Police chief appeals firing to city council

Eastport Police Chief Peter Harris says his firing on the morning of September 28 by City Manager Thomas Hoskins "was a wrongful termination based on lies." The dismissal is the third firing of a police chief in the past three years in the city, which has had nine police chiefs in the past 10 years.
"It's a career assassination," Harris says of the termination, as it will now be difficult to get hired at other departments, although he is now working part-time for the Pleasant Point Police Department. "I was not guilty of any misconduct. The only thing I'm guilty of is standing up to Thomas Hoskins," he says, adding, "He's taken away my dignity." Other than a short statement, Hoskins declines to comment on the matter, on the advice of legal counsel.
Harris has appealed the firing to the city council, and the council has scheduled a hearing on the appeal for Monday, October 19, at 6 p.m. at city hall. Harris can choose to have the hearing conducted in an open session. The session may be a hybrid of meeting in-person and by Zoom. A petition asking the council to overturn the dismissal is now being circulated in the city, and residents have sent a fair number of letters to the council about the firing.

Reasons for firing outlined
Harris alleges that during his time as police chief he was micromanaged by the city manager, not allowed to have executive sessions with the city council and not allowed to hire a fourth full-time officer for the department, which had been understaffed for two years.
The immediate issue that appeared to lead to the firing was the rehiring of Mark Emery as a full-time officer without authorization from the city manager and without following up with the city treasurer about the rehiring, although that's in dispute. Emery had been a full-time officer with the Eastport department for 25 years, and while he left a few months ago to work at the Baileyville Police Department, he was still on the Eastport roster as a reserve officer. Emery then contacted Harris about again working full-time for the department, and Harris spoke with the city manager about rehiring him. Harris says, "He said, 'It's your show to run'" but added that Harris should check with the city treasurer. Harris had then tried to reach City Treasurer Traci Claroni but she was not available at work, and Emery was scheduled to begin work during the week of September 28. When Harris did finally reach Claroni, she told him that the city manager told her that Emery was not to be hired and that Harris needed to speak with Hoskins. He then spoke again with Hoskins, who accused him of not getting his authorization to hire Emery. "I didn't need it, but he did sign off on Mark [Emery]," Harris maintains. He says that the city manager has the authority to hire and fire the police chief but not any of the officers. "That's my job to hire my officers."
While Hoskins did give Harris the option to resign, Harris says he chose instead to be fired, because he believes his being let go was wrong. "You can't just fire me because you want to silence me or because I stand up to you once in a while. It's wrong that I can do everything right as a police officer and still be terminated. I was fired for hiring a man who is working right now, and I was told I couldn't hire him. It's backwards."
Harris also alleges that Hoskins told him that he could not have an executive session discussion with the city council about Hoskins interfering with his hiring of officers. He then tried to get a second executive session with the council about the hiring of Emery, which he says the councillors supported. Concerning the holding of executive sessions, Mary Repole, a former city council president, says that if city personnel request an executive session "then it should happen."

An understaffed department
With the hiring of Emery, the Eastport department, which had not been fully staffed for over two years, finally had four full-time officers. Harris was sometimes working 96 hours a week when the department was short-staffed. "Instead of recognizing how hard I was working, I was made to feel it was my fault. I got fired for trying." He says the irony is that Emery is now working for the department. "They have no problem with it now."
In recent months, Harris was able to get Greg Smith, who was working at the Pleasant Point Police Department, to become a full-time officer for Eastport, at a significant drop in pay. Nick Johnson also came to work part-time for the Eastport department, as the department went from being manned by only two full-time officers to having two more. "Finally the City of Eastport had rested coverage around the clock," notes Harris. "I put the department on my back, and these people finally wanted to work here."
Following his firing, Officer Smith has since left the department, Harris notes, and he says that Johnson also wants to leave and that Officer Caela Fenderson is scheduled to leave in December. "There's a reason there have been nine chiefs in 10 years. They work their chiefs to death and don't want to pay their officers competitively," Harris says. "All of the officers know the history here and don't want to apply."

