Given that Belchertown’s last police chief resigned in disgrace, town leaders surely want their next commander-in-chief to brim with integrity.
Three finalists have emerged for the high-profile post, all of whom come from departments outside the town. They hold the ranks of lieutenant and captain and each has a wealth of law enforcement experience.
Each could potentially serve as an outstanding police chief for this community of 14,700 residents.
But a cloud hangs over one candidate, Lt. Robert Powers Jr. of the Northampton Police Department.
Powers has been named as a defendant in a federal lawsuit for allegedly participating in hazing officer recruits and making disparaging comments about Hispanics while serving as an instructor at the Western Massachusetts Police Academy in Springfield.
Specifically, the complaint alleges Powers engaged in a pattern of demeaning behavior and made culturally insensitive comments as an instructor. Plaintiff Timothy Turley, a recruit in his 40s from West Roxbury, alleges Powers compelled him to “perform the degrading task of kneeling down and placing socks on the bare feet of another officer.”
Turley alleges Powers and other instructors discriminated against him because of his age and that Powers regularly used the term “ethnics” interchangeably with “Hispanics,” and told recruits that “Massachusetts police officers could issue citations to ‘ethnically altered vehicles all day long,’” among other allegations.
This could all be lies or, at the least, fabrications or misrepresentations of what really went on at the academy during Turley’s officer training. That’s up to the judicial system to decide, and it will.
It falls to the Belchertown Select Board to thoroughly vet its candidates for police chief, which means doing background checks and asking tough questions during job interviews. It’s disturbing the board did neither last week.
It took a town resident to alert the board’s chairman, Ronald Aponte, to the federal lawsuit in an email a week before last Friday’s candidate interviews, during which the board did not raise the issue with Powers.
Aponte told the Gazette the lawsuit would have no bearing on the selection process and that the suit “hasn’t come to a conclusion and he (Powers) is innocent until proven guilty.”
Still. The concept of innocent until proven guilty doesn’t mean a candidate for police chief can’t be asked for his take on serious allegations about his conduct while training a new generation of police officers. It is especially relevant given the supervisory authority this position holds and the high professional standards every community expects of a police chief.
It would not have been taboo to ask Powers about his involvement in the case. Instead, it would be a common sense thing to do. A job interview for police chief should not be a cake walk. It should include tough and, if necessary, uncomfortable questions that can provide explanations and reveal how a candidate thinks on his feet and conducts himself when pressed.
What happens if Select Board members hire Powers as police chief without having asked him questions about Turley’s complaint, and all or even some of the allegations are deemed to be true? Then what?
Aponte had the lawsuit in hand days before Friday’s interviews with the finalists, who include Capt. Christopher Pronovost of the Amherst Police Department and Lt. Mark Saloio of the Sturbridge Police Department.
Obviously, residents are interested in the matter given that one of them brought this to the board’s attention.
Town residents deserve to learn as much as they can about their next police chief, which is more than just a resume, qualifications, recommendations and cookie-cutter interview questions. Sometimes, the hiring process for police chief demands a probing query into one’s character, especially if that person plans to spend nearly three decades on the job like the last one.
As the Select Board prepares to choose its next top cop this Friday night, we seriously question whether it has done its full job.