PETITION — SHELBURNE FALLS, MA · SELECT BOARD · BOF CLASSIC ORGANIZERS · PUBLIC RECORD
Move the BOF Classic out of the business district — and account for what happened on race day 2024
This petition has two layers. The first is practical and straightforward: after 44 years, it is time to reroute the Bridge of Flowers Classic away from the core business district. The second is harder to ignore: what happened on race day, August 10, 2024, was not a routine crowd-control disagreement. It was one more episode in a documented, six-year campaign of selective enforcement and civil rights violations by the Shelburne Police Department against a specific resident — and it happened in plain view, on camera, in front of witnesses.
The Race and the Business District
Every August, the BOF Classic shuts down the commercial heart of Shelburne Falls — the streets that businesses depend on, the roads residents live on, the property owners who were never officially notified. In 2024, the race fell on tax-free weekend, the single biggest retail event on the Franklin County calendar. The town was closed for it. Businesses that count on that Saturday got nothing. A resident trying to make a 20-minute round trip to his own office spent 30 minutes in detour, couldn’t make his postal deadline, and lost that workday entirely — because Chief Gregory Bardwell’s personal truck was one of the vehicles blocking his road. Nobody had called. Nobody had knocked. There was only a sign on a telephone pole.
When that resident attempted to seek basic redress from race director Michael McCusker — a completely legal act on public property — McCusker got in his face, offered nothing, and made a sarcastic remark about the resident’s memory. When a race volunteer in a turquoise shirt then escalated by threatening to go on Facebook and wreck the resident’s reputation, McCusker stood by and watched. He did nothing. Then came the Shelburne Police Department.
One of the volunteers actively confronting the resident was Amanda Kingsley, who played a central role in blocking passage and verbally abusing him. When the resident explained he needed to reach his office and the post office for time-sensitive business shipments before the 11:00 AM deadline, Kingsley and other volunteers refused to allow passage, called him an “asshole,” and escalated the situation. During the confrontation Kingsley stated, “We’ve been through this before.”
This was not a neutral interaction. In June 2020, during public Facebook threads about Black Lives Matter protests, Amanda Kingsley explicitly called for boycotting the resident’s business (Metal Stone Arts) and advocated creating lists of “racist” local businesses so residents could avoid them. The resident had never met Kingsley prior to race day 2024. Her prior public calls for economic harm against him, combined with her statement on race day, demonstrate that the obstruction and verbal abuse were not spontaneous crowd-control measures but were influenced by a documented four-year personal and political grudge.
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This volunteer-led escalation directly preceded Chief Bardwell’s arrival and threat of arrest. The race organization empowered individuals with clear conflicts of interest to act with the authority of event officials, then relied on the Shelburne Police Department to suppress the resident’s complaints rather than address the volunteers’ conduct.
What the Police Did That Day — And Why It Was Not Routine
Chief Bardwell approached the resident and threatened him with arrest for disorderly conduct. Not the volunteer who had just threatened a citizen with public defamation and was actively hurling expletives. Not the man who was shouting. The resident. The one trying to get his grievances heard.
When the resident asked Chief Bardwell to define “appropriate level” — a reasonable question when someone threatens you with arrest — Bardwell scoffed and walked away. He never answered. He issued a threat and retreated. Under the First Amendment, threatening a citizen with arrest to suppress speech on a public road is not a gray area. It is a civil rights violation. The chief of police used the threat of arrest as a tool to make a complainant shut up and go away.
Bardwell didn’t want to hear the grievance. He wanted the noise to stop. That is not policing. That is suppression.
At the same time — simultaneously, while the chief was threatening the resident — Sergeant Kurt Gilmore was doing something the video documents clearly: he was physically moving his body back and forth to keep himself between the resident’s camera and the turquoise-shirt volunteer. Not for safety. The resident was 30 to 40 feet from the volunteer. Gilmore was actively, deliberately blocking the recording of a citizen on a public road. He jockeyed. He moved when the camera moved. He shook the volunteer’s hand as the man drove away.
Obstructing a citizen’s right to film on a public road is a First Amendment violation. Doing it while your chief is simultaneously threatening that same citizen with arrest for speaking is not a coincidence. It is coordinated suppression. Two officers. One target. Two constitutional violations running in parallel, on camera, in broad daylight, in front of witnesses.
