2:45 pm Jan 17, 2022 Happy Birthday Betty White; Happy Martin Luther King Day
THE PUBLIC NEEDS ALL THE APRIL 1, 2021 ADAM KNIGHT PHOTOS
Moreover,
as pointed out earlier,
the right to privacy of a public employee is a limited one, and the contours of that right were not clearly established in 1992 or today.
In the circumstances of this case, the court concludes that the town and the individual members of the Board of Selectmen
did not abrogate plaintiff's clearly established privacy rights by public disclosure.
BACKGROUND
The Court treats the following facts as undisputed for purposes of this motion only.
a. The Letter https://casetext.com/case/cronin-v-town-of-amesbury-2
On January 9, 1988, Inspector Charles B. Wright, a defendant, was looking for petty cash as a flower donation for the funeral of the fire chief's mother in Chief Cronin's desk drawer at the Amesbury Police Department, while Cronin was on vacation. Wright found a sexually explicit, handwritten letter, written on yellow lined paper in response to an advertisement in a pornographic magazine. According to Wright, the letter was stuck in the petty cash location where funds were stored by the union to pay bills, although another officer who had looked in Cronin's desk earlier in the week did not remember seeing a letter there. Wright believed the writing to be that of Chief Cronin, and the letter was signed "Mike." He read it.
With some reluctance, the court repeats the first sentence of the letter, without which the reader cannot fully appreciate the context of this controversy. The letter, dated October 21, 1987, begins: "Hi, you sexy slut! I just saw your ad in the Looking Glass # 13 on page 14. My pxxxk is stiff looking at you with that fat dxxxxo ready to plunge into your pxxsy." The letter continues with similarly graphic language about consensual sexual activities the writer states he had with a girlfriend. The writer also stated that although he was white he liked seeing his "slut fxxxxd by white and black." The letter concluded by asking the recipient to write "Mike" at I.M.S. at P.O. Box 741, Salisbury, MA 01952. The ad depicted a nude woman with ropes wrapped around her body.
The listed P.O. box was registered to International Marketing Services c/o Michael Cronin. The letter was never sent.
YIKES
CREEPY MEDFORD CITY COUNCIL DOESN'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE PUBLIC INTEREST, THE PUBLIC THAT PAYS THEM.
Summary
Finding that the defendant police officers were entitled to qualified immunity in their "limited dissemination" of a sexually explicit handwritten letter found in the plaintiff police chief's desk, given the "sharply divided caselaw on the authority of a municipality to inquire into a police officer's private sexual conduct and its impact on fitness for duty"
Summary of this case from Mercure v. Van Buren Tp.
Moreover, as pointed out earlier, the right to privacy of a public employee is a limited one, and the contours of that right were not clearly established in 1992 or today. In the circumstances of this case, the court concludes that the town and the individual members of the Board of Selectmen did not abrogate plaintiff's clearly established privacy rights by public disclosure. At the time the letter was disclosed, a neutral hearing officer had concluded after a public hearing that Cronin had written it, and he had recommended discipline; the town manager had demoted him based in large part on a finding he had lied about his discussions concerning the letter. Gonthier testified that the Board of Selectmen released the letter to the press after a Freedom of Information Act request for the letter, which had been an exhibit at the Foundas hearing. The selectmen could fairly have concluded that the public interest in disclosing the basis for the discipline of the town police chief outweighed his privacy interests. As the First Circuit has warned, "[w]hen the law requires a balancing of competing interests, it may be unfair to charge an official with knowledge of the law in the absence of a previously decided case with clearly analogous facts." Borucki v. Ryan, 827 F.2d 836, 848 (1st Cir. 1987) (district attorney had qualified immunity where he disclosed private psychological information because he concluded public confidence would be furthered).
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