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By Harry Kane
Hometown Weekly Reporter
In the wake of a decision to cancel annual school dances at Walpole High School because of underage drinking, a lone individual defaced several walls with anti-police slogans on and off campus.
At the start of the school year, Principal Steven Imbusch cancelled the upcoming school dances due to last year’s continued issues with intoxicated students.
Between the hours of 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. on the morning of Friday, September 9, a person of interest retaliated by spray-painting hateful messages on a couple walls at the High School and along the outside wall at the Cumberland Farms on Washington Street.
“The tagging incident happened subsequent to the cancellation of the school dances,” explained Walpole Police Chief Carmichael.
Despite the nature of the vandalism, the police investigation is revolving around property defacement, not the grievance with the school dance cancellation. Photos courtesy of Walpole PD
One message reads, “F**k Walpole Police,” while another says, “Don’t cancel our dances.”
“We’ve had some issues in the past where somebody had a grievance and they decided to tag a wall or tag a bridge or bridge overpass,” said Carmichael.
The Chief admitted that plenty of people have an anti-police quotes that they want to somehow disseminate through tagging.
The police investigation isn’t concentrated on the fact that somebody’s has a grievance regarding the cancellation of school dances, but instead the defacement of the property.
“That’s where the motivation of the investigation focuses on –somebody destroying property in the town,” said Carmichael.
A CCTV camera outside the Cumberland Farms shows the criminal wearing gym style pants, a hoodie, mask and white gloves.
“Walpole Police Detectives have identified the suspect as a 15 year old juvenile and recovered items of evidentiary value implicating him,” added Chief Carmichael via email. “We cannot release the specific items recovered, but we recovered items linking him to the crimes, followed by a confession.”
“This affects the whole community,” explained the Chief. “This affects all of the students who were looking forward to sitting down and discussing the situation with the dances, and now this individual took it upon themself to throw a wrench in that whole process.”
Typically during school dances, a school resource officer is on duty to supervise. Tim Songin is the officer who has been on duty in the past.
“The typical school dance has school staff there to chaperone. If police are needed, they are there,” explained Carmichael.
The police chief said that the school dances are usually successful and that the students have fun, but during some of the dances there are occasionally good kids who decide to make a bad choice and decide to either consume alcohol before they get to the dance or after they get through the front door.
The chaperones or the police have had to intervene in the past.
“There’s a liability issue there – there’s a public safety and a public health issue that we have to worry about, and there’s a likelihood that somebody could drink and they could drive afterwards… the potential is always there,” said Carmichael.
“The vast majority of kids don’t drink or do drugs and want to go to the school dances to have a good time with their peers, but there are a few that break the rules,” he added.
In the past, the police have utilized portable breath test machines following the dances to make sure that students aren’t intoxicated. In certain cases, parents have been contacted if their child was under the influence.
“There’s a very delicate balance. You want to make sure the kids are having fun – they have outlets, they have a place to go where they can meet and congregate with their peers and have a fun night – but there’s also that balance where we have to make sure that they are safe,” said Carmichael.
Chief Carmichael explained that the Walpole Police Department wants to become more involved and possibly sponsor the next dance, whenever the school is ready to allow one to occur.
There is a student police advisory council group, which begins meeting in October, and discussions will ensue about the possibility of future dances.
