John F. Sendelbach: Petition: Investigate Shelburne Police Department

PETITION FOR INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION

Shelburne Police Department — A Six-Year Documented Record of Selective Enforcement, Institutional Failure, and Escalating Harm

Initiated by: John F. Sendelbach · Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts May 2026

To:

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell

Northwestern District Attorney's Office · First ADA Steven Gagne

Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission (POST)

Shelburne Board of Selectmen · Buckland Board of Selectmen

Franklin County Sheriff's Department

Every fact stated in this petition is drawn from police reports, court dockets, federal court orders, DA investigations, sworn testimony, medical records, and documented video and audio evidence. All cited case numbers, report numbers, and docket numbers are on the public record. Nothing in this petition is a legal conclusion. All referenced legal findings are those of sitting judges in active proceedings.

This is not a complaint about a neighborhood dispute. It is a documented record of a municipal police department whose written policy of selective enforcement produced a predictable six-year chain of escalating harm — ignored warnings, a false criminal charge, a public beating, the destruction of evidence, and a continuing failure to self-correct even as federal courts and state investigators accumulated findings against its personnel.

I. The Permission Structure: A Written Policy of Non-Contact

Primary Document — Report 21BUC-54-OF, July 13, 2021

"I told Hennessey that I was not going to call Sendelbach because it hasn't worked in the past." — Sergeant Kurt Gilmore, Shelburne Police Department, in his own official incident report.

That sentence is the Permission Structure. It is not an offhand remark. It is departmental policy written by a sergeant in an official report, never retracted, and followed for the next four years. It states explicitly that one party in an ongoing dispute would receive police response and engagement; the other would not — regardless of what that other party reported, regardless of what evidence showed, regardless of constitutional equal protection requirements.

Between 2020 and 2023, Katherine Hennessey filed approximately eight police reports against John Sendelbach. He was never contacted or interviewed before any of them. Not once. The first time the Shelburne Police Department communicated with him regarding any of those eight reports was when a process server handed him an emergency Harassment Prevention Order on March 3, 2023 — three years into the documented pattern.

Every single one of those eight reports collapsed the moment anyone examined evidence:

Judge Mazanec vacated the March 2023 emergency HPO after hearing the audio recording Hennessey had described as containing a homicidal threat. She was laughing. The words were calm.
On June 6, 2023, at the show-cause hearing, Sendelbach presented approximately one hour of video and audio. A clerk-magistrate found No Probable Cause. The criminal harassment charge filed by Officer Pettengill and Detective Jenkins — co-signed after neither officer had ever met the accused — collapsed the first time anyone reviewed evidence.
Judge Mazanec denied a subsequent HPO petition after reviewing surveillance video that directly contradicted Hennessey's sworn affidavit.
Judge Mazanec denied a third HPO petition with prejudice — a finding Massachusetts courts reserve for documented bad faith. That is three separate judicial findings of not-credible testimony against the same complainant, before the same judge.

The Shelburne Police Department generated zero perjury referrals from any of these findings. Detective Jenkins sat through the entire June 2023 show-cause hearing and watched the charge he co-signed fall apart exhibit by exhibit. No corrective action. No adjustment to the Permission Structure.

II. The Prediction That Was Not Acted On

On September 6, 2024, Katherine Hennessey wrote a letter to Sendelbach's commercial landlord, Brad Walker. The letter contained the sentence:

"It's really only a matter of time before someone gets hurt."

That letter was forwarded to the Shelburne Police Department and received by Detective Tucker Jenkins. He read it approximately twelve days late. He filed no report. He issued no warning. He conducted no interview. He took no action.

Fourteen months after that sentence was written, she hurt him. On a public sidewalk. In front of witnesses. More than thirty combined blows.

On October 16, 2025, Sendelbach stood in front of Chief Gregory Bardwell at the Neighbors gas station on Mohawk Trail in active atrial fibrillation. His heart rate was near 180 beats per minute. He asked the Chief to feel his wrist. This exchange is on video.

