Should a police officer who was fired for allegedly using excessive force and urging a witness to lie about the incident be allowed to return to the force?
On the surface, we would all say an emphatic "no!"
But it's not that simple in Newbury. This is a case that points out a serious flaw in how police are disciplined — the slow pace of the judicial system has created an enormous mess.
The officer — Sgt. Lawrence Kent — was fired for those charges after an internal investigation found he had beaten an uncooperative bicyclist who was riding down the middle of Route 1 after dark in May 2010. The young man refused to stop, ran when officers finally forced his bike off the road and spit in Kent's face.
The report also found that Kent had filed false reports about the incident.
Kent was on paid leave for a year before the report was finally issued, and he was quickly fired once the report was released. Meanwhile, criminal charges advanced slowly through the court.
Last month, some 20 months after the incident occurred, a jury found him innocent. They found the testimony against Kent lacked credibility to merit a criminal conviction, and they clearly did not see the young man, who has run into other trouble with police, as a sympathetic figure.
Now, according to Kent's lawyer, he wants his job back. An arbitrator will decide whether he'll get it, and if previous history in this state is any indication, we'd bet that he will.
Further muddying the situation is an accusation made by Kent's lawyer that his client is a "political scapegoat" who was removed in order to free up slots for other officers to advance. This kind of a charge has a big payout by Newbury taxpayers written all over it.
We've stated this before, and we will state it again: One of the key problems made clear by this case is the glacially slow pace of the investigations into this matter. It took months for a state police report to be concluded that found merit in pursuing charges against Kent, followed by more time spent on a second, independent probe by the Town of Newbury that served as the basis of his firing. Newbury's already small police force was reduced even further by the paid leave of its sergeant. And Kent was collecting pay for the job he was prohibited from performing.
We've seen these kinds of cases play out in other communities. A most notable example occurred more than a decade ago in Amesbury where former police Chief Michael Cronin was fired for various allegations, then the town was forced to rehire him and pay a substantial back-pay settlement. It is a costly way to do business.
Firing police officers for misconduct has widespread repercussions, particularly when criminal allegations are involved. While prosecutors may prefer a measured pace in order to ensure the charges are worthy of prosecution, that pace is out of sync with the practical and political needs of the community that police serve. Our justice system needs to dramatically pick up the pace in order to help resolve these kinds of police matters in a more timely manner.
It may not completely prevent costly decisions from being made, but it would help our local officials make better decisions.
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