DRACUT — The Sept. 15 breach of security and arson at the town’s police station was not a one-off event.
Another breach occurred earlier this year, according to an internal investigation report prepared by Assistant Town Manager Victor Garofalo for the Board of Selectmen.
The arson on Sept. 15 led to the loss of two police cruisers. The earlier event involved an individual banging on the back door of the station looking for medical attention.
The report, a 16-page narrative accompanied by 120 pages of supporting documents, was not discussed at the meeting except for a brief comment from Selectman Tony Archinsky. The report was distributed to selectmen prior to their meeting on Tuesday night, when The Sun obtained a copy.
It focuses on Police Chief Peter Bartlett, his communications with Town Manager Ann Vandal, and an unfinished security gate at the police station. A security fence was completed in June 2019 nearly two years before the first security breach earlier this year.
Archinsky said the report “raised more questions” for him, and he called for an executive session at the Oct. 26 board meeting.
He also asked Town Counsel James Hall to review the documents to see if there had been a breach of contract.
The report identifies several factors in the security gate’s unfinished status including a 2019-20 investigation of the town’s procurement practices, Bartlett’s injured-on-duty leave for most of 2020, and a communication breakdown between Bartlett and Vandal. That breakdown was compounded by Bartlett’s leave.
The security fence and gate received some notoriety when the state attorney general’s office opened the procurement investigation. The contract for the work had been given to a Hooksett, N.H., company when a Billerica company had a lower bid. Bartlett lives in Hooksett and was the chief of police there before taking the Dracut position.
The AG’s investigation was closed without charges.
In Garofalo’s narrative, Bartlett “at the end of March, 2021, during a budget meeting, he informed Town Manager Vandal that an individual who had been involved in a fight had driven (in)to the back of the police station. He was found banging on the back door of the station and in need of medical attention.
“Chief Bartlett indicated in his response (to the investigation) that he requested funding at the time with Town Manager Vandal to complete the fence. The Town Manager has no recollection of that conversation, and if it did happen, her response would have been ‘do what you need to fix it.’ ”
The report presents a timeline of Vandal asking the chief for capital requests for his budget. For example, on Feb. 13, 2020, Bartlett answered a Jan. 21, 2020, email reminder for capital requests. He had two.
He asked first to replace computers that were less than three years old at a cost of $17,000. The second was to replace 10 Patrol PC mobile data terminals, essentially heavy-duty computer tablets, that were only two years old, at a cost of $62,000.
“There was no capital request to address the security issues and security gate that were brought up in Chief Bartlett’s email on Dec. 16, 2019,” the report states.
In that email, Bartlett suggests “the funds (amount unspecified in the email) should be added to the FY21 budget in the Machinery and Equipment line.”
In the same email, Bartlett blames the investigation by the state AG’s office for the fence problem.
“The reason this is the center of the procurement discussion is because of the false statements and narrative created by (former Town Manager Jim Duggan) not wanting to take responsibility for not following the procurement law,” Bartlett’s email states.
Bartlett has on several occasions said he asked for, but never received, funding to complete the security gate. Vandal calls this “unequivocally false.”
Garofalo, who is also the town’s director of finance, concludes “there was funding within the police department operating budget for this project in FY2020, FY2021 and FY2022. Additional funds were also available within Police Federal Funds, for which this security gate would have been a permitted expenditure.”
An arrest was made in the Sept. 15 arson but the case is still under investigation. Garofalo said this limited what he could say in the report.
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Report: Dracut had another police station breach - Lowell Sun
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