On video — October 16, 2025

Chief Bardwell said: "I don't want to." He then stated he "can't charge false police reports" — a statement that is factually incorrect under M.G.L. c.269 §13A. He directed Sendelbach to the Attorney General's office and walked into the store for coffee.

Three days later, on October 19, 2025, Sendelbach went to the Massachusetts State Police barracks in Shelburne. Officer Sheerer witnessed his condition and called EMS. A Stryker LIFEPAK 15 cardiac monitor recorded his heart rate between 130 and 230 beats per minute. Officer Sheerer is a neutral third-party witness. The machine has no opinion. It simply records what it reads.

On November 29, 2025 at 6:45 PM, Sendelbach sent a mass email to the entire Shelburne Police Department, both Select Boards, and approximately seventy recipients, warning of imminent legal action and naming the first defendant. The department had that email in its system by 7 PM.

Between 7 PM on November 29 and 5:32 PM on November 30, the Shelburne Police Department took no documented preventive action.

III. November 30, 2025: The Morning Trespass, the Evening Assault, and the Evidence That Was Never Preserved

The Morning

On the morning of November 30, 2025, an unidentified Shelburne officer responded to Sendelbach's report that Katherine Hennessey had driven onto his rented property at 1 Ashfield Street without invitation. She had driven past the store entrance to the far end of the lot where his van was parked and screened from the street, displayed a peace sign followed by a double middle finger, mouthed profanity directly at him, and drove away.

Sendelbach reported the trespass within fifteen minutes. The responding officer took the statement and reviewed his bodycam footage. No trespass charge was filed. No cameras in the area were checked. No action was taken.

This detail matters operationally: a trespass charge and evidence preservation at this stage would have created a formal record directly contradicting Hennessey's December 1 sworn affidavit — filed the day after the assault — in which she claimed she had "pulled into the parking lot to get a newspaper but chose to drive away upon seeing him." The newspaper rack is around the corner from where her vehicle would have needed to park to access it, and is not visible from a standard parking approach to the lot. The morning incident and the evening assault are causally connected: no consequence in the morning, no deterrent by the afternoon.

It should be noted that this was not the first time Hennessey had confronted Sendelbach at a business property. This was the third rented location at which her conduct had affected his relationship with a landlord — a pattern that carries its own weight in the documented record of sustained harassment.

The Evening Assault

At approximately 5:32 PM on November 30, 2025, at 40 State Street in Buckland, Brook Batteau charged out of Floodwater Brewing and shoved Sendelbach hard with both hands off the curb to the pavement. Batteau jumped on him from behind and began striking him. Katherine Hennessey exited the brewery approximately ten seconds later. A second individual grabbed both of Sendelbach's elbows from behind and pinned his arms. Hennessey struck him repeatedly in the head and face. He did not retaliate. He screamed for help. Approximately eight to ten bystanders were present. None intervened.

Sendelbach's iPhone had fallen to the road during the initial shove. The screen was still lit. It was still recording. Hennessey bent down, picked it up, walked approximately 75 feet to the Deerfield River bank, and threw it in. He watched the lit screen arc into the water. She then walked back and resumed striking and kicking him — a second, separate act of battery occurring after a deliberate pause that included the destruction of evidence.

Sworn Statement — Zachary Livingston, Co-Owner, Floodwater Brewing (December 9, 2025)

"Brook Batteau pushed [Sendelbach]. I asked Batteau why he did it. He admitted it and said 'You don't understand, John has been after my family for five years.' I told Batteau 'But you still shouldn't have pushed him.' It was clear that Hennessey and Batteau did not go outside to confront Sendelbach's filming — they went outside to confront Sendelbach."

On December 11, 2025, Sergeant Gilmore issued probable cause findings: against Katherine Hennessey for Assault and Battery (two counts, M.G.L. c.265 §13A) and Malicious Destruction of Property (M.G.L. c.266 §126A); against Brook Batteau for Assault and Battery. Both defendants were arraigned on April 7, 2026. On that same date, the Commonwealth requested and the court imposed a stay-away and no-contact order as a condition of bail — the judicial system formally acknowledging, in binding legal terms, a risk the Shelburne Police Department had spent six years declining to assess.

