Jane Doe v. Concord Police Department, et al.

Concord, New Hampshire, personal injury lawyer represented the Plaintiff seeking an order requiring that her name be removed from the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule (EES). See RSA 105:13-d (2023).



I. Facts



[¶2] The following facts are taken from the trial court's summary judgment order or are otherwise established by the record. In 2013, a Concord police officer discovered that her firearm was missing from the firearms lockers at the police station. The officer had the key to her locker, and she noticed that only one other locker was closed and locked. She recalled that the plaintiff, who was also a Concord police officer, had recently been in the booking area but had left to transport a prisoner to a local hospital. Each locker could be opened only with an individual key or with a master key kept in the watch commander's office.



[¶3] The officer reported her missing firearm to her supervisors. A Concord police sergeant called the plaintiff, who was still at the hospital, and asked her for the serial number of the firearm in her possession. The sergeant confirmed that the plaintiff had the other officer's firearm. According to the sergeant, the plaintiff told him that she realized she had forgotten her firearm while she was still at the police station, and she asked another officer to retrieve it for her. The plaintiff told the sergeant that the officer must have inadvertently taken the wrong firearm.



[¶4] Upon returning to the police station, the plaintiff spoke with the sergeant and a lieutenant about the incident. She maintained that she first realized she had forgotten her firearm while she was still at the police station and that another officer retrieved the firearm for her while she was still at the station. The plaintiff's partner, however, told the officer whose firearm was missing that the plaintiff did not notice that her firearm was missing until she was at the hospital. Upon learning what the plaintiff had told her supervisors,

the officer then informed the sergeant and the lieutenant that the plaintiff had lied about when she realized that she had forgotten her firearm.



[¶5] The Concord Police Department opened an internal affairs investigation into the allegation that the plaintiff was untruthful during her conversations with her colleague and supervisors regarding the firearm. The plaintiff claimed that, when the sergeant first contacted her, she told him that she realized that she forgot her firearm while at the hospital and that "he was mistaken or confused" in remembering otherwise. The investigators found that the plaintiff struggled to answer specific questions during the investigation and that her statements lacked credibility. They concluded that it was "more likely that [the plaintiff was] lying about this incident because she believed she would have been in trouble if she properly reported this to the on-duty supervisor." They further determined that the plaintiff "had ample opportunities to have reported the incident the way it transpired but went to great lengths to cover up the facts" and that she "circumvent[ed] the chain of command . . . in order to skirt detection."



[¶6] The investigators recommended that the allegations be sustained. They recommended finding that the plaintiff: (1) lied to a colleague and her supervisors about when she first knew that she had forgotten her firearm; (2) "failed to answer questions truthfully to her superior officers during the investigation"; (3) falsely stated that she had not spoken to the lieutenant and the sergeant about the incident when she had; and (4) offered facts to another lieutenant that were inconsistent with the statement she provided to the sergeant.



[¶7] The police chief sustained the allegations, and the City terminated the plaintiff's employment. The chief also sent a letter to the City prosecutor and county attorneys submitting the plaintiff's name for inclusion on the "Laurie List," see State v. Laurie, 139 N.H. 325 (1995), which was subsequently renamed as the EES, see N.H. Ctr. for Pub. Interest Journalism v. N.H. Dep't of Justice, 173 N.H. 648, 651 (2020); RSA 105:13-d, I. The plaintiff appealed the termination decision to the City's Personnel Appeals Board (PAB), which also found that the plaintiff lacked credibility and upheld the decision.



[¶8] The plaintiff subsequently filed a complaint against the City in superior court alleging, among other things, gender discrimination and wrongful termination. The parties reached a settlement agreement, which included a provision requiring the City to remove documents relating to the firearm incident and termination of the plaintiff's employment from the plaintiff's personnel file and maintain those documents "in a separate investigative file." The City also agreed to notify the police standards and training council that the plaintiff's "departure from the police department was a negotiated resignation."



[¶9] Years later, the plaintiff filed a complaint in superior court, naming the City and the DOJ as defendants, seeking the removal of her name from the EES pursuant to RSA 105:13-d. She argued that the City erred in recommending her name for inclusion on the list, that "the underlying conduct is not potentia

The DOJ filed a motion for summary judgment, which the City joined. The trial court granted the defendants' motion. The plaintiff unsuccessfully moved for reconsideration.



Affirmed.