This is the latest developments in a saga that began with the fatal shooting of 27-year-old Biagio Kauvil by police officers during a mental health call response in January. No mental health co-responders were on scene when the Hinsdale PD breeched a locked door to confront Kauvil at the instruction of Chief Shawn Boyne, who has been on leave since the incident. While the Berkshire District Attorney’s Office found no criminal conduct occurred on the part of police, the incident has deepened mistrust between residents and the town government.
Chris Daigle, representing the firm, delivered a presentation at a long, tense, and at times explosive, meeting last week at the town office. He explained his firm’s work on the audit to that point and explained next steps.
But, one of the first things Daigle had to address was his relationship with Boyne. As the Berkshire Eagle reported in May, Boyne had “highly recommended” his fellow former Connecticut State Police colleague’s law firm to the town of New Milford, Connecticut, back in 2013.
“Mr. Boyne is a former Connecticut trooper. I did serve 10 years, but there's 12,050 troopers,” Daigle said. “I have never worked with Shawn Boyne ever in the Connecticut State Police. In his second job, he was at New Milford Police Department as its police chief in the state of Connecticut. New Milford Police Department is a policy client of Daigle Law Group. We do not associate together, we're not friendly. He is a law enforcement officer. I was a law enforcement officer.”
Once he had spoken to questions about his relationship with Boyne, Daigle moved on to discussing the completion of the first phase of the audit, which had examined the Hinsdale PD records, including budgets, contracts, trainings and personnel files, and where things stand in the second phase.
“We did move to phase two, which is the part where we start to meet with individuals, meet with the town, meet with the select board, meet with the chief, meet with the officers, meet with other town police executives, and have a community meeting,” he said, “because obviously we can cost a lot of money to have individual meetings with everybody, but [we] try to give everybody an opportunity to convey to us what we need to do.”
Daigle said he expected that phase to conclude by the end of July before moving to the third and final part of the process.
“We are going to look at things that have a direct effect on services, and we're going to make recommendations in the end, because I've learned a long time ago that the one thing that you can do correctly in this world is you can set expectations where they should be, and that is, I want to be clear with you, the best thing that we can do as the consultants is make recommendations, [and] justify why we're making a recommendation,” Daigle said. “Unfortunately, once we're done — sorry, [Town Administrator Bob Graves] and sorry to select board and finance committee — we're going to put it back on you guys, and you all as an entity will have to decide what recommendations you are going to take into effect.”
Daigle confirmed that criticisms levied at the Hinsdale PD by Berkshire District Attorney Timothy Shugrue and other law enforcement entities over its handling of the lethal mental health response in January was a driving force behind the audit, as well as the months of reporting since that brought other allegations of misconduct against the department to light.
“That's one of the reasons I believe we're here is because of those allegations that were made to whether or not to determine if, if the there is any underlying truth to the policy operation training issues that were associated that have been talked about, mainly by the district attorney,” Daigle said. “I think the town of Hinsdale has done this for the purpose of finding out the answers to those questions through … a team of individuals who has expertise in what it should look like and whether or not it's what it is, what it does look like.”
One of the sources of tension between the town and some residents is that the select board says it intends to reinstate Boyne as chief as early as this month once he is cleared from medical leave — long before the audit of the department is completed.
“Whether or not Chief Boyne returns and meets his qualifications to return, and whether or not there is an investigation to his actions before or after he returns is a separate lane to us,” Daigle said. “The analysis of what we're doing, whether he comes back or doesn't come back, that is a town issue that has to go through town legal and town operations, and that is in their situations.”
WAMC asked if the firm’s findings would include personnel recommendations if they found that the leader of the police department was the source of problems with its functions.
“If we analyze and are analyzing things like policy training operations, and we see clear deficiencies that need to be rectified, we will identify those, those deficiencies,” Daigle said. “Whether or not that directly leads to the town taking any action in the employment application, that's on them. Our job is to make sure the men who wear this uniform do the job the way it's supposed to be done, and to make sure that they have clear guidance on what is expected of them. That's what we're looking at here.”
Daigle made it clear his firm’s report will ultimately be delivered directly to Hinsdale’s leadership, who will then decide whether or not to release it to the public that decided at a March meeting to pay for the $25,000 audit. But, he also indicated he may give another public presentation.
“I assume that in order to bridge the healing process that the town of Hinsdale will want to make the report in some form of viable, and maybe I'll even be back to do this again after the report is over, so that you can understand the recommendations.”
Daigle estimated the entire audit would be finished in another 60 to 90 days.
Towards the end of the contentious and emotional meeting, Hinsdale select board member Raymond Huntoon attempted to assuage the concerns of skeptical meeting attendees that the body intended to take the firm’s findings seriously.
“We will take his recommendations and what we can afford and how we can work it out. We will apply it and try to make it all happen, but we will prioritize it to what we think is important first. We're not going to accomplish it all in a minute. That's what we're here for. We know there's weaknesses, we know there's issues, but we are trying to take care of it, that's what we're here for. We will work at it.”
