Chief Chris Jones' LPD: Lie, Plagiarize, Deceive

[XLFD]

Before Ludington Police Department (LPD) Chief Christopher Jones introduced the strategic plan for his department at an April Fools Day gathering, the Ludington Torch couldn't help but recognize that the plan, supposedly developed by the genii at the top of the LPD, seemed to have a lot of similarities in style and substance to a Durham (NH) PD strategic plan.  So much so that most any teacher or college instructor would call it outright plagiarism to a high degree, and give it a failing grade accordingly.

The LPD Strategic Plan did not acknowledge the Durham plan at any point within, or any other source.  And while such plans often borrow ideas and formats freely from other sources without attribution, this theft of intellectual property was rather thorough, blatant, and willfully done.

After going to that meeting I wrote about it later that night saying:

"Police Chief Jones took a couple of minutes at the start of the meeting to talk about his collaboration with the Durham (New Hampshire) PD to create Ludington's strategic plan.  The copies of the LPD plan given out to meeting attendees had this at the bottom of the last page:  "The plan was modeled after the Durham (NH) Police 2020 Strategic Plan, with their permission."  There is no attribution yet on the city website, and one would think that had he not been caught red-ink handed, that he would not have mentioned Durham this evening, giving himself and Captain Haveman the credit for the plan.

Of course, since the chief isn't known to be the best truth teller, I am checking out the 'collaboration' and the 'permission' with a FOIA request looking into correspondence and communications between the DPD and LPD administrators (prior to the publishing of this article [dated 3-30-24])."

                       Chief Jones (pictured far left in furry white boots) providing security for one of Ludington's ruling families 

Sure enough I sent a FOIA request asking for:  Communications/Correspondence between the LPD administration staff (Jones, Haveman, Wietrzykowski) and the Police Department administrators of the City of Durham, New Hampshire dated prior to March 29, 2024 in regard to the DPD's strategic plan and the LPD's use of it.

Chief Jones, who related to a packed house of about five dozen people at the city hall council chambers on April 1st that there had been such a lot of collaboration between the two departments in crafting the finished strategic plan for LPD, had to look around so much that the response was a day later than what the law allows (five business days after reception), but all that hunting high and low got was this response:

There were no written records between the LPD and the Durham PD granting the use of DPD's strategic plan.  There was no written permission or any communication between departments, and the response doesn't even try to suggest that any such permission was unwritten and granted in person or by phone, both which seems unlikely given the extent of the 'borrowing' and the lack of any mention of it at all in the original plan.    

One could perhaps forgive the LPD and their new chief for taking the shortcut of using the Durham PD's strategic plan as their template with just a couple of minor changes over the 19 pages.  After all, they did save a lot of money on having an outside consultant create a plan that will probably just gather dust as the LPD does what they do best, ignore protocol to a very dangerous extent.  These guys are police officers, one doesn't expect a lot of creativity out of them; more are expecting a copy and paste from one solid source or two, but it isn't a lot of extra effort to acknowledge those sources when they do.

But what people shouldn't be willing to accept is a police chief getting up in front of the community and lying to them about some mutual effort between another out-of-state PD and themselves when there never was any such understanding made between them.  This erodes the public trust in the whole department and makes everything else they do bear further scrutiny, whether it's stealing some other department's intellectual property or introducing a new FOIA policy that is nothing more than public extortion, used as a tool to prevent the media from investigating issues involving the LPD. 

After they were caught doing that, Chief Jones lied about a wholly new unauthorized policy being their previously existing FOIA cost estimation policy.  See a pattern here?

[Willy]

Thanks X for revealing another questionable situation regarding a local official. I cannot remember anybody in local authority ever admitting they were wrong or showed remorse about acting inappropriately, unethically or immorally about any wrong doing they had done in performing their duties. This has been frustrating to most of the citizens but not unexpected. This is one of many things wrong with those in the position of leadership in much of Mason county and it's cities and townships. This is not to say that all those in power have been this way but those who have abused their positions cannot bring themselves to be humble and ask for forgiveness as well as setting the record straight on what they have done and what is really going on behind the curtain.

[XLFD]

Humility and integrity is a rare trait among our elected officials and administrators, and rarely is it a trait that lasts long.  Though they were often at each other's throats and had sizable egos, 5WC Angela Serna and Mayor Steve Miller had those traits and were voted out of office for it, losing to Wally Cain and Mark Barnett, respectively, among the worst of their ilk.  Mitch Foster has metamorphized into a bad character over the years, he had such promise early on, but he's only working against the regular citizen nowadays with little regard for the law or ethics.  The change came on fairly quick after Serna and Miller were gone; unfortunately, it's irreversible without a change in personnel and so our money will continue to go to enterprise zones, developers, boondoggle projects, deer culls, and other folly.