Three officers are on paid
administrative leave and the AG's office, FBI and U.S. Attorney are all
investigating and pledging to "get to the bottom" of the incident.
Posted by Kyle Stucker
Seabrook Police Chief Lee
Bitomske pledged Wednesday afternoon that his department, in cooperation with
state Attorney General's Office, "will get to the bottom" of whether
three of his officers are guilty of criminal misconduct during the arrest of
Michael Bergeron Jr.
Bitomske, Deputy Police Chief
Mike Gallagher, Town Manager Bill Manzi and the Seabrook Board of Selectmen
held a press conference Wednesday afternoon following a nonpublic selectmen
session to discuss the incident and the subsequent AG investigation into the
matter.
"Obviously it's a major
setback for us," said Bitomske. "It's a dark cloud, but I can assure
the people of Seabrook we do have professional officers in the department — men
and women... I hope this will be dealt with swiftly and sooner rather than
later, but we will get to the bottom of this with the resources that are
available to us to help us out."
Seabrook Patrolmen Mark
Richardson, Adam Laurent and Keith Dietenhofer have all been placed on paid
administrative leave while the AG's office conducts a criminal investigation
into recently-surfaced surveillance footage that shows the officers using force
in the Seabrook police station following Bergeron's arrest on driving while
intoxicated charges on Nov. 11, 2009.
U.S. Attorney John Kacavas
confirmed to Patch on Wednesday that his office and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation are also involved in the investigation due to possible civil
rights violations.
Gallagher said the AG's office
has assumed the lead in the investigation and that Seabrook's investigation is
"on hold" until the AG has completed its findings.
"We will not be running a
parallel investigation because the officers have due process rights under the
[U.S.] Constitution and they also have due process rights under their
collective bargaining agreement," said Gallagher. "One investigation
might affect the other."
Officer Dave Hersey, the fourth
officer shown in the video, which was posted by Bergeron to YouTube on Monday,
hasn't been placed on administrative leave.
Manzi said the incident isn't a
reflection of the regular protocol of the Seabrook Police Department and that
the members of the department will continue to "do an outstanding"
and "exceptional job" for local residents.
"Everybody at this table
stands behind the police department and the men and women of the police
department," said Manzi. "We don't consider anything we're looking at
as the norm."
Bitomske said the video was
made available to Bergeron as part of the discovery process of a potential
court case started by Bergeron at some point following the incident, which is
consistent with Bergeron's version of the events.
The reason the court case never
came to fruition was still unknown Wednesday, and it is still unknown why the
video surfaced this week more than four years after the arrest of the
then-19-year-old Bergeron, a Seabrook resident with a lengthy history of
arrests.
Bergeron, now 23, has not
answered media requests for comment.
Gallagher and Bitomske both
said Wednesday that they each saw the video for the first time this week, and
that they are working to determine whether anyone else saw the video after it
was recorded in 2009.
“We’re looking for answers at
this point ourselves,” said Gallagher, answering a question about how the
events could take place on station surveillance cameras without the incident
being brought to the attention of supervising officers or other members of the
department.