Select Board candidate Rick Coletti fired from Wareham Police, had private detective’s license revoked for misconduct

Select Board candidate Rick Coletti was fired from the Wareham Police Department in 1998 for misconduct as a police officer and had a private detective’s license revoked in 2002 for the same reasons.

According to a 1998 Standard-Times report and a 2005 court case titled Coletti v. Department of State Police, Coletti forged the signature of a police dispatcher with whom court documents say he was having an affair, conducted an unlawful criminal history systems board/board of probation check on the dispatcher and was deemed unfit to work by the department’s psychologist at the time.

“That was a personal choice that I regret, but that does not define me as a man.” Coletti said when contacted by phone on May 2 after Wareham Week learned of the 1998 and 2002 events. “That’s ancient history and has no bearing on what I’m vying for as a selectman.”

Coletti is one of three candidates for a two-year seat on the Select Board in the May 6 election.

According to the 1998 Standard-Times report, then Wareham Town Administrator Joseph F. Murphy said the department’s psychologist recommended Coletti “seek treatment,” which Murphy stated Coletti failed to do.

In the report, Murphy said Coletti’s failure to seek treatment put himself, citizens and other officers at risk.

According to court documents, Coletti had been with the Wareham Police Department from 1984 until being fired in 1998, and applied for a private investigator’s license in 2001.

Although that license was initially granted by the State Police, it was revoked in 2002 after the then Wareham police chief wrote a letter to State Police voicing the “surprise” he felt when seeing Coletti had been granted the license.

One of the main requirements for becoming a private detective is that the applicant be of “good moral character,” which the judge ruled Coletti was not due to his past conduct.

Coletti claims his license was wrongfully revoked because none of his misconduct occurred while he was a private detective.The court disagreed, citing the precedent set in previous cases that a license can be taken away due to conduct prior to obtaining the license.

Part of the court's ruling included a controversy Coletti was involved in regarding a firearms license in 2001.

According to court documents, Coletti had applied for a new license to carry a firearm after his was revoked upon termination from the Wareham Police Department. When applying for the new license in 2001, he answered “no” to a question asking if he had ever had a license to carry a firearm revoked, suspended or denied.

“I wasn’t trying to sidestep it,” Coletti said in Friday’s phone conversation. “When I filled it out, I wanted to get it done quickly, and I inadvertently had put that.”

The State Police’s hearing officer stated in court documents “Mr. Coletti knew or should have have known that he should have answered ‘yes.'”

Coletti said he has had a license to carry a firearm for about five years now.

“I would not be a constable, have a respectable business or be a professor or instructor with the National Safety Council if there was anything that would have been a fly in the ointment,” Coletti said.