Maine deputy criticized by Lewiston taking pictures fee blasts preliminary as inaccurate, deceptive

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By John Terhune
Portland Press Herald, Maine

SAGADAHOC COUNTY, Maine — The Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Workplace deputy who has confronted intense criticism for failing to confront the Lewiston shooter earlier than he dedicated a mass taking pictures filed a 20-page defense of his actions Tuesday morning with the fee investigating the taking pictures.

In its March 15 interim report, the fee blasted Sgt. Aaron Skolfield for not doing extra to disarm Robert Card in September after he discovered Card had punched his good friend and made threats in opposition to his Military Reserve unit’s base in Saco. However within the doc Skolfield submitted to the fee Tuesday, which ripped the interim report as “inaccurate and intensely deceptive,” he stated Card’s Military leaders deserve the blame — not him.

“In what seems to be eagerness to assign blame to somebody apart from Mr. Card for this horrific tragedy, the fee missed or misinterpreted key particulars and disregarded the restrictions on Sgt. Skolfield,” the doc reads.

Skolfield has already cited a number of complaints he has with the doc — inaccuracies within the fee’s timeline, an uncritical acceptance of Military testimony and the issuance of an interim report based mostly on incomplete findings — throughout an interview with the Press Herald in April. The brand new report, filed with the assistance of Skolfield’s lawyer, is the primary formal motion he’s taken to dispute the fee’s findings.

The fee’s preliminary report, which was based mostly on hours of testimony given at public hearings, troves of police stories and different paperwork, and an unknown variety of closed-door conferences and interviews, stated Skolfield had sufficient possible trigger to make use of Maine’s yellow flag legislation to briefly confiscate Card’s weapons final September.

Whereas the fee acknowledged that Maine legal guidelines made it troublesome for Skolfield to convey Card into custody as soon as he refused to open the door at his Bowdoin dwelling to police, it stated the deputy ought to have discovered a approach, both by staking out Card’s dwelling or by charging him with a crime.

Skolfield insists this logic solely is smart in hindsight. On the time, he stated, he didn’t have all of the details about the extent of Card’s psychological sickness, together with the truth that medical doctors had advisable that the Military preserve him away from weapons each in Saco and at dwelling. And he stated the individuals who did have that data — Capt. Jeremy Reamer and Sgt. Kelvin Mote — downplayed how severely they took Card’s threats.

“At no level did Mote or Reamer talk any urgency to have a welfare test finished on Mr. Card. In reality, it was fairly the alternative,” the report reads. “Mote, not by way of his actions earlier than the tragedy, however as a substitute in meaningless phrases after the Lewiston tragedy expresses his dire concern to the fee.”

Precisely how the Military characterised Card’s sickness to police has develop into a key query at current fee hearings. Each Reamer and Mote have denied they minimized Card’s threats and have criticized the Sagadahoc sheriff’s workplace for not discovering a option to full a face-to-face analysis of Card after Mote’s co-worker on the Ellsworth Police Division handed alongside the threats in opposition to the bottom on Sept. 15.

“I trusted that the legislation enforcement, based mostly on the data that they received, would take it and run,” Reamer advised the fee on April 11. “I used to be simply anticipating them to do their job.”

However Skolfield stated this doesn’t sq. with the truth that Reamer first discovered that Card assaulted his good friend two days earlier than Mote ultimately handed the considerations alongside the police — a element that contradicts the fee’s authentic report. And he cited a recording of a cellphone name between Reamer and Skolfield on Sept. 16, during which Reamer repeatedly tells Skolfield to not put himself in hurt’s approach and to as a substitute simply “doc” the tried well-being test.

“The one factor I might ask is in case you might simply doc it,” Reamer says within the recording. “Simply to say he was there, he was uncooperative, however we confirmed that he was alive and respiratory. That’s form of from our finish right here all we’re actually searching for.”

Mote declined Tuesday to debate Skolfield’s claims, citing a pending Military investigation into the company’s dealing with of Card.

Skolfield additionally complained that it was unfair and deceptive for the fee to launch an preliminary report focusing totally on the position of the sheriff’s workplace within the Card case earlier than it had a chance to completely perceive what Military leaders had finished and the way that may have affected Skolfield’s resolution making course of.

A number of robust strains of questioning at current fee hearings counsel that Military leaders will face criticism of their very own within the fee’s ultimate report, which it plans on releasing later this 12 months.

This story is a part of an ongoing collaboration with FRONTLINE (PBS) and Maine Public that features an upcoming documentary. It’s supported by way of FRONTLINE’s Native Journalism Initiative, which is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Basis.

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(c)2024 the Portland Press Herald (Portland, Maine)
Go to the Portland Press Herald (Portland, Maine) at www.pressherald.com
Distributed by Tribune Content material Company, LLC.

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