PETITION FOR INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION
Shelburne Police Department and Municipal Officials — A Six-Year Documented Record of Selective Enforcement, Institutional Failure, Embedded Conflicts of Interest, and Escalating Harm to a Whistleblower
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. It is also a record of a Select Board that was warned, responded with silence, and then endorsed the department with public money. And it is, at this writing, a whistleblower safety statement from a citizen who has documented reasons to fear what comes next.
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 under the Fourteenth Amendment.
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 throughout. The words were calm.
On June 6, 2023, at the show-cause hearing, Sendelbach presented approximately one hour of video and audio evidence. 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 the 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, across five years of proceedings.
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 this 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 of any kind.
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 the 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.
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 laughing.
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.
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. With his arms pinned and his ability to protect himself eliminated, Hennessey struck him repeatedly in the head and face — more than thirty combined blows. He did not retaliate. He screamed for help. Approximately eight to ten bystanders were present on a village sidewalk in early evening. None intervened.
An additional individual — identified by Sendelbach to Sergeant Gilmore at the scene as Tom Del Negro, a known musical collaborator of Alouette Batteau — is described in witnesses' accounts as the initial instigator who exited the brewery first. He appears in Gilmore's summons report only as "a male" that Sendelbach "pointed at." He was never identified by name in the report. He was never interviewed. The initial aggressor in a violent assault was erased from the official record of that assault. This is the difference between an investigation that failed to identify a witness and an investigation that declined to.
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 seventy-five feet to the Deerfield River bank, and threw it in while the screen was lit. He watched the lit screen arc into the water from thirty feet away. She then walked back and resumed striking and kicking him — a second, separate battery occurring after a deliberate pause that included the destruction of evidence. Kicking while shod constitutes assault with a dangerous weapon under Massachusetts law.
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. On April 7, 2026, both defendants were arraigned. 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
Neighbors Gas Station cameras: would have documented the morning trespass and proven Hennessey's December 1 affidavit geographically impossible. Sergeant Gilmore never requested it. Presumed gone.
Crystal Visions (ground-floor business at 40 State Street): camera with a direct sightline to the assault location and the phone-toss point. Never contacted. Not mentioned in any report.
Law office directly across State Street: exterior camera covering the same sidewalk at the exact location of the assault. 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 three-camera failure was not bad luck. It was the predictable result of a department that had never been required to canvass available cameras within a defined radius, document that canvass, or account for the gap between what existed and what was preserved.
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 starting fresh, none referencing Judge Mazanec's three prior findings of not-credible against the same respondents. On April 7, 2026, the Commonwealth requested and the court imposed the 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 own coaching had established.
IV. Post-Arraignment Conduct: Bail Conditions and Ongoing Intimidation
The criminal arraignment of April 7, 2026 did not produce a change in behavioral pattern. It produced documentation of that pattern continuing under court supervision.
Courtroom Gestures — March 12, 2026 and April 7, 2026
During the March 12, 2026 HPO hearing before Judge Powers, while Sendelbach was under oath as respondent, Katherine Hennessey was seated directly behind Attorney Elkins and within his clear line of sight. She performed a sustained obscene gesture — presenting her middle finger toward him under the guise of adjusting her glasses. Sendelbach reported it in real time, on the record, under oath. Judge Powers responded that calling it out was not helping his case. The event is on the court transcript.
Hennessey has offered two irreconcilable explanations for this gesture in prior proceedings: she either gives people the finger frequently and cannot recall specific instances, or she habitually pushes her glasses up with her middle finger and people misinterpret it. These accounts cannot both be true. She chose the version most useful for each specific audience.
At the April 7, 2026 criminal arraignment — the proceeding at which she entered her plea and the court imposed bail conditions — she performed the same gesture multiple times across the courtroom aisle toward Sendelbach while making sustained direct eye contact. She then switched hands and repeated it. As Attorney Elkins led her toward the hallway, she turned back and performed the gesture four to five additional times consecutively. This occurred in a courtroom under active video surveillance. The court video from the April 7, 2026 arraignment should be preserved and reviewed before any routine overwrite cycle.
