EVERETT – You keep asking me about Troy Meade’s future with the Everett Police Department. So I keep asking.
I pester city spokeswoman Kate Reardon regularly about the status of Meade’s employment. No one else with the city, including elected officials, is supposed to speak about the case publicly. We stopped calling the attorney the city hired to handle the civil lawsuit against Everett once we learned he was billing the city for taking our calls.
In case you’ve forgotten, Meade is the officer who wound up on trial for murder after a drunken driving stop in a south Everett parking lot ended in death.
I’ve been asking Reardon the same questions about Meade for months: Is he still on paid administrative leave? How much has he been paid? Has the department conducted an internal investigation into the shooting? Why not? Is the city waiting to do an internal investigation until after the civil lawsuit is resolved? If so, why?
So, here’s the latest. Meade remains on administrative leave. He’s been paid nearly $93,000 while on leave. His bosses haven’t conducted an internal investigation to determine if he violated any department policies. They haven’t determined if there are grounds to fire him.
Reardon has continually avoided answering the other questions about why the department hasn’t done an internal investigation or how long they intend to keep Meade on administrative leave.
Meade was acquitted in April of murder and manslaughter for the line-of-duty shooting of Niles Meservey, 51. Meservey was shot from behind June, 10, 2009 while sitting in his car outside the Chuckwagon Inn on Evergreen Way. A drunken and belligerent Meservey refused to get out of his car and drove into a metal fence. Meade told jurors that he saw the car’s reverse lights come on and thought Meservey was going to run him down or injure another officer. He shot Meservey seven times.
In the second phase of the trial, under civil rules, the jury found that the shooting wasn’t self-defense. That verdict meant the state didn’t have to foot Meade’s legal bills. Everett taxpayers, however, ended up paying for Meade’s defense. City officials said Everett was on the hook for the $241,000 in legal fees because Meade was working in his official capacity as a police office at the time of the shooting.
The city also has been racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend against the lawsuit filed in February by Meservey’s daughter. The city is accused of failing to properly train Meade. The city alleges that Meservey is responsible for his own death.
The case is set to go to trial in April. Maybe by then we’ll know if Everett plans to put Meade back to work.
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