The Evidence That Was Never Preserved

The investigation of the November 30 assault produced a managed record rather than a complete one. Every objective data point was allowed to reach its natural expiration date.

Neighbors Gas Station cameras — would have documented the morning trespass and proven Hennessey's December 1 affidavit geographically impossible. Sendelbach attempted to retrieve this footage himself several days after the assault, without his phone (which was in the river) and therefore without the precise timestamp needed to identify the relevant window. He spent approximately thirty minutes reviewing footage with his new landlord — an awkward situation given that this was now the third tenancy at which Hennessey had appeared and affected a landlord relationship — and was unable to locate the relevant footage. Sergeant Gilmore never requested it. The footage is presumed gone.
Crystal Visions (ground-floor business at 40 State Street) — camera has a direct sightline to the assault location and the phone-toss point on the Deerfield River bank. Never contacted. Not mentioned in any report.
Law office directly across State Street — exterior camera covering the same sidewalk. Never contacted. Not mentioned in any report.
Floodwater Brewing interior footage — requested by Sergeant Gilmore approximately nine days after the assault. The system had already overwritten the data.

Sendelbach emailed Gilmore the Hennessey December 1 affidavit within eighteen hours of the assault. Documentary proof of perjury was in Gilmore's possession within one day. No footage was subsequently retrieved to confirm or contradict the perjured account.

The HPO Coaching

Sergeant Gilmore's own summons report (25SHL-47-AR) states explicitly that he "suggested" the defendants seek Harassment Prevention Orders against Sendelbach. He did this the night of the assault, before his own criminal investigation was complete.

Three courts subsequently denied Sendelbach's protection petitions — each court starting fresh, none referencing Judge Mazanec's three prior findings of not-credible against the same respondents. The dual-HPO coaching provided the defendants with the precise legal architecture used to frame a criminal assault as a mutual harassment dispute. An officer does not suggest that assault defendants file civil orders against the assault victim the night of a battery and then express surprise when the strategy succeeds.

On April 7, 2026, after the criminal arraignment, the Commonwealth requested and the court imposed a stay-away order — retroactively confirming that protection was warranted from the same defendants that three civil courts had declined to restrain, each starting from the framing the department's coaching had established.

IV. Detective Tucker Jenkins: The Record

Detective Tucker Jenkins co-signed the March 2023 criminal harassment charge (Report 23SHL-8-AR) against a man he had never met, based entirely on the account of a complainant whose prior reports had all collapsed under evidence review. The report states in its own second paragraph: "It shall be noted that both Detective Jenkins and I were both aware of prior incidents between Mr. Sendelbach and Mrs. Hennessey." They drove to her residence carrying the accumulated weight of every unverified complaint the department had processed without interviewing the accused. The charge collapsed at show-cause when evidence was reviewed for the first time. Jenkins made no perjury referral and took no corrective action.

In January 2025, a separate investigation found that Jenkins had made 25 phone calls totaling 67 minutes to an 18-year-old female student at Mohawk Trail Regional School during a 30-day period and had deleted text messages related to those contacts. The Berkshire District Attorney's Office found the conduct exceeded professional boundaries. The school district terminated his position. A community petition calling for his removal from the police department gathered 218 signatures. Jenkins declined to be interviewed by DA investigators. Chief Bardwell publicly characterized the community's concern as "reckless spreading of reputation-wrecking rumors." The Select Board voted to retain him in a three-hour executive session.

Federal Court — March 12, 2026

U.S. District Judge Mark G. Mastroianni denied qualified immunity to Detective Tucker Jenkins personally in Mlynick v. Town of Erving et al. (3:24-cv-30108), finding it plausible that Jenkins "provided misleading information" and ignored exculpatory facts to manufacture probable cause. The case is now in active federal discovery with proceedings scheduled into 2027.

