Methuen Mayor David P. “D.J.: Beauregard Jr. and City Councilor Mike Simard followed up Wednesday on the mayor’s recent call for U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley to reopen a federal investigation into former Methuen Police Chief Joseph E. Solomon.
Beauregard and Simard are asking Methuen councilors to approve a joint resolution next Monday, telling Foley that Solomon’s recent guilty plea and jail sentence do “not answer the full set of questions surrounding the 2017 police contracts, the favors that preceded or followed the approval of those contracts, (Sean) Fountain’s appointment and continued service or the conduct of others who have never faced charges.”
They note while Solomon pleaded guilty to 17 charges, including hiring part-time intermittent officers and unlawfully appointing them to full-time jobs, there was no prosecution of the 2017 police contract “that would have made Solomon one of the highest paid law enforcement officials in the country.”
“During the following six months, Solomon gave police department jobs to two councilors, including Fountain, and elevated the relative of another councilor to the rank of police captain. In September, the Council approved a separate superior officers’ contract containing costly provisions that city leaders did not understand,” they added in the draft letter.
They follow on Beauregard’s complaint last November there was a “lack of prosecution of several co-conspirators and other serious state and federal crimes,” saying Fountain “was paid at the rate of a master patrolman, allowed to work as a detective and testified in at least one murder trial. While impersonating a duly qualified officer, he arrested and detained more than 40 people.”
Beauregard and Simard noted an earlier federal case was “mysteriously abandoned without explanation.”