Board votes to fire veteran Hingham officer
By Allison Manning
The Patriot Ledger
HINGHAM —
It didn’t matter to selectmen whether the contact that Hingham police Lt. Kris Phillips made with a light plant employee was playful, accidental or intentional. They voted unanimously Tuesday night to fire the veteran officer.
Phillips may appeal the action to the state Civil Service Commission.
The decision stems from an incident in April 2008. Phillips was working a paid detail on Lincoln Street when, in response to a joking comment from a light department employee, he gestured, making contact with light department employee Todd Sherwin’s groin, causing Sherwin to double over in pain.
During a lengthy hearing Tuesday afternoon, Phillips argued that the contact was accidental in an act of horseplay, while police department attorney James Toomey said Phillips acted intentionally, because of stress.
Phillips said he had been under stress during the month prior to the incident. He had just returned to duty after an investigation into a domestic incident at his home.
“Sometimes you let your guard down,” he testified. “This is not how I would normally act.”
After the decision, Phillips declined to comment.
Police Chief Taylor Mills launched an investigation of the incident. After finding evidence of misconduct, he recommended that Phillips be fired.
Criminal charges against Phillips have been filed.
Phillips said the investigation was the culmination of years of bad blood between him and Chief Mills.
“This prosecution of Lt. Phillips reflects bad faith in small-town politics in its worst sense,” Phillips’ attorney, Alan McDonald, said during the hearing.
McDonald said the action was retaliatory, designed to discredit and possibly remove Phillips from the police force “because of ill motives of the chief that are unrelated in any way to Lt. Phillips’ performance as a police officer.”
Phillips testified that he thought the chief was retaliating against him because Phillips “would not cover up an internal-affairs investigation involving Mills’ son.”
When The Patriot Ledger asked for copies of documents created during the internal investigation, the police department declined to provide them, saying the documents were “personnel records” and therefore legally exempt from disclosure. The newspaper has appealed the decision to the secretary of state’s office.
Selectmen said they were concerned with discrepancies between the report Phillips filed during the investigation of the Lincoln Street incident, and the description of the events at the hearing. In his statement, Phillips said that in an act of horseplay he “snapped his fingertips” at Sherwin’s midsection, accidentally hitting Sherwin’s groin. When he described the incident during the hearing, he said accidental contact was made as he gestured while walking away.
“Nowhere in that statement does it say your contact ... was inadvertent,” Toomey said.
Here is some of the testimony of Police Lt. Kris Phillips at the hearing:
“I believe the chief is bringing these charges against me because I would not cover up an internal affairs investigation involving his son,” referencing an alleged underage drinking party. Mills’ son was never named.
Phillips testified that Chief Mills approached him about the party. “He stated, ‘Kris, take this information, put it in your back pocket and own this officer for the rest of his career.’”
“I’m a young sergeant, first year. I don’t need to (anger) the captain. I didn’t think that anything like this would ever come back. I know the (then) captain’s reputation and I was in fear of him.”
Phillips testified during his interview for lieutenant, he answered a question about staffing. He said that Mills later approached him. “He told me that I made him look bad. His statement was, ‘You made it look like the chief wasn’t doing his job.’ And he further stated I was not going to get his endorsement for the promotion. And he would not forget this.”
(Phillips declined to speak to a reporter after the decision Tuesday.)
Chief Mills’ response to Phillips’ testimony, following the hearing:
“It made no sense for me to get up and address these issues (at the hearing),” he said, explaining why he did not testify at the hearing. “It’s a distraction from the issue at hand, no relevance to the incident that we’re dealing with.”
On Phillips’ recollection of Chief Mills telling him to withhold information about an underage drinking party: “I absolutely have never said any such words at any time... I’m saying it never happened. ”
“His effort was to make this about me and take the focus off of him.”
On approaching Phillips after his interview for lieutenant: “I did speak with him that I didn’t think it was necessary to discuss the aspect of our effort to create a permanent intermittent program because it had been documented. He may have sensed that I was not happy with that response to the questioning ... I speak my mind, I don’t hold things in. If I’m not happy with the way an officer does something I let them know.”
