The relationship between two Berkshire County police departments has continued to strain this year. The challenges stem from a mental health call in January that ended with the caller killed by police. Now, town officials are taking the squabble to the state as they hash out what interagency cooperation looks like going forward.
Berkshire Bureau Chief Josh Landes joined Ray Graf on Midday Magazine with the latest.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Graf: So Josh, how did we get here?
Landes: So, back in April, a letter that WAMC published from Dalton Police Chief Deanna Strout to the neighboring town of Hinsdale officially ended the two communities' agreement for law enforcement mutual aid.
In that letter, Strout spelled out the extent of the rupture between the two towns after a botched mental health call by the Hinsdale Police Department back in January, under the leadership of Hinsdale Chief Shawn Boyne, who has since resigned from the role, officers, including folks from the Dalton Police Department, forced their way into a locked room and confronted 27-year-old Biagio Kauvil, who had actually reached out to emergency services for help as he experienced a mental health crisis.
When police burst in, they found Kauvil with a gun in his hand, his hands in the air, and in the struggle that followed, shots were fired. Hinsdale officer Jeremy Spratt, who has since left the force, fatally shot Kauvil in the head, and also shot a fellow cop.
Kauvil's gun also discharged after he was tackled by police, which struck two officers, including Boyne as well.
So, the Berkshire District Attorney's office investigated the incident, and while it found the police's use of force to be lawful, it criticized Boyne's decision making and leadership throughout the incident. That was followed up on explicitly in this letter from the Dalton Police Department ending mutual aid. Strout takes particular issue with Boyne's attempt to foist responsibility for this failed response onto one of her officers, which is part of this larger case she makes for why Dalton has decided to end its relationship with sending police support to Hinsdale.
I obtained and published more records from Dalton and Hinsdale back in May, that really underscored that the relationship between these towns has really been crumbling for some time, even well before the incident back in January with the death of Biagio Kauvil, ranging from a Hinsdale officer making violent threats to a dispatcher in Dalton to concerns raised by Dalton about the competency and training of the Hinsdale police for issues going back years. This conflict extends to the Hinsdale police circumventing the Dalton Communication Center - that's the regional dispatch service they rely on - to make off-record calls. It continues to be a tense situation because the leadership of Hinsdale has resolutely defended its police department throughout all of this, and also publicly complained about slow response times for requests for aid in the wake of Dalton ending the mutual aid agreement.
Graf: In recent days you've received further troves of documents. Those include letters by Hinsdale and Dalton officials to the state. What have they revealed?
Landes: Through a Freedom of Information Act request, I got my hands on 49 pages of communications between Dalton and Hinsdale. Suffice to say, tensions have only continued to grow since the spring.
It's very clear from Hinsdale's communications they feel that the Dalton Police Chief Deanna Strout is sort of the main problem that they've identified in their relationship with Dalton.
This all came to a head in August when, on the 24th, Hinsdale Town Administrator Robert Graves sent a letter on behalf of the town select board to the Massachusetts State 911 Department, alleging that "recent actions and public statements by Dalton Town Hall officials have destroyed Hinsdale's confidence in its current dispatch arrangement."
The letter sees Graves reiterate a common complaint from Hinsdale that Dalton has put its residents and emergency responders at risk by suspending mutual aid. And in that letter to the state agency that governs the Massachusetts-wide 911 response system, Graves says that Strout, the Dalton police chief, made a comment to a newspaper that she would "cherry pick" mutual aid calls to which she would allow her officers in Dalton to respond to in Hinsdale.
Here's the thing: there is no quote from Stroud to the media in which she says anything approximating that, and certainly not the phrase "cherry pick."
The crux of his complaint to the state's 911 department is that Strout is somehow calling shots at the Dalton Dispatch Center, which he claims is in violation of how the center is supposed to operate.
It's important to stress that the entirety of the concern he's expressing to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is again about the police chief effectively controlling the dispatch center, and that is based on these claims that Strout has somehow indicated that she is the one calling the shots. There, he calls on the department to full-on investigate Dalton and its dispatch center over what he claims to be this this overstep of authority from Chief Strout in the command structure.
Now, going through these communications between Dalton and Hinsdale, going back to the spring — It's made very clear to Graves and Hinsdale over many messages that the decision making around ending mutual aid between the two communities is not a unilateral one from Strout. It's very clearly from the Dalton town manager, it's from the Dalton Select Board. So for Graves to make the claim that all of a sudden this is solely the the move of Deanna Strout is not backed up by the documents that I have in front of me, all of which Graves is connected to in some way or another.
More to the point, it was very clearly expressed to Graves and Hinsdale that the Dalton Dispatch Center would never leave a police officer in any risk or danger, despite the suspension of mutual aid. Meaning explicitly that Hinsdale would not be left high and dry.
I wasn't the only person who noticed him claiming that Strout had said she was cherry-picking response calls. In fact, the Dalton Select Board Chair Robert Bishop asks Graves to send him the article in question. Graves responds saying that "several articles reported that Dalton suspended mutual aid, but retained discretion to evaluate Hinsdale emergency requests individually." He says that he feels that it "appears to have been instituted by Strout."
Though again, there's little to back up that claim other than his perception, and offers that as justification for telling the state 911 department that Strout explicitly told media publicly that she would cherry pick responses, which again never happened. Now, he sent Bishop a number of articles that supposedly would have supported his interpretation of this events and justified his use of the cherry pick quote, including two by WAMC, but but none of which remotely come close to asserting that Strout unilaterally controlled dispatch responses to Hinsdale.
Graf: What did officials in Dalton have to say in response to Graves' assertions to the state?
Landes: On Sept. 8, Dalton leaders like Town Manager Eric Anderson and their dispatch center director Gabrielle Taglieri basically said, 'Look, Strout has no authority over the dispatch center.'
Dalton has again committed to responding to Hinsdale in cases where officer safety is at stake, despite the mutual aid agreement ending. And Anderson says it is troubling that Graves is unaware of all of this, given that he was copied on all correspondence, and notes that Graves very easily could have communicated with him about these concerns directly.
Part of this is that Hinsdale wants to terminate its contract for dispatch with Dalton, and Dalton says that it's okay to move forward with that, despite not agreeing with the move. Anderson, Taglieri, and Strout of Dalton all declined comment on this story.
Hinsdale Town Administrator Robert Graves and Acting Police Chief Bruce Collett did not respond to my request for comment on this story, and I'm waiting to hear back from the Massachusetts State 911 Department about all this mess.
