ELIOT — The chief of the Eliot Police Department on Monday denied accusations made against him last week in court that he failed to act after learning that most of the town’s police officers consistently falsified their patrol reports.

Instead, Chief Theodor Short said he and his former deputy chief only discussed the possibility that the officers lied in their reports and that he was never presented a finalized investigative report into the matter.

Short’s nuanced distinction about whether he did or did not have a report written by former Deputy Chief Kevin Cady or whether they just talked about it, strikes at the heart of a question now being considered by a judge in York County Superior Court in Alfred.

Cady testified Friday before Justice John O’Neil Jr. during a hearing in an unrelated criminal case that he presented a 60-plus-page report to the chief documenting how he discovered that four of the department’s six patrol officers had repeatedly lied in their reports, claiming they patrolled areas in town, while GPS mapping data from their cruisers proved they hadn’t. The judge is considering whether to level sanctions against the prosecution in the criminal case for failing to turn over that information to the opposing side in court.

“Kevin Cady never gave me that report,” Short said in telephone interview late Monday afternoon. “I think that’s where it starts to get muddy. I never received any kind of report.”

Short said he distinctly remembers talking to Cady about Cady’s findings in 2009, but he claims Cady never finalized the report and presented it to him with a recommended action.

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“I do remember him coming to me about it. I don’t have a concrete recollection about how many officers were involved,” Short said.

Cady said in a phone call Monday evening that he presented the report to Short in Cady’s former office, explained the contents of the report and that Short refused to get involved and walked out of the office.

“The ball was in his court,” Cady said. “Why didn’t he even follow up on something that serious?”

It’s not just Cady’s word against Short’s. Another former officer of the Eliot police force, Kevin Curran, also testified in court on Friday that he gave Short a memo reminding the chief of Cady’s report and his duty to turn it over to prosecutors in criminal cases to share with defense attorneys. Curran testified that Short emailed him back acknowledging he had received memo.

The testimony came up during a pretrial hearing for Paul Olsen, 33, who is accused of assaulting and raping his former girlfriend at her Eliot home. The case was investigated by the town’s police in 2012.

Amy Fairfield, who is Olsen’s attorney, has demanded that Short turn over Cady’s report to be used as evidence in Olsen’s defense, believing it could undermine the credibility of the officers who brought the charges against her client.

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At the hearing, Fairfield gave copies of both Curran’s memo and Short’s email response to the judge to be considered. O’Neil ordered that both documents remain impounded for now from the public.

The hearing adjourned on Friday without reaching a conclusion. Lawyers on both sides are expected to call more witnesses when the hearing resumes, at a date to be determined in the next couple of weeks.

Short said Monday he didn’t remember any correspondence with Curran about officers lying in their reports, but he also declined to discuss it in detail.

“It doesn’t ring a bell with me,” Short said, adding, “I know this is still an ongoing hearing, so I’m not going to address it.”

Short, who is chief of both the Eliot and Kittery police departments and has worked in law enforcement for 40 years, said he has fired officers for lying before and that he has no tolerance for dishonesty for those serving under him.

“I think these officers understand, if they lie they are going to be fired,” said Short, who worked for the Maine State Police before becoming chief in Eliot in July 2004.

Cady testified Friday that he began looking into GPS data and officers’ patrol reports in 2009 after an ex-girlfriend accused a patrolman of domestic violence stalking while he was on duty.

Though Cady did not name that officer at Friday’s hearing, news reports from the time describe former Eliot police Officer Matthew Raymond’s arrest on a stalking charge. Cady testified that to verify the accuracy of the GPS evidence in the stalking case, he checked data from other officers’ cruisers and found that it didn’t match what they had documented in their reports.

 


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