PORTSMOUTH — The City Council voted 8-1 to appoint the Rev. Arthur Hilson to fill the Police Commission seat vacated by Joseph Plaia in December.
Hilson received 858 write-in votes in November’s election, but finished third in the race for two open Police Commission seats to Joe Onosko, who received 2,335 votes and former Assistant Mayor Jim Splaine, who finished first with 3,047.
Councilor Rick Becksted cast the lone no vote against Hilson’s nomination.
Reached Wednesday, Hilson said he has not heard when he is going to be sworn in as a commissioner. “I take it in stride,” he said about his appointment. “It’s just another opportunity to serve my community. Whatever’s for me, I’ll have.”
Hilson said once sworn in he’ll focus on “listening and getting a handle on what’s happening.”
“I’m pro community police. I’ve said that for awhile. It’s important to have a strong connection between the community and police,” Hilson, the pastor of New Hope Baptist Church, said Wednesday. “People need to know we’re all part of the same community and it’s not an adversarial thing.”
“I love being active in my community. I think I’ve demonstrated that for the last 28 years,” he added.
Hilson pledged to be “another reasoned voice” and added “it’s important that one learns to listen … to both the police and community.”
Splaine said Hilson’s “background and experience, and his many years of public service, will greatly contribute to the work of the Police Commission and our oversight of the Police Department.” “I much look forward to working with this very good man,” Splaine said in a Facebook post.
The City Council’s appointment of Hilson on Tuesday sought to address what City Attorney Robert Sullivan described as a “conflict of law.” Sullivan said the conflict arose about whether Hilson should automatically take over as police commissioner because he finished third in the most recent election as the city charter states, or if the City Council should appoint someone as a 2015 legal opinion by an assistant attorney general advises.
“Under the straightforward application of that charter provision, Rev. Arthur Hilson would automatically assume the position vacated by Joseph Plaia for the balance of Mr. Plaia’s vacated term,” Sullivan stated in a memo to City Manager John Bohenko. Sullivan added that either decision the council made could lead to a legal challenge.
But Mayor Jack Blalock maintained the council could avoid a lawsuit if it voted to appoint Hilson, which it ultimately did. That option would satisfy both the city charter and the state attorney general’s opinion, Blalock said.
Assistant Mayor Cliff Lazenby made the motion to appoint Hilson to the Police Commission. Councilor Josh Denton pointed to the number of write-in votes Hilson received, saying that is “extremely difficult” to do.
Denton also referenced an incident that Hilson was involved in 27 years ago that led to Hilson’s resignation as director of the Department of Public Safety at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
According to a 1993 Massachusetts Ethics Commission report, Hilson was fined $4,000 in civil penalties “for violating the conflict of interest law by soliciting a $1,000 no-interest loan from a subordinate employee, failed to repay half, and later accepted a $1,000 gift from the same employee at a time when she was a criminal suspect being investigated by the university’s police department.”
Denton said one of the tenants of criminal law is the concept of rehabilitation. “It’s safe to say he’s been rehabilitated over that period of time,” he said.
Councilor Chris Dwyer worked with Hilson on the African Burial Ground monument in Portsmouth. Dwyer said whenever she was with him she was struck by “the number of people that would always come up to him, particularly parents, who said what he had meant to their high school students or their young students as a mentor.”
Becksted argued during the meeting that instead of appointing Hilson, the council should interview the interested candidates and then pick one. He pointed out that’s what the council did in August 2015 when then-Police Commissioner Gerald Howe resigned. The council in 2015 ultimately appointed Wayne Lehman to replace Howe. Becksted said he wanted to “repeat something that worked.”