The mechanism the federal court found plausible in the Mlynick case — an officer assembling one-sided information into a criminal charge while ignoring exculpatory facts — maps directly onto Report 23SHL-8-AR: two officers arriving "aware of prior incidents," building a charge from one side's unverified complaints, and filing without interviewing the accused.

Thirteen days after the federal qualified immunity denial, Chief Bardwell submitted a merit raise request for his "fantastic crew." The raise was approved. Select Board Chair Rick LaPierre described it as "well worth it."

V. The Hereditary Defect: A Department-Wide Pattern

Note: The following two incidents are entirely separate from the Hennessey/Batteau matters. They involve different parties and occurred in a public event context, yet it demonstrates the same institutional pattern of selective enforcement and First Amendment violations by Shelburne Police Department personnel.

~ Jeff Powell / Officer Pettingill Incident – Spring 2024

Documented example of selective enforcement and preferential treatment by the same officer who co-signed the 2023 criminal harassment charge.

In spring 2024, while lawfully parked and filming a kiosk from inside my vehicle, a driver in a car similar to one associated with prior complainants drove past, beeped aggressively, and gave me the middle finger. I followed (on my normal route to work) to capture the license plate. The driver slammed on his brakes at the Conway Street intersection, nearly causing a rear-end collision. He then exited his vehicle, approached my driver’s window aggressively (within inches), and recorded me while I was trapped with no safe way to leave. This created reasonable fear of harm.

I called the Shelburne Police. Officer Christopher Pettingill responded — our first in-person meeting. I showed him the video. He agreed the driver’s behavior was aggressive and noted the vehicle had an expired registration (at least 1–2 weeks) plus an invalid inspection sticker. However, Pettingill later called and stated he could not charge the driver without also citing me for “driving while filming.” Ultimately, no charges were filed against the driver.

Ten days later, Pettingill pulled the same driver over on Route 2. I observed from a legal distance. Instead of towing the vehicle for the known violations, Pettingill allowed roadside assistance to “fix” the registration and let the driver leave. Pettingill then filed an incident report that framed me as the aggressor, omitted the driver’s aggressive actions and illegal vehicle status, and failed to note that he had activated his body camera without informing me (captured on my own recording).

This is the same Officer Pettingill who co-signed the March 2023 criminal harassment charge against me without ever meeting or interviewing me. The contrast is clear: aggressive leniency toward a driver committing multiple vehicle violations and road rage, versus aggressive pursuit of charges against me based on unverified complaints.

~ Bridge Classic Race Day 2024 – Documented Selective Enforcement on Camera

On August 10, 2024, during the Bridge of Flowers Classic on tax-free weekend, Chief Gregory Bardwell and Sergeant Kurt Gilmore provided a clear public demonstration of the Permission Structure in action.

When the resident attempted to seek basic redress from race director Michael McCusker on a public road — a legal act protected by the First Amendment — a volunteer escalated by threatening to destroy the resident’s reputation on Facebook. Chief Bardwell arrived and immediately threatened the resident with arrest for disorderly conduct. He did not address the volunteer who was hurling expletives and making public defamation threats. When the resident asked Bardwell to define “appropriate level” — a reasonable question when threatened with arrest — the chief scoffed and walked away without answering.

Simultaneously, Sergeant Kurt Gilmore physically moved his body back and forth to block the resident’s camera from filming the volunteer. The resident was 30–40 feet away. Gilmore jockeyed position as the camera moved, then shook the volunteer’s hand as the man drove away. This was not a safety measure. It was deliberate obstruction of a citizen’s First Amendment right to record on a public road.

Two officers. One target. Two constitutional violations — a threat of arrest to suppress speech and active interference with filming — occurring in parallel, on camera, in broad daylight, in front of witnesses. This was not routine crowd control. It was the Permission Structure wearing a yellow safety vest.

Chief Bardwell's Merit Raise Pitch

Chief Bardwell asked the Select Board to evaluate his department in isolation for a merit raise. The institutional record does not support that framing.

