On August 16th, 2012, a town employee for the Town of Winchester filed a Federal Lawsuit for civil rights violations.
Daniel Rapucci Vs Winchester Police Dept.
Co. Defendants
Plaintiff:
Daniel Reppucci
vs
Defendants:
Cheshire County, Cheshire County Sheriff’s Department, Richard A Foote, Kelvin Macie, Gary A Phillips, Christopher Roberts, Unknown Employees, Winchester Police Department and Winchester, Town of
Case Number: 1:2012cv00316
Filed: August 16, 2012
Court: New Hampshire District Court Concord Office
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights – Other Civil Rights
Cause: 28:1331 Federal Question: Other Civil Rights
The reason I’m posting this injustice on Keene Cop Block is because one of the defendants is former Cheshire County Deputy Sherriff Kelvin Macie who was fired and rehired by Keene Police Dept. See KPD Employees.
Kelvin J. Macie
accreditation specialist
kjmacie@ci.keene.nh.us
603.357.9813 x7037
By reading court documents and litigation it seems to me that Kelvin Macie illegally used his position to do an unauthorized favor type investigation for retaliatory purposes on behalf of Winchester Police Chief Gary Phillips.
This habit of Keene Police covering for officers and hiring family members of other Keene Police officers (Kyle Macie nephew of Kelvin Macie) after they’ve been let go from other departments for disciplinary reasons needs to stop. Keene Police Chief Kenneth Meola needs to resign along with all the upper brass. Not to mention at least two County Road Pirates are former KPD retirees, also these two former KPD employees were promoted just weeks before their retirement, Darrell Madden and Eli Rivera.
This whole thing was set off by former Sheriff Richard Foote who later turned in his resignation due to a lawsuit filed by a female officer Jackie Parker who is now a police officer in Pembroke, NH. Officer Parker filed a lawsuit against Winchester PD and reached an undisclosed settlement and court records were sealed. You can see details of this story also on http://winchesternhcorruption.blogspot.com/. This is one corrupt little police department and it’s a wonder why Keene Police would hire someone involved in all this .
Keene Police received an award on March 23rd of 2013, it’s a CALEA accreditation for outstanding professional standards and conduct. After reviewing the Police Chiefs annual report, I saw that most of complaints filed are “unfounded” and/or “no action taken.” Is there an incentive for Keene Police to hide the complaints and put on paper that most of all complaints are unfounded? After seeing Keene Police on hundreds of calls and hearing firsthand accounts on specific officers, I started to raise my eyebrow and wonder how almost all the complaints are unfounded. I started to dig on the Keene Police Website and found a huge incentive for this. The CALEA Accreditation Award for excellence. In my opinion based on some facts, not only from video but firsthand accounts, I believe that this “unfounded” thing is based on a lie and that Keene Police painted a false picture on their own department. It’s really funny how 60% of all complaints are for unprofessional conduct, and they receive an award for excellent conduct .
Some people may feel protected by Keene Police but for the most part most do not. Again Matt Griffin and his illegal tactics tries to intimidate me on March 8th 2014 by repeatedly shining his service flashlight in my face after I ask him not to. I thought this was Officer Macie but due to flash blindness I was mistaken. I found out by Sgt. Chris Simonds that the officer was Matt Griffin. I filed a complaint on Griffin and 1 hour later Amish Paul and I (Centurion) saw Griffin in his cruiser heading toward town. Griffin saw us at 12:30 am March 9th on West St and he U turned his cruiser and he followed us at 22 MPH. We stopped at a Gas station for 30 minutes and he pulled across the street and he sat in his cruiser for 30 minutes. Retaliatory behavior from KPD is bad routine these Cops are getting into. Especially Matt Griffin, Benjamin Nugent and Sgt. Jason Short. But Matt seems to be the worse as past videos have shown.
During a DUI checkpoint in 2013, Cop Block Radio‘s Eric Freerock was arrested for “Disobeying an Officer”, which translates to not showing his ID fast enough. It was his first arrest and this was his first trial. Unfortunately he doesn’t challenge the main claim against him, that he “refused” to show ID, which he did not, he simply returned the officer’s request with some questions, and was promptly arrested. Sadly, there is no video of their interaction, though I’ll link to other video of the checkpoint below. Here’s the full trial video from Keene district court – it’s also the first activist trial in the fancy new courthouse:
A couple weeks back I posted to copblock.org “Brady Cops” (below in its entirety) to solicit input from readers on how best to acquire the names of police employees known to have lied in court and thus be of questionable integrity. Known as a “Brady list” or in the ‘shire, as “Laurie list,” per a case that involved someone by that name, today, on the New Hampshire Bar Association site an opinion piece by Jeffrey M. Kaye weighed-in on the subject.
While it’s a step in the right direction as it would make the process a bit more transparent, it still falls far short from what should be done – the names of so-called “Laurie cops” should be made public for all to see. And if the police employee on that list lied in legaland, they should obviously be held accountable.
