Portsmouth Must Give $150K To Ex-Cop Goodwin

By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org, InDepth NH

PORTSMOUTH, NH — The New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that Portsmouth must give $150,000 back pay to fired Portsmouth Police Officer Aaron Goodwin, who got in trouble for pressuring an elderly woman to leave him her $2.7 million fortune.

In a ruling released May 14, the Court sided with Arbitrator Bonnie McSpiritt, who found the city at fault for its own lack of supervision or accountability when she granted Goodwin two-years of back pay.

“There was a lack of accountability in the Police Department and the City that the Court is not free to ignore,” McSpiritt found. “If [the officer] had been properly supervised, the [officer’s improper conduct] may not have occurred and if [it] did occur because he did not correct his conduct then there would have been just cause to discipline him. I note that the just cause concept expects that the employer will do their job too and the [police department] failed to do so. I took into consideration that [the officer] used poor judgment throughout the situation, but I determined that his command staff should have educated him that the decisions he was making were poor ones.”

This is the second time the Court has weighed in on Goodwin’s back pay, and it may not be the last. Portsmouth filed a motion for reconsideration of the Supreme Court’s order soon after it was issued, claiming McSpiritt’s most recent decision is unreasonable.

McSpiritt originally ruled that Goodwin was entitled to his salary and benefits from June of 2015 through August of 2017 because the city violated his due process rights and lacked just cause to fire him. After the Supreme Court rejected that decision, McSpiritt reconsidered the matter and issued a nearly identical award. The city’s poor supervision was the main reason for the second arbitration ruling.

The Supreme Court’s May 14 ruling states it is limited to overturn arbitration decisions unless the arbitrator made a “plain mistake,” or if any of the parties engaged in fraud or some other form of dishonesty during the arbitration. Neither of those conditions are present in the second arbitration, the Court ruled.

Goodwin, 47, was fired in 2015 after he reportedly used his position as a police officer to exert undue influence on Geraldine Webber, a 92-year-old woman with dementia. Goodwin helped write Webber’s will so that he was left her fortune, but he never got the money. The will was challenged in court and Goodwin was ultimately left out in the cold.

His legal dramas continued in 2023 when he was charged with assaulting Mamadou Dembele outside Gilly’s Diner. Also charged were his brother, Kevin Goodwin, and sister-in-law Shannon Goodwin.

According to the Attorney General’s Office, Dembele, a bank manager, was picking up food at the diner when he was accosted by the Goodwins, who hurled racial slurs at him. The Goodwins allegedly followed Dembele to the parking lot and continued their racist taunts. When two Asian American customers arrived to get food the Goodwins turned their racist attention to them, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

Dembele intervened and reportedly tried to address the racist comments with Shannon Goodwin, according to the Attorney General’s Office. While Dembele was trying to speak with Shannon Goodwin, Aaron Goodwin walked behind him and threw him to the ground.

Another man, also Black, tried to help Dembele, and he was allegedly assaulted by Kevin and Shannon Goodwin, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

The criminal cases ended with plea deals and no jail time, but the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office pursued civil charges against the Goodwins accusing them of violating Dembele’s civil rights. That case fell apart last year when Rockingham Superior Court Judge Andrew Schulman ruled the state failed to prove its case.

“To be clear, all three Goodwins were out-of-control on November 22, 2023. Kevin’s comments in the diner were reprehensible. Shannon’s conduct was outrageous. Aaron’s conduct properly resulted in a criminal conviction, and might have supported a more serious charge. But the court decides this case by applying the statutory law to the facts that were actually introduced at trial,” Schulman wrote.

This article first appeared on InDepthNH.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.