Weare chief resigns following AG's report that recommends putting him on list of

[Silent_Bob]

http://www.unionleader.com/article/20141016/NEWS07/141019137

CONCORD — Weare Police Chief John Velleca announced his resignation in a letter Thursday after controversy surrounding the Laurie List and questions about his credibility.

Velleca said he was "proud" of the role he played in "revitalizing" the police department in Weare, but "ashamed and deeply sorry" to have hurt his family.

The New Hampshire Attorney General's office said earlier on Thursday that there may not be sufficient evidence to support formal charges of simple assault and falsifying physical evidence against Velleca, but that its investigation had produced "significant concerns regarding Velleca's credibility."

That means Velleca belongs on the so-called Laurie List of ethically compromised police officers. The AG's office says prosecutorial agencies must disclose this incident should Velleca be a witness in any further criminal case.

Velleca, who asked last month to be put on administrative leave after his executive assistant obtained a domestic restraining order against him, had been hired as police chief in October 2013 to improve the behavior and image of the Weare Police Department.

The Attorney General's Office began an investigation after Velleca's executive assistant, Jennifer Posteraro, accused him of assaulting her.

The AG's report says Velleca initially denied having an affair, but later admitted that around the last week of July 2014, he engaged in a "brief" affair with Posteraro, but told her he was not her boyfriend.

Velleca, who had retired in 2011 as an assistant chief in the New Haven, Conn., police department, said at the time of his hiring in Weare that transparency, integrity, honesty and professionalism are what he expected for himself and from those who work under him.

Velleca made a number of changes in both personnel and practices, including having officers wear video cameras, in an effort to improve the reputation and effectiveness of the department.

Posteraro alleged that after she called Velleca's wife in Connecticut on Sept. 11, to tell her of the affair, Velleca came to her residence, demanded her phone and, as she sought to retrieve it, caused her to fall twice, before he returned the phone she said contained evidence of the affair.

The AG's report says that during an interview, Posteraro backed away from her initial accusations of assault during the telephone retrieval incident, saying Velleca didn't push her with his hands and she didn't think it was intentional.

Velleca told investigators he thought she was impaired at the time. He said she wasn't wearing shoes, the grass was wet and she fell trying to grab the phone.

Posteraro also said the phone was later taken by Hillsborough police investigating her complaints and turned over to Weare police, after which Velleca took the phone to an Apple store and had it wiped clean and factory setting restored.

The AG's investigation showed Velleca knew Posteraro regularly backed up her phone's contents in the cloud, so anything on the phone could be retrieved, and claimed he was having the factory settings restored so he could assign it to a new officer. The phone wiping also occurred Sept. 12, before Posteraro made her assault allegations.

The AG's report said Velleca and his lawyer provided investigators with voice mails and emails form Posteraro, dating from August until the time of the complaint. In one voice mail, Posteraro said: "you need to go ... leave New Hampshire." In another, she told him that "we both know that I hold all the cards here."

The report says in a footnote that Posteraro has a pending civil suit against her former employer, in which she seeks damages related to allegations that she was discriminated against on the basis of her mental health, and subject to sexual harassment and a hostile work environment.

[WithoutAPaddle]

Maybe I have too much time on my hands.  As I read this, the executive assistant, Jennifer Posteraro, and Weare police chief John Velleca had an affair during and confined to July of 2014, and then she called his wife on September 11, 2014 to rat him out to her.  Then, in a very tight time frame beginning September 11 and concluding September 12, he went to her residence, where she was outdoors and barefoot on wet grass and he demanded "her" phone from her.  She fell to the grass attempting to retrieve it, but it doesn't say whether she sought to retrieve it to secure possession of it or turn it over to Velleca.  It cannot be determined definitively from that account from whom the Hillsborough police, to whom Posteraro had complained, had obtained the phone, but since she is the source of the information that they had taken it in investigating her complaint, that would seem to indicate they had taken it from her, and that therefore she had not surrendered it to Velleca when he had demanded it.

It is obvious that this phone of "hers" was department property assigned to her, so Velleca was surely within his rights as her superior officer to demand it when he did, even though so demanding could also make him criminally or civilly culpable in related matters.  The part of the story that really rankles me is, what in Hell is the Hillsborough Police Department doing giving this physical "evidence" back to the Velleca's Weare Police Department the day after the alleged assault by Velleca occurred?  I mean, even if an orderly investigation of the complaint by the Hillsborough police might eventually have determined the phone to be of no evidentiary value, such a determination could not have been professionally completed in just a few hours, and I would expect that evidence taken pursuant to an investigation that is not needed would ordinarily be returned to the person from whom it was taken, regardless of who the investigating police believes owns it unless the person it was taken from expressly agreed otherwise or there was a court writ so ordering.

Insofar as the AG determining that Velleca "knew" about cloud backup, yeah, we all "know" things about cloud backup.  I've seen the movie trailers for the Cameron Diaz movie (has it been released yet?) where they come to realize that none of us really have any idea what "the cloud" is, so I have to believe that Velleca was at least hoping against hope that wiping out what ever evidence he could might be to his benefit.

Is the Weare police department so hard up for assignable phones that the Chief had to personally bring it to the Apple store to reassign it?  Was there really an employee on the payroll who was supposed to have a phone but didn't have one?

[Free libertarian]

  A "brief" affair eh ?   Seems like that little piggy got tangled in his under Weare.

[KBCraig]

  A "brief" affair eh ?   Seems like that little piggy got tangled in his under Weare.