FREEPORT

What was intended to be a low-key conversation among police and community members Thursday afternoon soon became tense as two members of the audience opened an old wound.

Freeport Police Chief Susan Nourse, a veteran member of the department recently promoted to the chief of police, decided to hold the event to allow the public to air any concerns they have.

A woman attending the informal forum referenced the Sept. 11 ceremony last year where fellow forum-goer James Roux III of Westbrook caused a disturbance, where it was reported that he interrupted a speaker during the ceremony and was taken away by Freeport police. He was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and refusing to submit to arrest.

Roux’s father was onboard United Airlines Flight 175, the flight that was hijacked by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, and crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center. Roux has said he was asking that the terrorist attacks that day not be used to promote political ideology.

Roux said Thursday that truth is needed for reconciliation, and told Nourse he’s never got any truth from her or any officers. He said he’s been labeled a psychopathic crazy man.

“I am in fear of the police in Freeport and in general now. I don’t trust them,” he said.

Nourse thanked Roux for voicing his concerns and offered to meet with Roux at some other point, but said she wanted to move on and get comments from everyone.

“I think in this forum I want to open it up to be more general conversation not specific to your situation,” she told Roux.

“I understand,” he said. “I think there are a lot of topics maybe in my particular instance to be covered, and I don’t want to monopolize this conversation on it. I’m not the only one that you’ve treated this way in Freeport. I think that if we don’t do it in public, open places like this, a lot of people just don’t have the opportunity if you’re on the accused side.”

Roux added: “When you talk about employing the community to help police, to me as someone who has been abused by the police and threatened by the supporting police community like the Patriot Riders, in that sense I find it to be militarizing against me or against people like me.”

Roux also alleged police have committed “abusive acts,” and repeatedly broken the law.

The woman in the audience who first brought up the 9/11 incident asked Roux if he knows how much he scared her and others at the ceremony during the interruption.

While Roux said he hadn’t come to argue, she told him he’d come for attention.

Roux thanked Nourse for listening and left the event early. Later, his stepfather Arnold Macdonald joined the small gathering and spoke about the incident last September as well. Community respect for police is a two-way situation, he said.

“A lot of my disappointment in the way that was handled, as a family, I think we could have been called in,” he said. “I don’t think an arrest was necessary in that situation.”

His wife was only a block away, he said, and he was at his office and learned about the incident when he got a call from a reporter.

The charges against Roux were dropped, and his actions protected by the First Amendment, Macdonald said.

The ceremony’s organizers, the Freeport Flag Ladies, later sought a protection of harassment order against Roux, which was denied by a West Bath District judge in January. Mcdonald said it was implied during court testimony that police told the women to address complaints they had against Roux by seeking protection from harassment orders against him.

“To me, the solution is to pick up the phone in a small town,” he said. “Don’t tell the Flag Ladies to sue him, tell them to talk to us or talk to the family because we can try to work things out together.”

Other discussion amongst approximately eight or nine residents Thursday mainly centered around speeding and traffic issues.

There are many ways to address speed, Nourse said, such as using a decoy car and increasing patrols in certain areas within a certain time frame.

It was also decided to change the name of the event, COP Talk. Nourse invited people to send her ideas for a new name.

Nourse said she will schedule more of the community talks in the future at different times of the day.

dmoore@timesrecord.com

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