At 3 p.m. Thursday, about 50 officers from the department descended upon Stratford Town Hall, to lend support to one of their captains allegedly involved in the incident. While they waited outside in an upstairs room where town hall meetings are held, the officer in question was in a room with the town's human resources director, Edmund Winterbottom, Stratford Police Chief John Buturla, Assistant Police Chief Joe LoShiavo their attorneys and others discussing the officer's fate.

The officer, Captain Joe McNeil, was one of the officers rumored to be involved in downloading the files of a potential recruit and distributing it to the general public, including Town Council Chairman Michael Henrick, R-1.

The recruit was none other than Stratford's Mayor James Miron's brother, Christian.

According to sources, Christian's profile contained negative information regarding his qualificationg to be a police officer. Some theorized that whoever was behind the break-in, McNeil or someone else, leaked it to prevent the mayor's brother from becoming a part of the force.

McNeil and his attorney, Richard P. Gudis II of ADSCME Council 15, spent two hours discussing the issue with the town officials and police management while McNeil's supporters waited outside.

"For what?" said McNeil's brother, David, who is a detective with the Stratford Police Department. "What is the crime, what is he being investigated for, the hiring practices of this town? There are plenty of applicants in this town that were qualified, but got passed over. That should be looked at," said the detective.

David McNeil went further, saying his brother is also being targeted for speaking out against other policies of the police department. McNeil is also the union's president.

"He speaks out about things that are wrong in the department, and naturally, they go after him. The squeaky wheel gets it."

To David, the whole thing doesn't add up.

"He simply has no knowledge," said McNeil. It would be easy for him to say 'yeah, this person mailed it out.' He's a captain with three small kids. They're threatening him with termination; why would he want to risk that?"

Joe McNeil has been a Stratford Police Officer for about 15 years, and has a clean record, according to his brother, which he said should automatically mean he not be terminated.

"He doesn't so much as have a letter in a file, so why all the sudden they are going to threaten him with termination...even if he did mail something out. What is the violation? the report is public, and could easily be accessed through the Freedom of Information Act."

Other officers at the demonstration backed McNeil, saying that McNeil was trying to prevent

someone who was trying to use his connections to Miron to get on the department, which is run by one of the mayor's hires, John Buturla.

"What he did was not against the law," said one officer at the scene, who declined to be named for this article. "They (police department management) don't really have anything. If they did, they wouldn't have been trying to make deals with the union like they have been during the last few months. They've also been trying to get McNeil to implicate Farmer, and they haven't been successful doing that, either," said the officer.

The other officer was officer Shawn Farmer, who shortly after the incident happened, abruptly quit the department to take a job elsewhere.

At the end of the hearing, McNeil abruptly left without making a statement.

However, Suzanne Ryan McCauley, the town's chief administrative officer, said in a written statement that "A decision on this matter will be forthcoming in the near future."

McCauley also said in the statement that McNeil had a "Loudermill hearing" Thursday, named after a U.S. Supereme Court decision (Cleveland Board of Education Vs. Loudermill) which recognized a public servant's right to tell his or her side of a situation before the employers decided to terminate or suspend them.

The union's vice president, Curtis Eller, told the officers there shortly after McNeil left that "we're in a holding pattern, we appreciate everyone's support, that's it for now."

©Stratford Bard 2008