Former Madawaska police officer Dennis Piccard told the Maine Human Rights Commission that he was fired after reporting a November 2022 group-home arrest and that his whistleblower status protected him from retaliatory discipline. “I will never subscribe to the blue wall of silence,” Piccard said as he described bringing concerns to supervisors and the attorney general.

Town counsel and the respondent argued that Piccard provided inconsistent accounts to a third‑party investigator and that recorded interviews with three on-scene medical responders contradicted key portions of his account. Counsel said the decisive issue was credibility and whether Piccard attributed statements to other witnesses that those witnesses denied.

Investigator Jane O’Reilly described a lengthy record that included recorded interviews, arbitration and unemployment hearings and told commissioners her task had been to assess whether the town’s stated reason for termination (misleading statements in the internal investigation) was a pretext for retaliation. O’Reilly said she had reviewed the interviews and weighed the contemporaneous record in reaching her recommendation.

During deliberations a motion was made to find reasonable grounds to believe retaliation occurred; the motion was seconded. The motion produced a tie vote among commissioners present, which by commission practice meant the tie left the investigator’s recommendation in place. The investigator had recommended no reasonable grounds; that recommendation therefore stands. The commission will notify the parties of the outcome in writing.

Commissioners’ remarks showed the panel was divided: some said the factual tangle and relationships among parties made the credibility assessment difficult to resolve administratively and left open stronger prospects at trial; others emphasized the investigator’s thorough record review and found the record insufficient to establish reasonable grounds for retaliation.

The commission will send written confirmation of the result and ordered a five-minute recess following the vote.