We are tired. We are beyond tired of the smoke, the mirrors and the carefully lawyered letters that lecture us about statutes while refusing to answer why the Hopkinton Police Department stayed silent when they had a duty to voice concerns about a convicted predator.

For three decades, the Hopkinton Police Department signed without comment or ignored the request for the common victualer license renewal for a convicted sex offender. A convicted sex offender whose record was in their own database. No law required their silence.

While we would never ask the HPD to provide unlawful information regarding the details of Peter Sismanis, nothing prevented them from providing simple statements on a vic license that could have saved a young woman from sexual assault. Statements such as any one of the following:

— The HPD opposes the issuance of a common victualer license to Hillers Pizza.

— The HPD cannot describe the confidential matters, but we have public safety concerns.

— The HPD recommends that the Select Board exercise heightened scrutiny in evaluation this application.

Instead they chose silence. For decades.

Not only did the HPD not indicate any level of concern, the HPD chose to treat a convicted sex offender as a valued community partner for decades, even sending the community to Hillers Pizza in a promotional video.

Nothing in Massachusetts law explains these choices. We are done with the deflections. We are done with the lectures about statutes that have nothing to do with the question.

Give us the independent, outside investigation we have begged for since August, or own the fact that this board is choosing to protect a negligent police command staff over the children of Hopkinton.

Time’s up!

Respectfully submitted,

Marie Laskowsky, Hopkinton Coalition for Children

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