This Was Not a One-Off. This Is a Pattern.
The race day incident would be troubling if it stood alone. It does not stand alone. It sits inside a documented, six-year record of the Shelburne Police Department systematically violating this same resident’s civil rights — a record that includes sworn judicial findings, a federal civil rights lawsuit, a formally documented “permission structure” written by Sergeant Gilmore himself, and a POST-decertified officer who was accessing child sexual abuse material on department devices while on duty.
Sergeant Gilmore — the man who jockeyed his body to block that camera on race day — is the same officer who wrote in Report 21BUC-54-OF: “I told Hennessey that I was not going to call Sendelbach because it hasn’t worked in the past.” That sentence is departmental policy. It states explicitly that one party in an ongoing dispute would receive police engagement; the other would not. It was never retracted. It was followed for four years.
Chief Bardwell — the man who threatened the resident with arrest for speaking on a public road — is the same chief who, on October 16, 2025, was videotaped refusing to feel the wrist of a citizen presenting in documented atrial fibrillation, saying “I don’t want to,” and walking into a gas station for coffee. The same chief who publicly defended Detective Tucker Jenkins after Jenkins was personally denied qualified immunity in federal court (Mlynick v. Town of Erving, 3:24-cv-30108, March 12, 2026) on a finding that he had manufactured probable cause. The same chief who, thirteen days after that federal ruling, submitted a merit raise request for his “fantastic crew.”
This is not a department having a bad day. This is a department that has decided, in writing, which residents receive its protection — and which do not. The race day conduct was not aberrant. It was entirely consistent with a documented, years-long institutional posture toward a specific citizen.
The volunteer who threatened the resident on Facebook was being disorderly. The cops knew it. Gilmore was close enough to hear every word. Bardwell arrived moments later. Neither of them said a word to the volunteer. Both directed their enforcement attention at the man who had been threatened. They protected the person threatening. They silenced the person threatened. That is not a judgment call. That is a choice — and it is the same choice this department has been making, in documented incidents, since at least 2021.
They literally have it in for this resident. It is obvious on the tape. It is obvious in the six-year record. And race day 2024 is one more chapter of the same story.
The Race Itself: The Practical Problem That Needs a Practical Fix
None of the above negates the fact that the BOF Classic has a solvable geography problem. The heart of the course — Crittenden Hill — is not in the business district. It never was. The route through downtown exists because nobody has been required to reconsider it. Sears Street provides alternative access. Rerouting is possible. The only things standing in the way are institutional habit and a race director who has spent 44 years receiving standing ovations instead of accountability.
McCusker claims on the public record — it is on video — that the race is an economic benefit to the town’s businesses. He should be required to prove it. Multiple business owners report the opposite. The 2024 race fell on tax-free weekend and those businesses got nothing. If the race genuinely generates the economic activity claimed, a third-party verified accounting should be easy to produce. If it can’t be produced, the claim should be retired.
WE THE UNDERSIGNED DEMAND
Reroute the race away from the core business district. The primary course is accessible without shutting down State Street and the surrounding commercial corridor. Design it that way.
Direct notification required — every affected property owner and business, at least 14 days prior, by personal contact or certified mail. Not a sign on a pole.
Publish verifiable economic impact data before the next permit is issued. Third-party verified. The claim has been made publicly and is now on the record. Back it up or stop making it.
Independent review of race-day police conduct — specifically: Chief Bardwell’s First Amendment threat, and Sergeant Gilmore’s documented physical obstruction of a citizen’s camera on a public road. Both are on video. Both belong in the record of ongoing civil rights review of this department, not buried in a race-day incident report.
Formal acknowledgment that a citizen seeking redress from a race director on a public road has a legal right to do so, and that threatening that citizen with arrest to suppress that speech — while protecting the person who threatened him — is not consistent with the First or Fourteenth Amendments, and is not consistent with the equal protection this department is obligated to provide.
This petition is addressed to the Shelburne Falls Select Board, the Buckland Select Board, the BOF Classic organizing committee, and every public official who has received documented warnings about this department’s conduct and chosen not to respond. The race can be fixed with a map. The department requires more. But both are overdue.