A defendant who performs sustained deliberate contemptuous gestures at the complaining witness on the day her bail conditions are being set — in the courtroom where those conditions are imposed — has demonstrated that the court's authority is not a constraint she intends to respect.
Alouette Batteau — March 23, 2026 Instagram Post
On March 23, 2026 — eleven days after the March 12 HPO hearing, fifteen days before the April 7 arraignment, and while her parents were on bail for the November 30 assault — Alouette Batteau posted the following to her public Instagram account:
Caption: "this one goes out to my stalker! teehee wish i was joking" Lyric overlay: "I never wished so much to k1ll a man with my bare hands" Comment from a named professional collaborator, left unremoved: "hope they d!e!!!!!"
"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. Given that documented pattern, the target of this post is not ambiguous. The qualifier "wish i was joking" is not a disavowal. It is an explicit acknowledgment that the violent wish is real, with the performance framing providing social insulation from accountability.
Chief Bardwell's April 9, 2026 written response to this post — copied to the Northwestern District Attorney — classified it as "part of a musical performance" that "does not clearly establish that the statements are directed toward you specifically." This determination was made 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 June 2020 thread documented a commenter writing "I would throw his camera in the water." Five years and five months later, Hennessey threw the phone in the river. The family's behavioral history is a record of stated intentions followed by delivery. That record is the context that resolves what isolation obscures.
Post-Arraignment Witness Intimidation — Zachary Livingston
A credible firsthand source who was present at a social gathering reports that Katherine Hennessey was heard, approximately five days prior to this petition's filing, expressing open anger at Zachary Livingston — the Commonwealth's key neutral witness — for conduct at his own establishment. She was heard to say: "When I see something wrong, I just have to do something about it."
That statement carries specific weight in this record. It is the same grammatical structure as the 2024 Walker letter: a behavioral disposition stated as present-tense fact, directed at a current target. Given her documented history of delivering on exactly this category of statement, her expressed hostility toward the Commonwealth's star witness in active social circles connected to this case warrants immediate evaluation under M.G.L. c. 268 §13B. The statute does not require an explicit threat. It requires willful conduct directed at a witness with intent to harass, retaliate, or interfere with a proceeding. The pattern in evidence satisfies that standard.
V. Detective Tucker Jenkins: The Complete 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 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 twenty-five phone calls totaling sixty-seven minutes to an eighteen-year-old female student at Mohawk Trail Regional School during a thirty-day period and had deleted related text messages. 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. At no point during that process did any board member acknowledge the documented civil rights concerns Sendelbach had raised about Jenkins in formal written complaints dating to 2023.
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 maps directly onto Report 23SHL-8-AR: two officers arriving already "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 — on March 25, 2026 — 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."
The department was simultaneously retaining 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." The Select Board added a "Proposed Motor Vehicle Lockout Policy" to its March 23, 2026 agenda. 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 seventy-five 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. The Select Board's Role: Informed Silence as Policy
Between 2023 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 ninety-nine percent of all emails to the Select Board and town officials went entirely unacknowledged.
In February 2024, Select Board member Andrew Baker used his official municipal email to accuse Sendelbach of criminal trespass on a posted construction site, stating: "I am not going to watch your video, and I am extremely disappointed to learn that you have trespassed on a posted construction site." When Sendelbach challenged the accusation and documented the physical absence of any posted signage on the ground, Baker was forced to retract in a public email two days later: "I apologize for my comment about you entering a posted site. We had talked about posting the site at our last Select Board meeting but apparently that has not yet been done." He then pivoted to tone-policing. A false criminal accusation made from an official municipal account, retracted only after being factually disproved, is not a minor administrative error. It is a documented use of the color of office to criminalize a constituent without evidence.
In January 2025, Baker encountered Sendelbach at the local post office and was asked directly about the department's civil rights exposure and the compounding litigation risk. Baker executed a physical retreat. In a subsequent February 9, 2025 email, he stated that because he was "neither the Select Board chair nor the Police liaison" at that time, he bore no oversight obligation for the complaints being raised. Title-shifting as an evasion of statutory accountability is not a legal defense. It is a documented administrative posture.
