After nearly a year, the Town of Swampscott has released its response memorandum to a complaint filed with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination by Police Officer Briana Sanchez against Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald.
Sanchez filed her complaint on March 14, 2023, alleging that Fitzgerald asked her an inappropriate question during her interview for the police-officer position in February 2022.
“During the interview, Mr. Fitzgerald asked me, ‘If you could change a physical feature on yourself – what would you change?’” Sanchez said.
Sanchez said in the complaint that she considered the question inappropriate and asked Fitzgerald to clarify before responding.
“He proceeded to state, ‘Yes, I want you to share a physical feature.’ I replied, ‘I wish I was shorter.’ He replied, ‘You are not that tall for a female,’ and requested that I further clarify because he did not like my answer,” Sanchez said in the complaint.
Last week, Fitzgerald gave The Item his account of the interaction.
“Each of the candidates that I sat with on that day were asked the same exact question. The question was: ‘what one thing would you change about yourself, and why?’” Fitzgerald said. “That’s a question that really speaks to an individual’s ability to be self-aware, to look internally, and to think about their ability.”
He said a reason for the question was to help police officers understand that while they should be held to a higher standard than civilians, it is impossible for them to be perfect.
Fitzgerald believes members of the Police Union are dissatisfied with his decision to take the town’s police and fire departments out of civil services in 2021, and their dissatisfaction may be a reason for why the complaint was filed against him.
“I think everything here is a result of doing some of the best work in my career, Fitzgerald said. “I would walk this line all day long.”
The response denies any wrongdoing by Fitzgerald. It presents evidence that it feels demonstrates potential ulterior motives by individuals who were members of the Police Union at the time that would lead them to take action against the Town Administrator.
The Town’s Response
The response focuses heavily on Swampscott Police Captain Joseph Kable and former Interim Chief Dave Kurz, as both were present during Fitzgerald’s interview of Sanchez. As part of the town’s internal investigation, all involved parties were interviewed. The response presents multiple alleged instances before, during, and after the hiring process of Sanchez that it feels calls the credibility of Sanchez, Kurz, and Kable’s accounts into question.
Two weeks after the interview took place, Kurz reported the question with details that coincided with Sanchez’s account. However, the response alleges that Kurz noted his account was only a paraphrase, as opposed to verbatim.
The response alleges that Sanchez’s complaint was filed at the direction of Kable, and claims multiple instances of Kable expressing disdain for Fitzgerald after the fact.
The response states that when Kurz was later interviewed by the town as part of its investigation, he said the exact words used by Fitzgerald were “what physical characteristics would you change about yourself?”
“On August 2, 2022, Captain Kable mentioned an action to ‘remove’ the Town Administrator during a conversation with the individual serving as Assistant Town Administrator & Director of Human Resources. A week later, in a conversation with that individual and Police Chief Ruben Quesada, Captain Kable again referred to the complaint against the Town Administrator, stressing the importance of taking it seriously in order to ‘continue the momentum.’”
During Kable’s interview with the town, he said he could not recall the exact terminology of Fitzgerald’s question.
The response accuses Kurz and Kable of disagreeing with Fitzgerald’s hiring process of Sanchez, in that they preferred moving forward with the other two candidates interviewed for Sanchez’s position. The response uses the facts that Sanchez was ultimately chosen over the other two candidates as a form of proof that she was not discriminated against.
“Finally, the results of the Town’s investigation cannot be said to constitute adverse treatment,” the response read. “Indeed, the Investigators’ findings did not even discredit Complainant, but simply acknowledged that the weight of the totality of the evidence did not support any findings of policy violations… At most, the findings amount to an unfavorable result for Complainant, Interim Chief Kurz, Captain Kable, and the Swampscott Police Union, but not adverse treatment of her.”
Kurz and Kable could not be reached for comment.
