Eric and Sharon Houle have grown more and more upset since last school year when they were informed of a racist death threat targeting their son written on the bathroom wall of John Stark Regional High school.
Equally disturbing as the threats themselves, which were written by two white students, is the way the school district has handled the situation and failed to act in a timely manner, they said.
Nearly 30 years ago, the New Hampshire legislature adopted what remains one of the strictest parole policies in the country. The 1983 law, a so-called “truth in sentencing” policy, prevents incarcerated people from becoming eligible for parole until they serve all of their minimum sentence. This is in contrast to many other states that allow people to qualify for parole after a certain percentage of their sentences have been served, especially when they have shown good behavior and made attempts to better themselves through education and prison rehabilitation programs.
Four days after Sandwich Police Department Chief Shawn Varney received a New Hampshire Right to Know request for twenty years of police records on April 15, the town emailed back a 63-page attachment containing information on budgets, hiring and officer demographics dating back to 2000.
Ossipee, a town 19 miles to the southeast, was sent an identical request at the exact same time and nearly a year later, Police Chief Tony Castaldo continues to ignore the law and hasn’t responded.
The case involved a February 2017 traffic stop by Trooper Haden Wilber on Interstate 95 in Portsmouth. After finding what looked like a small amount of heroin during a search of the car, Wilber also accused the driver — Robyn White of Avon, Maine — of carrying additional drugs in her body. She spent 13 days in jail, underwent an invasive body cavity search and was eventually released when no drugs were found.
The state’s Police Standards and Training Council is one of the organizations that came under scrutiny and increased public interest following last year’s police killing of George Floyd, which sparked a nationwide movement to review policing structures and policies.
In New Hampshire, that movement chiefly came in the form of the governor’s police accountability commission, which released 48 recommendations to improve policing, nearly half of which directly reference the standards and training council.
After Asma Elhuni, Lebanon resident and Movement Politics Director for Rights and Democracy New Hampshire, was arrested Thursday alongside four other activists at the State House, she said their fight against the “immoral” legislation in the state budget that Gov. Chris Sununu signed Friday is not over.
Despite the budget being signed and sealed, Elhuni vows to revitalize community outreach efforts in the wake of the legislation. The activist said New Hampshire communities “will not be divided,” and Rights and Democracy will focus this summer on engaging more people than ever around the state.
