Police chief suspended 21 days
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By Thatcher Moats TIMES ARGUS STAFF - Published: June 18, 2009
BARRE - Northfield Police Chief Jeffrey Shaw has been temporarily suspended for claiming he had received required police training when he had not, concluding a process that began in early 2008 when a state agency began investigating the chief.
The penalty was part of a settlement that Shaw and his attorney proposed, which the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council accepted Tuesday as the two parties were headed for a hearing in the case.
The suspension of Shaw's law enforcement authority went into effect Tuesday and will last for 21 days, said Todd Shepard, the chairman of the training council.
Shaw must also fulfill other terms of the settlement, including attending a briefing on Vermont's training rules and studying topics such as general management principals, delegation of authority and professional ethics.
The training council decertified Shaw in January after investigators found that he missed firearm and first aid training for several years.
Each year police officers in Vermont are required to undergo hours of in-service training, including firearms training and first aid training if that has lapsed.
Shaw missed firearms training in 2004 and 2006 and apparently never received first aid training after becoming chief of the Northfield Police Department in 2001. But in his annual letters to the council, he stated he had received that training.
Nine members of the training council voted Tuesday on whether to accept the agreement. Only Keith Flynn - who represents state's attorneys on the council - voted to reject the proposal, said Shepard.
Flynn could not be reached on Wednesday, so it's not immediately clear why he voted against the settlement.
The town of Northfield will bring in retired Montpelier police chief Doug Hoyt to act as chief while Shaw is suspended, according to town manager Nanci Allard.
"He'll be available to the other officers if they need guidance or something catastrophic happens in town and we need a chief," said Allard.
Allard refused to say whether Shaw will be paid during the suspension or say whether the town plans to punish the chief.
She did note that the action against Shaw was taken by the training council and not the town.
Shaw could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
In an earlier interview he said the missed training was an oversight and that he did not intend to deceive anybody with the letters to the council.
Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell, however, drafted a damning letter when the investigation concluded saying Shaw had been "plainly deceptive," and Sorrell questioned Shaw's credibility as a police officer.
Days after the training council received that letter they decertified Shaw, which would take away his law enforcement authority.
Shaw was the first police officer to be decertified under a training council rule that went into effect in September 2007, outlining when and how an officer can lose his badge.
But he is not only police officer in Vermont to have flawed training records.
An ongoing statewide audit has found training record problems at many police agencies across the state, including one involving Vergennes police Chief Michael Lowe.
Those other officers - unlike Shaw - were given the chance to fix their training problems without first being decertified.
Some in the Northfield community felt the chief was being treated unfairly compared to other officers.
But Todd Shepard, the chairman of the training council, said Shaw's case didn't compare to the others.
In Vergennes, he said, the problem was one of documentation, in which officers said they had received training but didn't have the paperwork to back it up. Further investigation revealed that some of the officers had taken the training they claimed to have received, said Shepard, though he wasn't sure if that was the case with Chief Lowe specifically.
"It was a documentation (problem) as opposed to, 'I'm sorry. I just did not take the training,'" said Shepard.
Sorrell has acknowledged that he is using Shaw as an example, adding that he thinks other officers around the state took note of Shaw's case.
"We're learning a lot about this system and I think this is really one of the effects of the Shaw matter, for lack of a better term, is that police departments all over the state are looking into their records and taking seriously the need to dot their I's and cross their T's," Sorrell said.
Shepard said the training records statewide are moving to an online system.
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