LEBANON — After nearly 30 years as a police officer, Lebanon Police Chief Richard Mello says he’s turning in his badge for a job in the private sector.

“I’m well beyond retirement age for policing and law enforcement,” Mello, 48, said Wednesday.

Mello confirmed that he’s accepted a new job in the private sector, but declined to say where.

The city announced Mello’s decision in a news release Wednesday. Lebanon Deputy Chief Phil Roberts will take over the position on May 1.

Roberts, 42, has been a police officer for over 20 years and worked alongside Mello frequently over the last five years, Roberts said.

City Manager Shaun Mulholland said that Mello makes a salary of $125,500 per year. He had not finalized a salary for Roberts by Wednesday.

Roberts praised Mello’s time as chief and said that he’s proud to be taking the helm in Lebanon.

“I grew up around it and this is kind of the top spot,” said Roberts, whose father Leonard Roberts was a longtime police officer, including deputy chief, in Hartford. “It’s rewarding to achieve this and I look forward to it.”

Roberts said he’s most concerned with “keeping the train on the tracks” and maintaining the progress Mello made during his time as chief. He said he’s eager to return to more community policing initiatives, like “coffee with a cop,” once the pandemic is over.

“He’s kind of handing me a turnkey operation,” Roberts said of Mello. “I don’t have any smoking-gun goals. It’s more of maintaining what (Mello) has built.”

That’s the direction Mulholland, a former police chief in Allenstown, N.H., said he hopes Roberts follows as well.

“(Mello) served the city well and was one of my strongest department heads,” Mulholland said, adding that he would like to see Roberts maintain the department’s community relations work, reduce traffic crashes and continue to combat cyber crimes.

Mello is the department’s third chief in the last 10 years. Former Chief Jim Alexander stepped down in 2013 to take a position at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. He was replaced by Gary Smith, who served as chief until he retired and was replaced by Mello in 2015.

Prior to Lebanon, Mello worked for 23 years as a police officer in New Hampshire. He started in Concord before moving to the Manchester police force in the late 1990s. In 2002, he took a job with the Hollis Police Department, where he was promoted to lieutenant before leaving to accept the Lebanon position.

A 48-year-old police chief retiring with 28 years of service would receive a pension worth 70% of the average of his three highest salary years, according to the New Hampshire Retirement System.

During his five years in Lebanon, Mello said he’s proud of leading the department as it pursued national accreditation by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. Mello said the effort was a three-year process that included outside experts from CALEA reviewing all Lebanon police policies, inspecting their facilities and interviewing city officials and Lebanon residents to get their thoughts on the department.

Lebanon police officially received accreditation in November, making Lebanon’s force part of the 5% of police departments in the country to hold accreditation, he said.

“It’s a three-year, grueling process,” Mello said. “It makes sure you’re utilizing best practices.”

That’s also a highlight for Mulholland, who said the accreditation is proof that the department is meeting national standards of policing.

Mello said there have been other points of pride throughout his time leading the force, including Lebanon’s investigation and arrest following an arson that destroyed the First Baptist Church on School Street in 2016.

Anthony Boisvert pleaded guilty to multiple counts related to the fire, including two counts of arson, and was sentenced in 2018 to 25 years in prison.

“It was a significant blow to the community,” Mello said of the fire. “Our department worked very hard to bring that person to justice.”

The department has also experienced some challenges in recent years, especially as national protests over police brutality brought more focus to local departments.

In Lebanon, some of that focus centered recently on the school resource officer, or SRO, a police officer stationed in the Lebanon High School. Activists have criticized the position, arguing that it makes some students — and especially students of color — feel unsafe.

Mello disputed that argument, but in March voters narrowly approved a petitioned article at Town Meeting to do away with the school resource officer position. The vote was nonbinding.

Though Mello disagreed with the SRO argument, he acknowledged policing’s history of disparate treatment toward people of color.

“We have a lot of work to do. Unfortunately there’s a lot of negative associations with policing,” Mello said. He added that police, locally and around the country, will need to keep looking at reform measures. “Accreditation moves the needle forward, but there’s a lot of work to be done.”

Roberts has been part of a long-running legal battle in New Hampshire. The state Supreme Court recently rejected a bid for a new trial by Strafford resident Scott Traudt, who served a year in prison for punching Roberts during a traffic stop 14 years ago, saying it was too late to file such an appeal.

Traudt has repeatedly gone to court to overturn his conviction following what he asserts was a wrongful arrest. Roberts declined to comment on the case on Wednesday.

Anna Merriman can be reached at amerriman@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.

]]>