Treated differently from other employees
Harris started his career in law enforcement back in 1996, having previously served as a crisis counselor. He has worked for the Eastport Police Department for about eight years and has also been an officer at Pleasant Point, Indian Township and Calais. He comments, "My heart's always been with the City of Eastport."
Noting that he believes he is the only African-American police chief in Maine, he says, "I was proud of that, that Eastport could do that." As a Black man, he says he never takes acceptance for granted, but he observes, "When I came to Eastport years ago, I felt accepted. I always valued that about this place. The people here are very warm."
However, Harris says the city manager "has treated me differently from any other employee of the City of Eastport. No other department head was subject to such criticism or had to sign paperwork to meet his demands or be fired."
Harris feels that his firing is a case of racial discrimination. "I never made that an issue before," he says, but the common denominator in how he was treated as police chief "is the color of my skin. He felt he could talk to me differently, he felt he could treat me differently." He adds, "I was allowed, with witnesses present, to be treated this way. He felt empowered to say things to me that shouldn't be said." Harris says he was told that the other officers hated working for him and, at a meeting of other department heads, that the officers didn't respect him and that he didn't have a handle on his department.
Harris has been police chief since June 2019. In April 2020, just before his one-year probationary period was about to end, the city manager, after only two months on the job, placed him on a special probation, where he had to attend three meetings a week with the city manager or be fired, according to Harris. He would need to attend the Monday morning department head meeting even though he would just be finishing a 72-hour shift, another meeting with only the city manager after that and then a one-on-one meeting on Fridays. "That was so unreasonable," Harris says. "I was absolutely worked to death. None of it made any sense from a humanity standpoint." He also could be fired if officers on duty did not check in with city hall three times a day, even though city hall staff could listen to the police radio calls. In addition, the chief had to do a special department schedule for the city manager and take calls from the city manager when he was off-duty or be fired. "He held a meeting at city hall and reads me out, telling me how incompetent I am," Harris says. "It was about putting me in my place."
Harris did speak with some city councillors about how he was being treated, but his concerns "fell on deaf ears," he says. "They allowed the city manager to exercise power he didn't have."
Harris comments, "If you're a minority, no one stands up for you. He was making an example of me, and everyone let him do this. It was completely unreasonable the way I was being treated."
Concerning the council's role in the firing of Harris, City Council President Rocky Archer comments, "We had nothing to do with it." He declines to make any other further comment on the matter.
After consulting with the city's legal counsel, Hoskins released a statement saying, "The termination of Peter Harris is a personnel matter based on performance only, not racial or discrimination." Harris, though, says that he never had a performance review with the city manager and that he passed the special probation, which ended in June.
Harris says he would consider coming back to work for Eastport, "but would anything change?" Of Hoskins' action, he says, "This is reckless and an abuse of his power. They allowed him to destroy the police department again."
With a sense of frustration, Harris says, "I took this job because it was the right thing to do for the City of Eastport. I worked the hours I did because it was the right thing to do. I put up with discrimination and was talked down to and talked at and dehumanized and allowed it to happen because I thought it was the right thing to do. I put up with Thomas Hoskins because I thought it was the right thing to do. I don't think anyone appreciates this."

Support offered
Of Harris' work as police chief, Eastport Fire Chief Richard Clark says, "He went over and above" in working "mega-hours" when the department was understaffed. "Any time we had a fire, he was always right there and would grab a hose and give us a hand if we were shorthanded." Of their relationship as chiefs, he says, "We worked great together."
Concerning whether city manager approval is needed for the hiring of police officers, Clark notes that he has never taken the hiring of firefighters to a city manager for approval in the 34 years he has been chief, although the city charter says firefighters and police officers are to be appointed by the city manager. Mary Repole, who is a former council president, says that the hiring of officers and the setting of their salaries has been up to the police chief, if the budget allows. Repole, who also is chair of the city budget committee, says that having four full-time officers is covered in the current city budget.
Of Harris' firing, she says, "It's such a huge disappointment to lose someone again who really cares." She adds, "I'm very disappointed. I think he's been a wonderful police chief. I never heard anyone complain about him. I think it's really awful that he's been treated that way."
Repole believes that the police chief position should be a council appointment and that the chief "should be given some autonomy. You shouldn't have a nonprofessional managing what you do and the hiring of officers. The police chief's discretion should be used for hiring and managing of salaries." Harris agrees that the department should be overseen by the council, not one person.
Chris Gardner, executive director of the Eastport Port Authority, who has been a reserve police officer since 1996, says, "Peter's been doing the best he could to help stabilize the department and to right the ship." Noting that the department was short-staffed while Harris has been chief, Gardner says that "puts a lot of stress and pressure on the department." He says he's "disheartened that we're potentially going to have to find another chief in such a short period of time, and I hope we can get this straightened out."