Former Chief James T. Hicks — resigned in disgrace following sexual misconduct allegations.
Paul John "PJ" Herbert — part-time Buckland officer who spent thirteen years claiming combat service in northern Iraq, an IED strike, and survival when British Royal Marines were killed. He collected $344,000 in fraudulent VA disability benefits. Pleaded guilty in March 2025. Caught by federal investigators, not local ones.
Former officer Jacob Wrisley — convicted of possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material and sentenced to four to five years in state prison. Some of the material was accessed on department devices while on duty. Permanently decertified by the Massachusetts POST Commission in April 2025 (Case No. 2025-020).
Officer Christopher Pettengill — co-signed the 2023 criminal harassment charge assembled without interviewing the accused.
Sergeant Kurt Gilmore — author of the written non-contact policy; the officer who "suggested" the assault defendants seek Harassment Prevention Orders the night of the battery.
Detective Tucker Jenkins — co-signer of the false charge; subject of the 2025 DA investigation for student boundary violations; personally denied qualified immunity in active federal civil rights litigation.
Chief Gregory Bardwell — refused to check the pulse on camera; asserted on video he cannot charge false police reports (incorrect under M.G.L. c.269 §13A); defended retention of Jenkins publicly; requested merit raises while all of the above is on the record.

That is seven names across the department's recent history. This is not a list of unrelated incidents. It is evidence that the same environment that produced the Permission Structure has repeatedly failed to self-correct even when misconduct became visible to outside investigators.

The Regional Standard: Erving as the County Benchmark

Chief Bardwell told the Select Board his department "tracks pretty well with the county." The county standard is now this: Erving Sergeant Adam Paicos — Jenkins's co-defendant in the surviving federal false arrest case — was fired by the Massachusetts State Police in 2012 as a probationary trooper for wrong-way driving and conduct unbecoming, arrested in Washington State in 2018 for DUI with a breathalyzer result of 0.15, and the subject of a formal chief's disciplinary memo citing "Dishonesty," "Unprofessional Conduct," and "Unlawful Activity." The Erving Select Board promoted him to sergeant in April 2021. Between January and March 2026, all four Erving patrol officers who were not named defendants resigned. The Erving Police Department is now being administered by the Franklin County Sheriff.

That is the county standard. Chief Bardwell is correct that Shelburne tracks with it.

Merit Raise Requested During Active Outside Legal Remediation

While Bardwell was pitching the merit raise, the Shelburne Select Board quietly added to its March 23, 2026 agenda a "Proposed Motor Vehicle Lockout Policy." The town retained an outside legal compliance consultant — referred to internally as "Becca" — because, in the words of a source with direct knowledge, the officers "don't know the laws" and "don't know how to do their job." A Motor Vehicle Lockout Policy is precisely what outside counsel drafts after a department realizes it has no written procedure governing the seizure and disposal of a citizen's recording device — a device seized from a public street, carried 75 feet to a river, and thrown in while still recording.

Merit is performance that exceeds a standard. What the Shelburne Police Department has is a department under active outside legal remediation, defending a federal civil rights suit with qualified immunity denied, requesting above-standard compensation on the strength of $1,900 in hybrid vehicle fuel savings.

VI. What the Permission Structure Costs a Human Body

The atrial fibrillation was formally diagnosed in 2021 and attributed by Sendelbach's physician to the documented stress of the six-year pattern. The American Heart Association notes that untreated atrial fibrillation reduces life expectancy by five to ten years. Repeated episodes are self-reinforcing: each episode lowers the threshold for the next.

Documented episodes are tied to specific events at specific times: the June 2020 viral video campaign; the September 2024 Walker letter period; the October 2025 gas station dismissal; the November 2025 assault; the March 2026 HPO hearing at which Hennessey performed obscene gestures from behind her attorney's back while Sendelbach was under oath, which Judge Powers declined to address. Each episode dated. Each traceable.

