Several former Lakes Region officers on recently published Laurie's List

CONCORD — Last month, Attorney General John M. Formella released a “Laurie’s List” of 80 New Hampshire police officers. The publishing of the list is the result of a 2018 Lawsuit by the New Hampshire American Civil Liberties Union and several New Hampshire media outlets under the state’s right-to-know laws. The origins of the list and lawsuit trace the roots back nearly two decades. The list contains several officers that had worked, or for one officer, continue to work, in the Lakes Region.

Carl Laurie had his murder conviction overturned in 1995 after the case of State v. Laurie revealed that one of the keys witnesses in murder trial, a police detective, had been disciplined for dishonesty. This fact had been withheld from the defense. 

“The idea behind the case was that this cop that was a witness, that if the jury knew about his previous dishonesty, it would have impacted their thinking,” said Henry Klementowicz, senior staff attorney at the New Hampshire ACLU. “It created a constitutional imperative to turn over that type of evidence.”

The 1995 reversal of Laurie’s murder conviction resulted in the prosecutors keeping a secret “Laurie’s list” of police officers with ethical, disciplinary and truthfulness issues. Such officers had the potential to de-rail a prosecution’s efforts if they were selected as witnesses.

Until the 2018 lawsuit, this list was not available to the public. During the lawsuit, the Supreme Court rejected the Attorney General’s arguments as to why the list should remain confidential. The ACLU and the media won the case, and after negotiations with LEACT(Commission on Law Enforcement Accountability Community and Transparency), the state Senate passed a bill that made the Laurie's List subject to the state’s right-to-know laws. 

“Following the twin effects of  the LEACT report and the Supreme Court decision, a group of stakeholders including the ACLU negotiated the statute,” said Klementowicz. “It was passed and signed by the governor (and) created a new legislative way to have the list partially and over time released.”

Per the language of the legislation, officers whose names were on the list were given a chance to fight for their removal.  

“People who were put on the list in 2018 or later are notified 90 days in advance and can file a lawsuit to get off. People listed earlier were given more time,” Klementowicz explained. “The people who filed, their names won’t be added until those lawsuits clear up.”

As a result of the pending lawsuit, only about 80 names were made public in December of 2021. While media and groups like the ACLU have championed the release of names, there are those within law enforcement who have serious concerns.

“The so-called Laurie List, aka the EES list, was a flawed product from its inception,” said Mark Morrisson, LEACT member and former president of the New Hampshire Police Association. “The recent legislation that was enacted really tried to standardize the process and allow for due process for the officers before being placed on the list, and have the ability to challenge the placement on the list, which did not exist.”

Morrison explained that previously, officers may not have known they were on the list, and that it might not always be clear what an officer could do to be listed.

On the official document, categories for being listed include falsifying evidence, falsifying records, truthfulness, criminal conduct, dereliction of duty, and in some cases, unknown.

“There are of course some officers who did things that deserved placement on the list," Morrison said, “but there’s also a portion of people who had no idea they were on it or had no ability to challenge. Some officers found out they are on the list when they went to apply to another agency. That type of treatment is fundamentally unfair to the officers.”

Of the eighty or so names published, nine were listed under various Lakes Region law enforcement agencies. Of those nine names, only one of the officers, Kristopher Kloetz, was still employed with their listed department. 

Kloetz was listed as having been employed with both the Belmont and Gilford police departments. 

Kloetz is no longer employed with Gilford, but still works for the Belmont Police Department. In an interview with New Hampshire Public Radio, Belmont police chief Mark Lewandoski stated that he believed Kloetz didn't belong on the Laurie List. The Belmont Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Sun.

Both the date of and category of Kloetz’s incident that landed him on the list are both marked as “unknown,” making it difficult to understand exactly what he did to land his name on the document.

Another officer by the name of Anthony Bonnier was listed for falsifying records under the Laconia Police Department. When the Sun reached out to the department, a supervising officer said that Bonnier was never employed with them, and that the listing was likely a mistake.

When asked if there were concerns that the list could be used against police officers for internal and political purposes, Morrisson stated, “Those were concerns that I had heard echoed for years well before my involvement, which really gets to the heart of some of the concerns.”

Despite some of these concerns and flaws, Morrison seemed relatively at ease with the results of LEACT’s negotiations. 

“I'm satisfied as far as the product that was put together by all the involved parties,” Morrison said. “I think it goes to addressing some of the key issues that we had been trying to work on for years, well before I was president of the NHPA.”

Klementowticz expressed high satisfaction with the public’s access to such information.

“When it comes to making sure that police in New Hampshire live up to the high standards we set for them, the answer is more transparency and not less transparency,” Klementowicz said of the publication of the list. “When we give police officers a badge and a gun we need to make sure we can trust them.”