A federal grand jury is investigating police contracts in the city of Methuen, according to The Boston Globe. The city's police department has been in the news over the sky-high salary of its former chief, Joseph Solomon. Methuen is a small city, but Solomon was one of the highest paid chiefs in the entire country. Now, the Department of Justice is apparently looking into whether he and others may have committed a crime in securing huge salaries. Northeastern University law professor and GBH legal analyst Daniel Medwed discussed the case with GBH All Things Considered host Arun Rath. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Arun Rath: So this reporting suggests that in negotiating a new contract with the city of Methuen a few years ago, the police union that was involved tried to conceal just how high salaries for police leaders, including Solomon, could go. That sounds kind of fishy, but would that constitute a crime?
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Daniel Medwed: It could, depending on a few circumstances. Apparently the contract included a 2% annual raise. That might be fine, except the allegations are that the basis upon which that 2% raise would be calculated included not just salaries but also benefits, and it had this compounding effect where it would increase every year because the base was so much larger than the city council and the mayor anticipated. In addition, apparently there was a provision that said that superior officers like captains and sergeants and others got a multiple of whatever the patrolman contract would give to regular officers, beat officers, and that patrolman contract had the same compounding principle in it. Long story short, it appears as though Solomon and one of his key deputies, a guy named Gregory Gallant may — and I want to use the word may, because it hasn't been proven yet — may have not completely clarified the nature of this contract in their negotiations with city council and the mayor.
Rath: So how do the legal limits of something like this work? How do we know where it would go to a level where the salary is too much and over the line?
Medwed: I think the issue is not so much whether the salary is over the line, because, as you suggest, I think that's somewhat unknowable. It's whether there was fraudulent activity in securing that salary. So under federal law, you can't use the mail or wire telecommunications to perpetuate a fraud. Here it seems like some of the allegations might relate to the use of emails or telephonic communications to basically fraudulently convey information about the contract. The issue here is if in fact there was some intent to defraud, and it's not just an issue of the city council or the mayor being negligent, then that could lead to a federal charge. And the federal charge here is quite severe.
Rath: Couldn't former chief Solomon say, well, it's not my fraud, it was the city that approved this contract. It's their responsibility to make sure this is on the up and up.
Medwed: I think you're exactly right, that's going to be the key to the case, that he's going to say — if, in fact, charges ensue — hey, this was all in writing. If the city council and the mayor had done their due diligence, they would have figured this out. Presumably the federal prosecutors have something more here, which suggests that maybe Solomon and others misled the city council or misled the mayor so that it was very hard to figure out what exactly was at stake. If, in fact, this does result in wire fraud charges, in theory he could be facing up to 20 years in prison. When people talk about "it's not a federal crime," the inference is that federal crimes are really severe. Wire fraud is really the poster child for it.
