Report: Auburn mayor was targeted for arrest

AUBURN – An independent investigator says Auburn police deliberately targeted Mayor Norm Guay for arrest, then cheered as though they were watching a sporting event.

City Manager Pat Finnigan released a summary of a 75-page report on the arrest Wednesday.

Auburn police arrested Guay in August and charged him with drunken driving. The arrest coincided with acrimonious contract negotiations.

Word of his arrest quickly spread, and soon accusations were flying.

Prosecutors later said Guay wasn’t drunk. Because of the controversy, city officials hired an independent lawyer to investigate.

The investigation said off-duty officers standing outside City Hall targeted Guay for arrest. The officers allegedly followed him as he drove away from City Hall and arrested him for drunken driving.

The investigation says those actions violated policy, because if police thought Guay was about to drive drunk, they should have stopped him from driving.

“Instead, contrary to standard practices, the mayor was allowed to get behind the wheel of his car and he was pursued in an effort to find a reason to stop and arrest him,” Finnigan wrote in the summary.

The summary says that when police at the station learned that Guay had been arrested, off-duty officers at the police station cheered.

Patrolman’s union lawyer John Richardson accused Finnigan of playing politics by not releasing the entire investigator’s report, which he has not seen. She should release the whole report, he said.