A brand new report commissioned by the City of Methuen describes former police Chief Joseph Solomon as a “‘Don’ of an organized crime family” and states he was a co-conspirator to get an unqualified former metropolis council president a police detective job that defrauded town out of $400,000.
Sean Fountain, a former metropolis firefighter and City Council president who the 203-page investigative report put out by the STIRM Group described as “Police Officer (Impersonating)” is the middle of the doc obtained by the Herald. The doc was launched March 27 and amended on Monday.
“On 1 July 2016, Fountain was appointed an Intermittent Police Officer by the City of Methuen’s Police Chief Joseph Solomon. Fountain was the beneficiary of a level of preferential treatment that was so blatant that it was criminal,” the report states. “He was treated differently from the four intermittent officers hired when he was.”
Solomon earned greater than $300,000 a yr whereas he was chief, in keeping with a number of studies.
The report states that Fountain solid a certificates that claimed he graduated from Northeast Regional Police Institute, or NERPI, in 1995, however the report alleges that it was truly an altered copy of a retired police lieutenant’s precise certificates. The report calls every copy of the Fountain certificates “direct descendant documents (DDD) that were created using the parent document.”
It helped him keep his officer/detective job, the report states, and its hefty wage “without ever having graduated from a police academy” which “left the City in a precarious position.”
Further, the investigator — who turned a State Police trooper in 1996 — challenges whether or not the part-time intermittent police academy provided by NERPI, and to which Fountain claims to be a graduate, contained the required coaching for Fountain to have even turn out to be a police officer in any respect, not to mention a long time after the claimed commencement.
As for former long-tenured Police Chief Joseph Solomon, “the current investigation does not paint Solomon in a positive light. His leadership style is that of a ‘Don’ of an organized crime family that leads through humiliation, fear, intimidation, and retaliation.” The report states that with out his involvement, “the crimes outlined in this report could not have occurred.”
The third named co-conspirator is a former Methuen police captain, who served because the Special Services Bureau Commander, the report states, “one of a select few individuals with access to the personnel record that was used to create a forged training certificate.” The report states that in interviews for this investigation, Gallant “opted to exercise his constitutional rights against self-incrimination over 100 times.”
The report states the Methuen Police Department already has a 50-plus-page affidavit in help of Fountain’s arrest. It states that any additional prosecution of alleged co-conspirators “should begin with Fountain” and that any offers struck with Fountain ought to embody “complete testimony” that might result in the prosecution of the others.
The Methuen Police Department declined to talk about the chief or any associated questions. Efforts to succeed in Solomon and Fountain had been unsuccessful.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”