The Canaan Police Department is offering a “Valentine’s Day weekend special,” which could be law enforcement humor or a way to drum up business.
Probably both.
“If you have an ex-Valentine with outstanding warrants, then please give us a call and let us know their location and we will take care of the rest,” Canaan police posted last week on its Facebook page.
Canaan’s “all-inclusive package” includes platinum bracelets, free transportation with a chauffeur and a weekend stay at a “five-star resort” with a semi-private room, overlooking the Connecticut River.
I’m not sure the Grafton County Jail in North Haverhill qualifies as luxury accommodations, but if it’s on Facebook, it must be true.
Canaan isn’t the only police department trying to pad its arrest numbers with Cupid’s help. (In the Facebook post, Canaan cops admit they copied the idea from another department.)
Last week, The Washington Post wrote about several police departments in Florida, Georgia and Louisiana that are encouraging people to celebrate Valentine’s Day by turning in their exes.
But Maria Haberfeld, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, told the Post the risks “outweigh the potential benefits.”
Initiatives such as this could possibly lead people to “provide false information as part of a revenge scheme,” Haberfeld said.
Arrests — even for nonviolent offenses — aren’t always straightforward. Have Canaan cops forgotten what went terribly wrong in their town on Dec. 23, 2017?
Sam Provenza, a Canaan officer at the time, and Christopher O’Toole, a New Hampshire state trooper, came across 26-year-old Jesse Champney leaving a convenience store.
Champney, who had a criminal record and was known to law enforcement, sped off on Route 4. Provenza and O’Toole followed.
After driving into a snow-covered field, Champney fled on foot. O’Toole gave chase. Provenza, now a state trooper himself, stayed behind to handcuff Champney’s fiancee, who was also in the car. (She was later released without being charged.)
O’Toole ended up firing seven shots, hitting Champney four times. O’Toole wasn’t wearing a body camera, so there was no recording of the fatal shooting.
O’Toole told state investigators that Champney, with a hand in his jacket pocket, threatened him while ignoring his commands to surrender.
It turns out that Champney was unarmed. Still, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office found O’Toole’s use of deadly force to be legally justified.
What does Champney’s killing have to do with Canaan’s Valentine’s Day promotion?
On the day of the shooting, police knew Champney was wanted on an outstanding warrant. He had failed to appear in court on two nonviolent charges that dated back more than a year.
There’s no doubt Champney was in the wrong when he didn’t show up for court. But how would Canaan police feel if another pursuit — prompted by their poor attempt at humor — ended with another unarmed man dead in the snow?
The Windsor Central Unified Union School District has an identity problem. The district, headquartered in Woodstock, is made up of seven Vermont towns — one of which, Killington, isn’t in Windsor County.
During a Zoom meeting Wednesday, Woodstock Union High School student Owen Courcey said, “the name is generic and bureaucratic.”
No argument there.
Courcey is part of a working group that’s trying to find a simpler — and more meaningful name — for the district, which was formed a few years ago during a statewide school consolidation effort.
Along with Woodstock and Killington, the district includes Barnard, Bridgewater, Plymouth, Pomfret and Reading.
“Windsor Central has nothing to do with any one town,” said board vice chairwoman Keri Bristow, of Woodstock, who heads the working group. “It is important to the school board that the name represents our collective communities.”
To that end, the group turned to Woodstock Union graduate Jason Drebber, a geology student at the University of Vermont, for help. The region has multiple mountains and rivers, which could become part of a “place-based” name, Drebber told the group.
Bristow’s group still has work to do, including surveying residents, before proposing a name change.
One name mentioned at Wednesday’s meeting that sounded appropriate but probably won’t get traction: Mud Boot Supervisory Union.
Jon Appleton, a longtime Dartmouth music professor and composer who died Jan. 30 at 83, was best known as a pioneer in the field of electronic music.
I also remember Appleton for the principled stance he took nearly 20 years ago when 42 students — or just about everyone who didn’t receive an A in his Music and Technology class — complained to college administrators about his grading. “How could I get a B in a music course?” a student asked.
Never mind that Appleton had handed out 30 A’s — and flunked none. The administration concluded Appleton’s grading system in the class he’d taught for 33 years was unfair and arbitrary. Students were allowed to treat Music and Technology as a pass/fail course so it wouldn’t affect their grade point average.
Appleton made sure the public knew what had happened. “It’s the responsibility of the faculty and the administration not to pander to students and their parents,” he told me.
A lengthy email that Appleton sent to his colleagues about the “decline of academic freedom at Dartmouth” drew little support. “It’s so comfortable here,” he told me in 2005, “no one wants to make any waves.”
I can think of one professor who did.
Jim Kenyon can be reached at jkenyon@vnews.com.