A further embedded conflict of interest has been documented within the Select Board's civic network. An elected member of the Board of Assessors — subsequently elected to the regional school board — disclosed to Sendelbach during a street conversation that Select Board member Andrew Baker is her godfather. When Sendelbach raised concerns about Baker's performance and the town's civil rights exposure, she stated directly: "You better be careful — Andrew is my godfather."Two elected officials in overlapping municipal roles, connected by a familial tie disclosed in response to civic criticism, creating a documented chilling effect on First Amendment-protected speech directed at a public official in his official capacity. This conflict of interest has not been publicly disclosed.
The Select Board's informed silence is not a neutral administrative posture. Its members were formally notified of the Permission Structure, the false criminal charge, the federal qualified immunity denial, and the escalating danger to a constituent. Its response was to retain the officer, approve the raises, and decline every communication. A yes vote on those raises while in possession of that record is a formal, public, documented endorsement of the Permission Structure.
VII. The Whistleblower Safety Record
This section documents the basis for a reasonable fear of retaliation by a citizen who has publicly documented the misconduct of named police officers, a Select Board member, and multiple town officials — officers who are now facing federal civil rights litigation, lost qualified immunity, school district termination, and active criminal prosecution of their network's members.
Sendelbach published a formal Whistleblower Safety Statement in May 2026. The documented basis for that statement is as follows.
The morning after the Safety Statement was published, a large pickup truck arrived at his workshop at high speed — an approach no visitor had made in six months of operation at that location. The driver wore a Heath Police Department sweater. He identified himself as the Chief of Police of Heath. His stated purpose was that he had thought Sendelbach was the previous tenant — a man named Keith who had vacated the property years earlier. Sendelbach identified him by title immediately, at which point the chief appeared visibly startled. The cover story — searching for a long-departed former tenant at a location the chief would have no reason to associate with that tenant — is not consistent with ordinary police community relations. Detective Tucker Jenkins lives in Heath. The Heath Police Department operates within a closely networked regional law enforcement environment. The timing of the visit — the morning after a detailed public whistleblower statement naming specific officers — is documented.
Approximately fifteen minutes after the chief departed, a Shelburne Police cruiser executed an unusual loop through Sendelbach's private parking area — driving the full length of the lot past his workshop door, then doubling back approximately one hundred and fifty feet to park at the adjacent gas station. Sendelbach filmed the departure. This is not the natural approach path to that gas station from the direction of travel. The officer made a purchase. The departure was filmed.
This was not an isolated event. Approximately six months earlier, while Sendelbach was driving through town, a Shelburne Police cruiser pulled to the side of the road and then began following him. He ended up in a parking lot. A second cruiser was already parked there and parked directly beside him.
Nearly every Shelburne Police cruiser operates with heavily tinted windows — a detail that, in a department of this size facing a community petition over an officer's conduct with a student and an active federal qualified immunity denial, reduces rather than enhances public trust and accountability.
A separate individual — a friend of Sendelbach's with his own documented history of targeting by the same police department, involving the same officers and the same departmental pattern — recently experienced a nearly identical sequence: false complaints, show-cause proceedings, same players, Chief Bardwell involved. That individual's experience is known to Sendelbach and confirms that the pattern documented here is not singular.
The documented fears are as follows, stated plainly for the record:
The possibility of evidence being planted on his person or in his vehicle, followed by a pretextual stop and arrest — a tactic documented in the literature of retaliatory policing against whistleblowers.
Continued economic sabotage through landlord pressure, commission interference, and institutional blacklisting — tactics already documented across six years of the record.
Physical harm, including the possibility of violence by actors whose livelihoods, pensions, and freedom are threatened by the civil rights litigation and criminal proceedings he has documented. The people who beat him on November 30 faced consequences they did not expect. The officers whose careers and retirement funds are now in jeopardy have demonstrably more to lose.