On October 19, 2025, a Massachusetts State Police LIFEPAK 15 monitor recorded the heart rate at 130–230 bpm. Officer Sheerer of the Massachusetts State Police is a neutral third-party witness to that reading. The equipment has no opinion about this case, no motive, and no capacity for exaggeration.

On March 23, 2026, Alouette Batteau posted lyrics wishing to kill a man with bare hands, captioned "this one goes out to my stalker! teehee wish i was joking." A named collaborator commented "hope they d!e!!!!!" The post triggered another atrial fibrillation episode. As of the filing of this petition, that episode has not fully resolved.

"Stalker" is not a generic word in this record. It is the specific and exclusive label applied to Sendelbach in every sworn affidavit, HPO petition, police report, and piece of live court testimony filed by this family across six years of proceedings. Chief Bardwell's April 9, 2026 written response — copied to the Northwestern District Attorney — classified the post as "part of a musical performance" that "does not clearly establish that the statements are directed toward you specifically." He did this without reference to the six-year documented pattern of this family stating intentions and then delivering on them.

The Walker letter predicted the assault. The assault produced a cardiac emergency. The June 2020 mob wrote about throwing the camera in the water; she threw the phone in the river five years later. The body kept the score the department refused to keep.

VII. The Select Board's Role and the Accountability Void

Between 2024 and 2025, Sendelbach sent multiple detailed, documented emails to Select Board Chair Rick LaPierre and wide distribution lists that included the full Select Board, Chief Bardwell, and every town official he could identify. These emails documented the Permission Structure, the false 2023 charge, Detective Jenkins's civil rights exposure, and specific warnings of escalating danger. Rick LaPierre never responded to any of them. Approximately 99% of all emails to the Select Board and town officials went entirely unacknowledged.

The Select Board already knew about Jenkins and Pettengill's civil rights issues from the June 2023 show-cause hearing about which Sendelbach had explicitly warned them. By refusing to address those warnings, the Board allowed Jenkins to remain in his position — enabling his later involvement in the Mohawk Trail student situation and the Erving false arrest case. All of it could have been addressed when first raised.

The Board has since held multiple three-hour executive sessions — closed to the public — in which the department's conduct, the Jenkins matter, and the federal lawsuit were discussed. The outcomes: Jenkins retained over 218 community signatures. Police salary budget increased by $113,000 — 22 percent — in a single year. Merit raise request endorsed.

A yes vote on those raises is not a neutral administrative act. It is a formal, public, documented endorsement of the Permission Structure, the one-sided reporting policy, the failure to interview before charging, and the Board's own refusal to respond to repeated citizen warnings about documented misconduct. It says: we knew, we were warned, and we voted yes anyway.

VIII. What This Petition Demands

1. Independent Investigation by the Massachusetts Attorney General

An independent investigation of the Shelburne Police Department covering:

The documented Permission Structure (Report 21BUC-54-OF) and its compliance with equal protection requirements under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The department's handling of eight police reports filed against Sendelbach without a single interview of the accused.
The failure to act on the September 2024 Walker letter explicitly predicting imminent violence.
The October 16, 2025 Bardwell gas station dismissal, on video, of a documented cardiac emergency and a citizen's direct request for engagement.
The November 30, 2025 investigative decisions: failure to file a morning trespass charge; failure to identify and interview the initial aggressor (a known family associate); failure to canvass five available camera sources; nine-day delay on brewery footage after known overwrite window; and same-night coaching of assault defendants to file civil HPOs against the assault victim.
The retention of Detective Jenkins following DA-documented boundary violations with a student and a 218-signature community removal petition.
The April 9, 2026 "musical performance" classification of a violent lyric directed at the complaining witness in an active case — filed during bail conditions — without reference to the six-year documented pattern of stated intent followed by physical delivery.
The department's record obstruction documented in a formal Supervisor of Records determination.

2. POST Commission Review

The Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission should review whether the Shelburne Police Department currently meets certification standards, given the documented pattern of misconduct across multiple personnel, the federal qualified immunity denial, and the department's active reliance on outside legal compliance remediation.

