What Still Needs Investigating.
By Jim Conley • Jun 9th, 2008 • Email This Post to a Friend •
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I mention this in the lead column above; but when it comes to the Arthur Conquest matter of May 24, 2007 there’s a considerably loose end that still needs tightening. On the day after the occurrence in the lobby of town hall, Brookline Police prepared an assault charge against Conquest and named former Zoning Board of Appeals member Lawrence Kaplan as the victim. [See the initial police report].
By all accounts it was Kaplan who escalated the shouting match which occurred after the Board issued a controversial decision on a building at One Somerset Road (which they later reversed).
Of course, the officer recommending the charge is the nephew of Kaplan. And worse, the charge was pursued without the benefit of interviewing witnesses (other than those on the Town payroll) who seem remarkably consistent in their view of events — Conquest was stepping in for someone else.
It’s hard to miss the appearance that police were charging Conquest as a means for Kaplan to exact retribution.
But no state agency, no civil rights group, no advocates for the the fair administration of criminal justice have bothered to find out how a thing like this can happen. And that, folks, should scare the bejesus out of you.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
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Another thing that remains to be investigated is whether Town Counsel made a call to the BPD on 911 or its 2222 non-emergency line. Lt. Burke’s report has near its beginning a description of a 911 call from Town Counsel, apparently preceding that of Polly Selkoe’s 911 call from her cell phone. In the interview of Town Counsel, she states that she went to her office and made a call to BPD on its 2222 non-emergency line. So, did Town Counsel make two calls or just one? In any event, the sequence of the events in the report would seem to suggest that Polly Selkoe’s cell phone call was made well before Town Counsel left the area of the Selectmen’s Hearing Room, returned to her office, and on her office phone called the BPD’s 2222 non-emergency line. Which call resulted in the response to the scene of Kaplan’s police sergeant nephew?