These fears are not paranoia. They are pattern recognition applied to a documented record by a man who spent six years predicting what would happen — in writing, to officials who did not respond — and was proven correct on November 30, 2025. The Walker letter predicted the assault. The assault happened. The same analytical framework applied to the current situation produces the current documented concerns.
This safety statement is in the public record so that if harm comes to John F. Sendelbach, there is no ambiguity about the documented context that preceded it.
VIII. The Department's Personnel Record
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. Set the foundational culture.
Paul John "PJ" Herbert — part-time Buckland officer who spent thirteen years fabricating combat service in northern Iraq, claiming an IED strike in which British Royal Marines were killed, and collecting $344,000 in fraudulent VA disability benefits. Pleaded guilty March 2025. Caught by federal investigators, not local ones.
Former officer Jacob Wrisley — convicted of possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material, some accessed on department devices while on duty. Sentenced to four to five years in state prison. 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; documented double standard of enforcement in the Spring 2024 road rage incident; activated his body camera without informing the subject, caught on the subject's own recording.
Sergeant Kurt Gilmore — author of the written non-contact policy; author of the June 29, 2020 permission-slip email to Hennessey; the officer who "suggested" assault defendants seek HPOs against the assault victim before completing the criminal investigation; physically blocked a citizen's camera at a public event in broad daylight.
Detective Tucker Jenkins — co-signer of the 2023 false charge; subject of the 2025 DA investigation for boundary violations with a student; personally denied qualified immunity by a federal judge in March 2026.
Chief Gregory Bardwell — refused to take the pulse of a citizen in documented atrial fibrillation on camera; stated on video he cannot charge false police reports (incorrect under M.G.L. c.269 §13A); defended Jenkins publicly; classified a violent lyric directed at the complaining witness as a "musical performance;" requested and received a merit raise thirteen days after his detective lost qualified immunity in federal court.
Seven names. One department. Not unrelated incidents. The same environment, repeatedly failing to self-correct even when misconduct became visible to outside investigators.
IX. 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 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.
Chief Bardwell is correct that Shelburne tracks with the county.
X. What the Permission Structure Costs a Human Body
Atrial fibrillation was formally diagnosed in 2021 and attributed by Sendelbach's physician to the sustained stress of the six-year documented 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 across the courtroom while Sendelbach was under oath. Each episode dated. Each traceable.
On October 19, 2025, a Massachusetts State Police LIFEPAK 15 monitor recorded the heart rate at 130 to 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 the violent lyric described in Section IV. That post triggered another atrial fibrillation episode. As of the filing of this petition, the effects of that pattern have not resolved.
These people have been shortening a life, measurably, for six years. That sentence is not rhetorical. It is the direct implication of the American Heart Association's guidance applied to the documented cardiac timeline. The body kept the score the department refused to keep.
XI. Public Records Obstruction
On August 25, 2025, Sendelbach filed a sweeping public records request (SPR25/2545) targeting documented misconduct, officer discipline records, and external litigation files involving Shelburne personnel. Chief Bardwell immediately counter-petitioned the Supervisor of Records for maximum statutory extensions and aggressive fee assessments. As of the filing of this petition, zero records have been produced. The formal Supervisor of Records determination documenting this obstruction is on file.
This is not a technical records dispute. It is a documented effort to prevent a citizen from obtaining the institutional records that document the department's own conduct — records directly relevant to active civil rights litigation, an active federal case, and this petition.
XII. 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 direct citizen request for engagement.
The November 30, 2025 investigative decisions: failure to file a morning trespass charge; failure to identify and interview the initial aggressor; failure to canvass five available camera sources; nine-day delay on brewery footage after the known overwrite window; same-night coaching of assault defendants to file civil HPOs against the assault victim.
The April 9, 2026 classification of a violent lyric directed at the complaining witness in active proceedings as "part of a musical performance" without reference to the six-year pattern of stated intent followed by physical delivery.
The public records obstruction documented in SPR25/2545.
The May 2026 surveillance pattern following publication of the Whistleblower Safety Statement — specifically the Heath Police Chief visit and the Shelburne cruiser loop through the private parking area.
