Police Who Arrested Him Lose Jobs : Having Paid Debt to Society, Prison-Educated Lawyer Gets Revenge

John Wright has never forgiven the police of this historic community for their role in sending him to prison for two years in the 1960s.

He didn’t just get mad. He got even. He got more than even.

Wright, a 61-year-old self-taught lawyer, sued for dismissal of six of the nine members of the force, including the chief. His suit contended that they had not been trained or tested as required by law.

The town fought him every step of the way, but finally gave up this year, when the highest New York court ruled that Wright was right.

The police chief became a former police chief.

“Twenty years ago I would have gone out and knocked these guys silly with my fists,” said Wright, who lives and works out of two trailers near a famous Revolutionary War battleground. “Now, I just take the lawbooks and get them that way. It’s better.”

His neighbors in Ticonderoga are amazed--not to mention annoyed --at how far Wright carries a grudge.

New Man in Town

The story began in 1963, when Wright left New Jersey and came here to work in a bar his mother owned. He said people in this rugged mountain country, suspicious of all outsiders, were out to get him from the start.

About two years after Wright arrived, Horace Snow, then a state police officer, led a raid on the bar and arrested Wright for having an unlicensed firearm. Wright didn’t dispute the charge, but he considered his sentence--3 1/2 to 7 years in prison--excessive.

During Wright’s “two years, two months and 28 days” in prison, his mother’s tavern was burned to the ground in a fire that was never explained, he said.

Once out of prison, Wright worked in an auto parts store and maintained an uneasy truce with the police. He had completed a law correspondence course in prison and was taking classes at Adirondack Community College.

The auto parts job didn’t work out. Wright, whose wife is a school cook, raised money by renting out trailers on his cluttered property. In 1981, Wright fought with a tenant who hadn’t paid her phone bill. He held the woman’s stereo and television set until he got his money.

New Charges Dropped

He also got arrested on grand larceny and possession of stolen property charges. Although those charges eventually were dropped, Wright didn’t forget.

He retreated into his second trailer, which was stuffed with hundreds of second-hand lawbooks and a home computer.

By then Snow had retired from the state force and was chief of police in this community of 5,500 on the northern shore of Lake George.

In studying laws and personnel records, Wright noticed that Snow lacked two years of supervisory experience and had not taken a civil service examination--both required by statelaw of prospective police chiefs. Moreover, Wright said, Ticonderoga had not properly advertised the position when the chief’s job was open.

Wright also discovered that the town’s three part-time police officers and two full-time constables had not taken the required civil service examinations before they were hired.

So, he sued.

Partial Victory

A state trial court in Essex County agreed that the part-time policemen should be fired, but said Snow and the other two officers could stay on.

Town officials fired the three part-timers, then quickly rehired them as constables. Wright filed an appeal.

Ticonderoga thought so little of Wright’s case that the town lawyer didn’t even drive to Albany to argue before the appellate court. Wright made his case before the justices himself.

In July, 1988, the appeals court accepted Wright’s arguments. Calling Snow’s qualifications “questionable,” they ruled that he should be fired. The three new constables should also be let go because they were doing work they had no authority to do, the justices said. The other two officers had to go as well.

The town then hired an Albany attorney to take the case to the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court. In February, that court refused to hear the case, so the ruling of the lower appeals court stood.

Police Chief Fired

The next month, Ticonderoga’s town board reluctantly fired Snow and the others.

Needless to say, Wright is not very popular at city hall.

“Personally, I’m not very fond of him,” said Robert Dedrick, the town supervisor. “He’s certainly caused the town of Ticonderoga a lot of problems.”

Dedrick is reluctant to say more because Wright has filed a lawsuit against him for calling him an “s.o.b.” in a newspaper article. Wright has also harassed town officials with other lawsuits and freedom-of-information requests about town board decisions.

Dedrick said that Ticonderoga hasn’t added up how much Wright’s lawsuits have cost the town.

Wright estimated that he has spent $20,000 on the cases. He bought a copying machine and his shelves literally sag under the weight of his law books. He can’t tell how many times he has traveled the two hours to Albany to file papers and do research. All for revenge.

“It’s a personality struggle that’s frozen town government,” said Fred Herbst, editor of the weekly newspaper, the Times of Ti. “The town government has accomplished virtually nothing in the last year and a half.”

Police Officers Wanted

Ticonderoga persisted in fighting Wright because “you don’t like to see people lose their jobs,” Dedrick said. The town now has five police officers and is advertising openings for others. A three-member police commission runs the department.

There was some feeling that Ticonderoga should not have fought the case when the courts said the town wasn’t following the rules, but there is not much sympathy for Wright, Herbst said. Most people are annoyed that he didn’t look at the “big picture,” at what it meant to the town, the newspaper editor said.

Oddly, one person who is not angry at Wright is the 62-year-old Snow, currently unemployed. He says no one in law enforcement holds a grudge against Wright and he is baffled as to why Wright thinks they do.

“I’m not too bitter about it,” Snow said. “I’m that type of person. He did his thing. As far as I’m concerned, out of every bad comes some good.”

Snow would not say what was behind the police raid in which Wright was first arrested. He said Wright had gotten a court to seal the police records of the case.

Wright, meanwhile, is taking no chances. He has strung high-intensity spotlights around his property, convinced that someone will come late at night to get even with him. He keeps six loaded shotguns in the small trailer where he lives, and he carefully locks his doors.

“You can’t buy satisfaction like this,” said Wright, dismissing those who say he carried a grudge to extraordinary lengths.

“They did everything they can to me,” he said. “They put me in jail. They burned my mother’s bar down. . . .

“It’s just like a dog--if you tie him up and beat him every day, when you finally untie him he’s going to bite your leg off at the knee.”