By Katy O’donnell
The Concord Monitor
WEARE, N.H. — Former Weare fire senior lieutenant Harry Lamb announced his immediate resignation and read from a letter that called Weare fire Capt. Scott Dinsmore a “hypocrite” and the department an “embarrassment” at a tense Board of Fire Wards meeting last night.
Lamb alleged the Weare Fire Department does not follow standard operating guidelines and “thrives on favoritism, nepotism, false records or no records at all.”
Dinsmore, Weare fire Chief Ray Eaton and board Chairman Jon Osborne said after the meeting that they had “no comment at this time” on the allegations. A firefighter who refused to give his name said the department could not say anything at the moment but will likely rebut the claims later this week.
After Lamb finished reading the letter, Steve Roberts, a non- fire department member of the board, said, “Everything falls under personnel issues, so we can’t speak on it.”
At one point in the exchange that ensued, Lamb specifically cited Dinsmore when referring to a breach of safety protocol, and Osborne cautioned that if he was going to name names, they’d have to finish the discussion in a nonpublic meeting.
“I will not go to a nonpublic,” Lamb said. “It’s like going into a tribunal in Iran. . . . If we go into a nonpublic, this board is going to tear me apart.”
He said he has personally felt persecuted, he said, because he doesn’t turn a blind eye.
“They want people in there that they can control,” Lamb said. “They can’t control me, and it really bugs them. With me out of the way they can do anything they want.”
Lamb also alluded in the letter to “a sexual harassment remark” made at his expense in an officers meeting several years ago. Lamb said that when he came late to the meeting, an officer said to him, “Where have you been, having sex with goats?”
Lamb said he went through the chain of command and brought the comment to the board but nothing was done.
“This was no way for an officer to be acting. They did nothing about it,” he said. The comment, he said, “gnaws at me.”
The Weare Fire Department has been plagued by infighting and public personality clashes before.
The minutes from a June 14 Board of Fire Wards meeting indicate a Weare resident, Jan Snyder, accused the board of omitting minutes and requested to have her comments added to the minutes verbatim.
In January 2009, four Weare firefighters temporarily resigned to protest the appointment of interim fire Chief Bill Tiffany over concerns that he was not qualified.
Last night, Tiffany, a member of the board, agreed with Lamb that “people don’t abide by the rules.”
“It’s too bad we’re losing (Lamb) because of what’s going on,” Tiffany said.
Lamb said he thought about pressing charges over the harassment remark but ultimately decided against it. He is releasing his letter, he said, to alert the public to what he sees as the misbehavior of the fire department. He said after he spoke that “they’re not done with me yet.”
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