This morning’s New London Day has an article about two complaints filed by Groton Town Council candidates against the police last year. One Republican and one Democrat, so this is an instance in which both sides do it.
I won’t say much about the substance of the Republican’s complaint, though his observation that:
“If you have a chief’s best friend and a subordinate investigating him, how effective is that investigation going to be?”
Seems to have some logic behind it, which is strange coming from a Republican.
The Democrat, Juliette Parker, was running (successfully) for re-election to the Town Council in October 2019. Her day job is secretary to the Groton City Chief of Police. The Groton Town Police union was upset because they weren’t allowed to cash in on providing security during a planned protest in the City at a submarine launching. Bear in mind, here, that the City of Groton has its own police department, separate and apart from the Town of Groton police department. It apparently fell to Juliette to deal with the union, and give them the sad news that they wouldn’t be getting extra pay on the City’s dime. Stephen McAndrew, president of the Union, then sent an email to all of the members of the Groton City Council and the Groton Town Council (yes, for those non-Grotonites who may read this, there are separate councils as well):
“There are members of the Town of Groton Police Local #3428 who were displeased with the way they were spoken to by the secretary of Chief Spellman,” McAndrew wrote. He added that Parker “seems to have an inflated sense of self with regards to her position,” and that the union believes it is a “major conflict of interest in this regards as it is apparent she believes her position as Councilor gives her the ability to talk down to officers and order high ranking union members of the Town Police Department to carry out certain tasks.”
The sole reason I’m writing this blog post is to just provide a little help to McAndrew, so far as writing prose is concerned. I’ve always been in favor of clear, concise writing, and it seems to me that he could have saved a lot of words by simply saying what he meant: that Juliette was an uppity black woman. I mean, why beat around the bush? The phrase popped to mind the second my wife read the above quote to me.
Poor writing aside, Juliette got the message, anyway:
In her complaint, Parker said there are recordings of the courteous and professional phone calls she made to Groton Town police about the submarine christening coverage. She said McAndrew had turned it into a personal attack containing false information.
She wrote that McAndrew’s comment about her “inflated sense of self” is “a sexist comment, and at best a racially insensitive one.”
“Should I as an African-American woman ‘know my place’ and step away and let Caucasian men like Sergeant McAndrew make all decisions?” she wrote in the complaint.
I’ve known Juliette for years now, and you’re not going to find a nicer person. I would lay odds that McAndrew’s lips would have been sealed had he been dealing with a white male. After all, a sense of entitlement only goes so far.
Somewhat Irrelevant Afterword: I will not write a word about the absurdity of the fact that Groton has both a Town Police Force and a City Police Force, and the attendant waste of tax payer money involved, including, for instance, paying two inflated chief’s salaries rather than just one inflated salary. No, I will not mention this absurdity, even though it is somewhat relevant to the above. Nor will I mention the even greater absurdity of the fact that the Town subsidizes what is, in effect a private security service known as the Groton Long Point Police, which exists solely to keep non-residents of that rich enclave out of said enclave, and which “police force”, to the best of my knowledge, has never investigated a white collar crime, which is pretty much the only type of crime likely to be committed there.
No, I shall not mention any of these things. I will stick to helping Mr. McAndrew improve his writing style.