__________________
Opinion: Defense Attorney Suggests New ‘Laurie List’ Procedures
Editor’s Note: Jeffrey Kaye represented Cody Eller in a criminal case that lasted more than two years before Superior Court Judge Jacalyn Colburn in April 2013 set aside the verdict based on “Laurie” discovery violations, after it came to light that the arresting officer’s credibility had been called into question. The case was resolved by a plea agreement in November. In a letter submitted to the NH Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Rules last month, Kaye suggested a number of protocols and procedures the court could adopt to ensure exculpatory evidence is disclosed to the defense in a timely fashion. The following is an edited version of that letter.
The New Hampshire Supreme Court and the Advisory Committee on Rules must address and mandate procedures to be followed by prosecuting officers statewide relative to disclosing exculpatory evidence to defense counsel.
From November 2012 until April 15, 2013, this defense counsel filed more than 10 motions to obtain exculpatory discovery in State v. Cody Eller. During Eller’s first trial, the court reviewed the limited material provided by the police and the county attorney’s office, which did not include any exculpatory materials that would have been favorable to the defense. NH Superior Court Judge Jacalyn Colburn, in her decision on April 16, 2013, set aside the initial verdict against Eller, based on “Laurie” discovery violations – the first time that has happened in 18 years.
The initial prosecution of Cody Eller should make everyone involved in the criminal justice system exceedingly uncomfortable. In an April 1995 decision, New Hampshire attorney and former US Supreme Court Justice David Souter warned that: “Unless, indeed, the adversary system of prosecution is to descend to a gladiatorial level unmitigated by any prosecutorial obligation for the sake of truth, the government simply cannot avoid responsibility for knowing when the suppression of evidence has come to portend such an effect on a trial’s outcome as to destroy confidence in its result.”
I understand the NH Attorney General’s Office is now considering new protocols for county attorneys to access possible exculpatory materials in criminal cases. It should be noted that any protocols or procedures established by the attorney general’s offices is just an instruction, and not mandated by the courts. I believe the court advisory committee on rules should examine the following issues:
At what point should the defense have access to potential exculpatory and impeachment evidence in criminal prosecutions?
In the prosecution of Cody Eller, former Pelham police officer Stahl, who was the prime witness, had a history, over 12 years, of a “pattern of conduct” of arresting youthful offenders, bullying them into confessions and violating their civil rights. The Pelham Board of Selectmen explicitly fired him in August 2013 for this “pattern of conduct” during a public, video-recorded termination proceeding. Unfortunately, if we looked at each isolated episode of Stahl’s misconduct, we would not see the whole picture – that “pattern of misconduct.” How can the court avoid this kind of situation in the future?
Should the defense be entitled to access, subject to a confidentiality agreement, any possible exculpatory or impeachment materials, which have been produced and submitted by local police departments to the charging authority, before those materials are totally filtered?
Should the court provide a defense attorney with a list of what potentially exculpatory materials the prosecution has provided to the court and which materials have been reviewed by the judge?
Self-proclaimed “authorities” dictate that it’s a crime for you to lie to a police employee, but it’s permissible for that police employee to lie to you. This is demonstrative of the double-standards upon which today’s policing institution is based.
Police employees lie in conversations on the street (when soliciting information), in their own reports (to make their version of the “truth” fit the scenario), and in legaland (a practice so commonplace that it’s been coined ‘testilying’).
Testilying
telling lies under oath; standard operating procedure for police officers acting as witnesses in trials (UrbanDictionary.com)
police perjury is the act of a police officer giving false testimony (Wikipedia.org)
Apparently, while you are secondary to the police employee when on the street (despite claims that they work for you), in legaland, should a police employee be caught lying, the facade of objectivity of the criminals justice system is made a higher-priority, as the name of the police employee is recorded on a list known as the “Brady list.” From the Brady v Maryland entry on Wikipedia:
Police officers who have been dishonest are sometimes referred to as “Brady cops.” Because of the Brady ruling, prosecutors are required to notify defendants and their attorneys whenever a law enforcement official involved in their case has a sustained record for knowingly lying in an official capacity
Recently we received an email from a gentleman in Michigan who questioned how Brady lists could be obtained. I didn’t know. I looked and didn’t find a step-by-step process outlined (surprise!). Thus I was motivated to write this post in the hope that you, the reader, would have some information helpful to answer this question.
Should a FOIA request be sent to each state attorney general (as they are atop the police hierarchy in each state), or to each county attorney (as the prosecutor, who’d then be privy to such info), or to each police outfit (who possess the files necessary for the Brady classification to be made), or is there another, less-laborious means?
I did inquire of a lawyer bud in NH, who noted that there, the list isn’t called a “Brady list” but a”Laurie list” after the case State v. Laurie. He said each defendant had the right to such information for those who were going to be called to testify in their case at legaland, and that he questioned whether police outfits would release such information to the public, noting that it may be claimed it’d violate the police employee’s personnel file.
Also, another friend is inquiring of his lawyer friend based in California on how best to proceed.
Hopefully between those leads, and the input generated from this post, a process can be determined, and the names of all known Brady cops can be acquired and posed here to CopBlock.org.