3. Northwestern DA Review of Judicial Bad-Faith Findings

The Northwestern District Attorney's Office should review the three separate judicial findings of not-credible testimony against the same complainant before the same judge and provide a public explanation of the basis for zero perjury referrals arising from any of those findings.

4. Mandatory Evidence Preservation Protocols

The Northwestern District Attorney's Office should establish and enforce mandatory evidence preservation protocols for all incidents involving documented ongoing harassment matters. Responding officers must canvass all camera sources within a defined radius within 24 hours of an incident and document canvass results. The three-camera failure on November 30 — Neighbors Gas Station, Crystal Visions, and the law office across State Street — was not bad luck. It was the predictable result of a department that had never been required to do the work.

5. Prohibition on HPO Coaching by Responding Officers

Responding officers should be prohibited from advising parties in an active criminal investigation to file civil harassment prevention orders before the criminal investigation is complete. The November 30 assault produced three HPO denials and ultimately a court-imposed stay-away order — the denials all flowing from the counter-filing architecture the department's own officer coached into existence the night of the battery.

6. Public Accounting from the Select Board

The Shelburne Board of Selectmen should explain publicly — not in executive session, on the public record — what review it conducted of the department's history before approving the merit raise request. If it conducted no review, that is itself an answer that belongs in the public record.

IX. Why This Matters Beyond One Case

The mechanisms described in this petition are not exotic. They are the standard operating procedures of a department that was never required to apply its policies to both sides of a dispute equally. One-sided complaint processing, evidence expiration by inaction, HPO coaching as neutralization strategy, pre-loaded investigative bias — none of these require active malice. They require only the absence of correction. The July 2021 Gilmore email is the key document: a sitting sergeant put in writing that he would no longer contact the complaint subject. That sentence became the operational policy of the department for the next four years.

When a police department decides which party in an ongoing dispute will receive its protection and which will not — and puts that decision in writing — it has created a permission structure. That structure does not produce neutral outcomes. It produces escalation by the protected party and harm to the unprotected one. The Walker letter, the October 16 dismissal, the November 30 assault, and the March 23 post are what a permission structure produces when it is allowed to run its full cycle. Every step was predictable. Every step was predicted. None was prevented.

The body kept the score the department refused to keep.

The phone is in the Deerfield River. The record is not. The archive is open. The record is still screaming.

John F. Sendelbach

Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts · May 2026

Documented Sources (Partial)

All primary documents referenced in this petition are available in the Deerfield River Archive at johnsendelbach.com. No login. No fee.

Police Reports: 21BUC-54-OF, 23SHL-8-AR, 25SHL-46-AR, 25SHL-47-AR, 25SHL-114-OF
Court Dockets: 2641CR000158 (Commonwealth v. Hennessey), 2641CR000159 (Commonwealth v. Batteau), 2541R00370
Federal Case: Mlynick v. Town of Erving et al., 3:24-cv-30108, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts — Judge Mark G. Mastroianni (Order March 12, 2026; Status Conference April 14, 2026)
LIFEPAK 15 monitor documentation: Massachusetts State Police barracks, October 19, 2025 — Officer Sheerer, witness
Walker Letters: September 6 and September 9, 2024
Bardwell Gas Station Video: October 16, 2025
Gilmore Summons Report: 25SHL-47-AR (December 11, 2025)
Hennessey December 1, 2025 Affidavit (Docket 2541R00370)
December 15, 2025 Hearing Transcript (Greenfield District Court — Judge Mazanec, third not-credible finding)
March 12, 2026 HPO Hearing Transcript (Greenfield District Court — Judge Powers)
March 23, 2026 Instagram Post (screenshot preserved)
April 9, 2026 Bardwell Written Response (on file, copied to Northwestern DA)
POST Commission Decertification Order for Jacob Wrisley: Case No. 2025-020
Mlynick v. Town of Erving: Qualified Immunity Denial Order, March 12, 2026
Merit Raise Request: Shelburne Select Board / Finance Committee, March 25, 2026