Medford City Councilors Criticize Mayor For Police Report

MEDFORD, MA — A dispute between the mayor and a resident drew discussion at a recent City Council meeting.

Micah-Shalom Kesselman addressed the Council on Oct. 13 in response to statements Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn made to Tufts Daily. The disagreement centers on comments made during a February Medford People Power meeting and the mayor’s subsequent decision to report them to police.

Lungo-Koehn went to the police station on Feb. 11 to document comments she was told had been made during the group’s Feb. 9 meeting, according to the police report. Her initial account attributed a statement about pushing her off a cliff to Kesselman and a similar comment to Barry Ingber. She told police she found the statements concerning.

An anonymous participant subsequently gave investigators a different account of the wording. The participant told police that Kesselman said, “Push her to the edge of the cliff,” to which Ingber responded, “I wanna push her off of the cliff.” The exchange occurred during a discussion about seeking the mayor’s support for an initiative, according to the participant.

Detective Sgt. Shawn Norton interviewed the participant and attempted to speak with both Kesselman and Ingber before concluding that no further police action was required.

“At this time there is no evidence of any direct threats being made towards Mayor Lungo-Koehn,” Norton wrote, adding that the matter was considered closed.

The issue became public through coverage disagreements between the mayor and Council over legal representation in a lawsuit challenging the city’s Values-Aligned Local Investments Ordinance. Lungo-Koehn suggested that Kesselman had been considered as a pro bono attorney but that councilors decided against using him because of comments about throwing her off a cliff.

Kesselman disputed both portions of that account. He said he never offered to represent the city and that his involvement in the lawsuit was on behalf of residents seeking to intervene in defense of the ordinance. He also denied advocating violence against the mayor or any other public official.

“I have never advocated for or supported violence against any of our elected officials and would never condone such,” Kesselman said during the Council meeting. “I wouldn't condone it against anyone, regardless of their political position.”

According to the police report, the anonymous participant said seven people attended the Feb. 9 Zoom meeting, which ran from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. One agenda discussion involved surveillance in Medford, including cameras and license plate readers.

During the discussion, Jason Rabin described an initiative he was trying to get the mayor to endorse and expressed uncertainty about how far to press her, according to the participant’s account.

Kesselman said the discussion concerned whether organizers should continue pressing Lungo-Koehn to implement an ACLU model executive order protecting local organizers against politically motivated targeting and investigation. He characterized his comment as an aside about pursuing the mayor’s support for the proposal.

After the mayor filed her report, Norton contacted Rabin by email and phone seeking information about the meeting and whether it had been recorded. The report states he had not received a response at the time that portion of the report was written.

The mayor also supplied a screenshot of a Reddit post she attributed to Kesselman. Norton wrote that the post contained negative and sometimes vulgar comments about the mayor’s political decisions but that he did not observe any comments he considered threatening toward her.

During a Feb. 16 follow-up conversation, Lungo-Koehn said she wanted the meeting comments documented and described Ingber’s reported remark as alarming and unacceptable. Later that day, Norton spoke with the participant who provided the account distinguishing Kesselman’s comment about the edge of a cliff from Ingber’s comment about pushing her off it.

Norton called Kesselman on Feb. 17. According to the report, Kesselman said his attorney advised him not to discuss the matter with police, and the call ended. Norton also left Ingber a voicemail requesting a return call but reported receiving no response before closing the matter.

Kesselman characterized the investigation during his Oct. 13 remarks as politically motivated and accused the mayor of using municipal resources to intimidate political opponents. The police report did not make a finding about political motivation.

City Council President Zac Bears said he had read the police report and criticized what he described as the mayor’s use of police against political opponents. He also connected the dispute to disagreements over publicity for Council neighborhood meetings.

“This is a person who had the police call his home who's worried about his family, who's worried about his job,” Bears said. “Please stop doing what you're doing. You are hurting people."

Councilor Justin Tseng also criticized the mayor, saying he was particularly concerned about residents who do not have an elected position from which to respond.

“As angry as I was about the mayor making insinuations about my character, that anger comes nothing close to the anger I feel about her doing it to residents who can't defend themselves, to residents who don't have the privilege of sitting at this seat and being able to respond in a public chamber,” Tseng said. “And then to create basically a state of terror where she's utilizing the police to attack individuals for their political beliefs, it's the type of stuff that you would expect out of I don't know, like Soviet Russia. This is craziness. It's utter madness."

Lungo-Koehn previously confirmed filing the police report and said she stood by the article.

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