ordered a background check done on a Massachusetts man, the son of a Quinn acquaintance, as a favor. The Massachusetts man wanted help getting a firearms license in Massachusetts after he was initially denied in that state.