The former police chief in Methuen, Massachusetts, was taken into custody Friday after pleading guilty to 17 criminal charges, bringing a yearslong case involving allegations of fraud, forgery and perjury within the city’s police department closer to an end.
Retired Methuen Police Chief Joseph Solomon, 65, entered the guilty pleas during a hearing at Essex Superior Court in Salem. It took roughly 13 minutes for the court to read each of the charges against him.
The plea was the result of months of negotiations with prosecutors.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell’s office said that under the plea agreement, Solomon was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in the House of Corrections, with 30 days to serve and the rest suspended for three years.
As part of the resolution of the case, Solomon will also lose his city pension of nearly $200,000 a year, which he had been collecting for approximately five years.
He will also lose his license to carry a firearm and his private investigator’s license.
Campbell said the charges to which Solomon pleaded guilty include procurement fraud, uttering a forged document, two counts of perjury by written affidavit, seven counts of obtaining unwarranted privileges in violation of the civil service laws and six counts of civil service law violations.
“Massachusetts communities rely on their police chiefs to make the best decisions for the safety and security of residents,” Campbell said in a statement. “Former Chief Solomon broke that trust by misusing his authority to elevate unqualified officers, putting residents’ wellbeing at risk.”
Solomon was among the highest-paid police chiefs in the country, the Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General revealed in a scathing December 2020 report titled “Leadership Failures in Methuen Police Contracts.” He was placed on paid administrative leave after the report’s release, and he submitted his retirement papers the following month.
In 2023, prosecutors brought charges against Solomon, accusing him of lying during his tenure about his own qualifications and those of at least six police officers he had improperly hired and promoted.
Travis Johnston, an associate professor of political science at UMass Boston, said the city can still recover from this black eye.
“If appropriate actions are taken, and investigations occur, and indictments are handed down, and reforms are made, then research has suggested that there can be a positive boost,” Johnston said.
Essex County District Attorney Paul Tucker defended the agreement reached with Solomon.
“The folks that don’t think that this is enough, I would suggest, respectfully, a police chief just stood and said ‘guilty’ 17 times,” Tucker said. “For the folks that think that that’s not extraordinary, I respectfully say they’re wrong.”
Methuen Mayor D.J. Beauregard, however, said he believes questions remain about others who may have been involved.
“There are several unindicted coconspirators who were not at all in the mix in this case here at the state level,” Beauregard said. “And there’s certainly more questions to be asked and more of a story to be told.”
Beauregard is calling on the federal government to reopen a related investigation that he says was abruptly abandoned in 2024. He said further investigation is necessary in part because people were arrested by officers he said Solomon had improperly hired and promoted.
The mayor also said he plans to pursue efforts to recover roughly $1 million in pension payments Solomon had already collected since retiring.
The OIG report found former Mayor Stephen Zanni had “agreed to unprecedented changes” to the contracts between the city, the Methuen Police Superior Officers’ Association and the New England Police Benevolent Association, Local 17.
The new agreement changed the way base pay was calculated for Solomon and other high-ranking officers.
According to the report, Zanni agreed in 2017 to pay Solomon more than $375,000 in 2018. That salary eclipsed those of police commissioners and superintendents in New York, Boston and Chicago by more than $100,000, and it topped Los Angeles’ police commissioner’s pay by about $4,000.
As of 2020, Methuen had 53,059 residents, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau — a fraction of the populations of those cities.
Methuen Police Captain Gregory Gallant, president of the New England Police Benevolent Association chapter, drafted the contract, which used the “Gallant Formula” as a method to determine pay.
Following raises under the formula, the report “estimated that the salaries of captains, lieutenants and sergeants would rise to an average of $432,000, $269,000 and $160,000, respectively, not including overtime or paid details.”
The year after Solomon’s pay increased, the Methuen Police Department began the process of laying off at least 50 officers because of a budget crisis.
Solomon defended himself and the department in an interview with NBC10 Boston in 2020.
“I’m not saying I’m not paid a lot of money,” he said. “I put a lot of hours in. I work very hard.”
Solomon was placed in handcuffs following Friday’s hearing and began serving his 30-day jail sentence.
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