John Connors, a 42-year veteran of the Portsmouth Police Department in eastern New Hampshire, has resigned from his job in the face of a gag order that has prevented him from discussing alleged misconduct within the force.
Mr. Connors said he’s been silenced by his colleagues ever since he spoke up after now-fired Sgt. Aaron Goodwin inherited more than $2 million from Geraldine Webber, a 92-year-old local woman who was suffering from dementia when she died in 2012.
“I hereby resign as a member of the Portsmouth Police Auxiliary, effective immediately,” Mr. Connors wrote Wednesday in a letter sent to the Police Commission, the city’s Herald newspaper reported. “I take this action so that I do not violate the media policy that I have been found to have violated.”
According to Mr. Connors, who lived next door to the woman, Mr. Goodwin visited Webber “hundreds of times” before she died, often while on duty and in an unmarked police cruiser.
“I wasn’t being nosy,” Connors told a local reporter in a newspaper interview last year. “I was watching a crime as far as I was concerned.”
Those visits started in late 2010 and continued until the woman’s death, Mr. Connors claimed. In the interim, Webber changed her will to leave most of her $2.7 million estate to Mr. Goodwin.
Mr. Connors said he brought the relationship to the attention of police officials throughout the ordeal, but his concerns were shrugged off every time until he went public with his claims last year.
Following his August 2014 interview with the Portsmouth Herald, Mr. Connors was served with a notice of complaint accusing him of insubordination, malfeasance and violations of the police department’s media policy. Mr. Connors said he was also informed that he was “no longer allowed to speak publicly about the Webber matter.”
Connors filed a federal lawsuit against the department earlier this year in response to the complaint, alleging infringements of his “constitutionally protected right of speech” as a whistleblower for publicly disclosing unethical activities of employees of the Portsmouth Police Department.
On Wednesday, however, he abruptly walked away from the force in the midst of the spat.
“It’s sad that after 42 years, I have to turn in my resignation to get my First Amendment rights back,” Mr. Connors told the Herald on Wednesday. “It’s been well over a year that I’ve been unable to speak in public, or to the press. At one point I was told that if I want to say anything, or speak in public, I had to get permission from the police chief.”
Mr. Goodwin was terminated from the force earlier this year after a review board determined his inheritance violated provisions of the department’s duty manual and the city’s ethics code.
On Thursday, Assistant Mayor Jim Splaine told the Herald he’ll ask his fellow city councilors in the oceanside community to endorse a statement of support for Mr. Connors.
“We commend and thank good Portsmouth resident John Connors for doing what we encourage all of our residents and employees to do when they see wrongdoing in our community: to stand up and speak out. The real strength of America is that when citizens use their freedom of speech to express their concerns, they should be protected and supported in that right and thanked for their courage,” he said.
Mr. Splaine said he plans to bring the statement to the table at a city meeting on Monday. Mr. Connors’ lawsuit, meanwhile, is still pending.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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