Howdy, Chief,

In the event you haven’t heard, I’m publishing GINNED UP again.

Three years ago, when I announced that I’d be publishing my memoir about my short time on Littleton’s Board of Selectmen, you went out and got a lawyer who, before I’d published even one word, threatened to sue me (on your behalf) were I to defame you and/or invade your privacy. With that threat in mind, I started publishing anyhow (in July 2021). After a couple of weeks, I received a second threatening letter from your lawyer, telling me to knock it off; then, a few weeks after that, a third letter, ordering me to stop publishing and delete everything immediately, or you were filing suit.

You thought I’d cave under all those threats.

I did not.

And when the forty-episode saga that was GINNED UP came to an end, you did not sue me. You had no basis upon which to place a claim. You were not damaged in any actionable way by what I wrote about you.

You were, however, portrayed as a man who was willing to do whatever it took to get rid of me (an elected official) after I’d conveyed the allegation (made by one of your subordinates) to my peers on the (all-male) Board of Selectmen that your hand-picked successor, Littleton’s Deputy Chief Matthew King, had been accused of digitally raping a woman in 1997 and paying her twenty-five thousand dollars not to move forward with the case.

That’s the gist of what I brought to Ted Doucette, Chair of the Board of Selectmen, on February 11, 2014.

I was forced out by you, Chief, three weeks later.

And six months after that, Littleton had a new chief. The guy you wanted.

What happened in-between?