WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Residents Monday pushed the Select Board to take action about a Police Department officer who has been added to a list of officers who the Berkshire County District Attorney will not call to testify in criminal proceedings.

 

Last fall, DA Andrea Harrington included Officer Craig Eichhammer on her office's "Brady List" of officers whose histories could jeopardize their credibility on the witness stand.

 

On Monday, in response to questions from resident Annie Art, interim Town Manager Charlie Blanchard confirmed that an officer in the town's police force recently was notified he has been placed on the DA's "do not call" list, and Select Board Chair Andrew Hogeland later confirmed that the officer whose status was changed to do not call was Eichhammer.

 

"Please, step up and do the right thing," resident Janice Loux told the board during the virtual meeting. "Terminate that officer because he's on a no-call list and can no longer do his job. That's the answer here. That's the solution."

 

Town officials said the situation is more nuanced.

 

Select Board member Hugh Daley said it is difficult for the town to make employment decisions based on judgments from a countywide elected official and a list that Daley characterized as "fairly arbitrary."

 

"There are whole counties that don't use Brady Lists at all," Daley said. "It's not a clean-cut issue as it relates to employment law."

 

Blanchard, meanwhile, noted that Harrington used as a basis for the do-not-call decision an 11-year old incident that was among the allegations in a federal lawsuit filed against the town (and later withdrawn) last year.

 

The problem there is that the town disciplined the officer involved in the 2010 incident at that time, and however much the current Select Board, current town manager or current police chief may or may not have handled that situation differently, the town cannot take another bite at the apple.

 

"Basically what happened was this incident occurred 11 years ago," Blanchard said. "At the time, the town decided to give the officer what is called a 'last-chance agreement.' Many communities do it. It lays out the fact that something happened that shouldn't have happened, and they're giving the opportunity to make sure it doesn't happen again. And they go on notice that if it ever does or anything similar to it, the termination will be immediate, and there will be no recourse, no challenging or anything like that.

 

"That agreement was entered into 11 years ago. The officer complied with it. To my knowledge, there have been no instances of any kind of complaints or disciplinary action since then."

 

Later in the meeting, Blanchard clarified that he was referring to "complaints or disciplinary action" for the same type of offense covered under the last-chance agreement.

 

Hogeland said the town has no ability to revisit the disciplinary action it took in the past.

 

"It has been established very clearly that the ability of a town to discipline an officer a second time for the same event is, like, none," Hogeland said. "There's a recent case from Chicopee where someone tried to do that. They tried to say that because someone's now on a Brady List for something they did under a prior administration. The arbitrator said: No. You can't just do that. You can't just change administrations and discipline a person again a second time for the same offense.

 

"That bridge has been crossed, and decisions that were made 10 years ago are not reversible at this point. But I do hear [the residents who want to do otherwise]."

 

A half-dozen residents joined Monday's meeting via Zoom to encourage the board to push Blanchard to take action.

 

"Just because the ‘last-chance agreement,' whatever the legalize refers to — there are new egregious violations of people's rights," said Carrie Waara, one of several who pointed to this spring's revelation that members of the WPD had illegally accessed the Criminal Justice Information System to find information about town residents.

 

"Let's act and try to clean up our police department. You're just dancing around the truth, which is we have some really unreliable and un-law-abiding law officers. That's ridiculous. Why? Just think about it a little more. That's all I'm asking."

 

Peggy Kern and Jessica Dils each noted that they were victims of the illegal CJIS searches. And each pressed Blanchard for specifics about the suspensions that were handed out to the officers involved in the incident.

 

"You're talking about being cautious with this officer? I have to live cautiously every day I walk outside my door in my town in real time, on a daily basis," Dils said. "I do not live the same life anymore. And I'm a white woman. These suspensions need to be known. Retraining hasn't done anything because these officers — or at least the one the DA in the last couple of weeks has decided to elevate a status from not only Brady List but 'do not call' — this is something that puts every single one of us in this town at risk."

 

Arlene Kirsch told the board that while she has supported the police department in a town she used to call home, the trust between the town and its residents has been broken in Williamstown.

 

"I haven't heard anything that says anything except: We have to protect this officer who had a Hitler photo, who attacked a woman sexually, who searched people like me," Kirsch said. "We need to hear from you some leadership that encompasses the idea of how to rebuild trust, when all I'm hearing is you want to protect the police department.

 

"I'm talking to the Select Board, not the town manager. Even though the town manager, strictly speaking, oversees the police, the Select Board oversees the town manager. So it is the Select Board who really will push this out. You want things from us. You want certain behavior from us. You want certain cooperation from us. Well, we want certain things from you also. We want to understand that you do understand that there's a social contract here. And I'm only hearing one side of it.

 

"And that's unacceptable."

 

Jeffrey Johnson and Wade Hasty, who were elected to the Select Board this spring on platforms that called for greater accountability in the police force, each spoke to the issue after the board's public comment period.

 

Hasty recommended the Select Board put pressure on the commonwealth's CJIS officials to provide answers to questions that interim Police Chief Michael Ziemba has been asking since the local infractions were discovered.

 

Johnson said issues raised on Monday night need to be "revisited and discussed."

 

"The citizens have spoken, they continue to come back to the meetings," Johnson said. "It's very personal, and I think it comes back to feelings. I haven't felt and been treated the same way as many people in our town have who have been discriminated against and treated poorly. I haven't had that experience.

 

"But I have a heart. And when I hear about it, I want to help. And I'm hearing it again tonight from people who are scared, and that doesn't sit with me. And I'm trying to figure out how we get through this. Because it's not going to go away."