by Ed Naile
We are going through the motions in Weare. Here is how the process is proceeding in the “Police Chief Miles Rigney Intimidates Voters” saga.
As you know, Chief Rigney, while waving above his head a fist full of papers and crowing at a public meeting that the signers of a petition to elect the police chief in the Town of Weare had criminal records. The petitioners seem to have found a legal way of having the police chief position accountable to voters opposed to having the police chief appointed by a foolish majority of a group of selectmen, as is the policy now.
Enter the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office. Upon the complaints of several people, including me, the AG sent an “investigator” to Weare to find out if Chief Rigney broke the law by using the national criminal checks registry for political purposes. That would be a violation of the law and a blatant violation of voter’s rights to exorcise their citizenship free of repercussions by meatheads of any stripe.
Interesting investigation so far. The person the AG sent out was none other than Orville “Bud” Fitch who, if his voter fraud investigations are a precedent, could take 366 days. Anyway, Bud has been told by officials in Weare that any tapes of the meeting no longer exist or were never properly recorded. There was a power outage that affected the cable company around 4 PM that day so naturally it caused a malfunction in the filming of a meeting that evening around 9 PM. I think it was Klingons and Romulans using their CBs in the “Neutral Zone that did it. You can see the problem Bud has.
Without that recording of what was said it would be difficult to make a case I guess. Since all you have is the testimony of dozens of people who were there and direct quotes from reporters from different papers saying Chief Rigney said the same thing about citizens being investigated.
Then there was me. I was the first person who walked up to Chief Rigney and requested the “papers” he had and was told I would not get them. (Doesn’t that make you think he knew what I was talking about?) Then there were Chief Rigney’s quotes in the papers the next several days where he said the papers in his hands were not background checks. (In regards to WHAT Chief?)
Needless to say, in the almost two weeks since the meeting I haven’t been interviewed by Bud during his “investigation.” No they will probably keep looking for the tapes that are not there. But this begs the question. If Rigney didn’t attempt to intimidate by TAPE why do they need the tape? People clearly HEARD the Chief SAY IT WITH HIS MOUTH, WHICH WENT TO THEIR EARS. So why don’t we use the WITNESSESS who were there? I guess we will have to wait until the “investigation” is over.
I hope the “investigation” doesn’t extend until AFTER the statute of limitations runs out like it did in the 2000 voter fraud case. Eh Bud?
I am working on how many times Chief Rigney has had run-ins with authority in his brief tenure as “Johnnie Law” in Weare. Stay tuned.