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. Review of Post-Arraignment Conduct
The Northwestern District Attorney's Office should evaluate:
The March 12 and April 7 courtroom gesture sequences for contempt and witness intimidation.
The March 23, 2026 Instagram post in light of the full six-year contextual record.
The reported post-arraignment hostility directed at Zachary Livingston for potential witness intimidation under M.G.L. c. 268 §13B.
Whether a motion for bail revocation or modification is warranted by the cumulative post-arraignment conduct.
5. Mandatory Evidence Preservation Protocols
Responding officers must canvass all camera sources within a defined radius within twenty-four hours of an incident in any documented ongoing harassment matter and document that canvass. The three-camera failure on November 30 was not bad luck. It was the predictable result of a department that had never been required to do the work.
6. 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.
7. 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; what review it conducted before retaining Detective Jenkins over 218 community signatures and a federal qualified immunity denial; and what its policy is for responding to formal constituent complaints about documented officer misconduct. If it conducted no review, that is itself an answer that belongs in the public record.
8. Disclosure of the Baker-Winfrey Conflict of Interest
The disclosed familial relationship between Select Board member Andrew Baker and an elected member of the Board of Assessors and school board — a relationship invoked directly to discourage First Amendment-protected speech about Baker's official conduct — should be disclosed on the public record and evaluated for compliance with Massachusetts conflict of interest law, G.L. c. 268A.
XIII. 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.
John F. Sendelbach Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts · May 2026
Documented Sources (Partial)
All primary documents referenced in this petition are available at johnsendelbach.com. No login. No fee.
Police Reports: 21BUC-54-OF, 21-133-OF, 23SHL-8-AR, 25SHL-46-AR, 25SHL-47-AR, 25SHL-114-OF
Court Dockets: 2641CR000158 (Commonwealth v. Hennessey), 2641CR000159 (Commonwealth v. Batteau), 2541RO000063 (HPO denied with prejudice, December 15, 2025), 2341AC000088 (No Probable Cause, June 6, 2023)
Federal Case: Mlynick v. Town of Erving et al., 3:24-cv-30108, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts — Judge Mark G. Mastroianni, qualified immunity denial March 12, 2026; status conference April 14, 2026; discovery deadline January 29, 2027
Medical Documentation: LIFEPAK 15 monitor photograph, Massachusetts State Police barracks, October 19, 2025 — Officer Sheerer, neutral witness; physician AFib attribution letter, 2021
Walker Letters: September 6 and September 9, 2024
Bardwell Gas Station Video: October 16, 2025
Hennessey December 1, 2025 Affidavit (eleven documented false statements)
December 15, 2025 Hearing Transcript — Judge Mazanec, third not-credible finding, denial with prejudice
April 7, 2026 Arraignment — court-imposed stay-away and no-contact conditions
Zachary Livingston Sworn Statement to Sergeant Gilmore: December 9, 2025
Gilmore Summons Report 25SHL-47-AR (HPO coaching language)
Baker Municipal Email Chain: February 8–10, 2024 (false trespass accusation and public retraction)
Baker Post Office Avoidance and Title-Shift Email: January 27 and February 9, 2025
March 23, 2026 Instagram Post — screenshot preserved; posted while parents on bail
April 9, 2026 Bardwell Written Response — copied to Northwestern District Attorney
Merit Raise Request and Approval: March 25, 2026 — thirteen days after federal qualified immunity denial
POST Commission Decertification Order for Jacob Wrisley: Case No. 2025-020, April 2025
Public Records Request SPR25/2545: zero records produced, obstruction documented
June 28 and June 29, 2020 Audio Recordings — defendants' own voices; refute every sworn claim filed in four and a half years of proceedings
Change.org Petition Removal Notice: June 9, 2020 — defamation and misinformation violations
100,000-byte archived Facebook comment ledger: June 2020 thread, 120+ participants, timestamped, preserved
Heath Police Chief visit documentation: May 2026
Shelburne cruiser surveillance footage: May 2026
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