We are fortunate to have Connors’s statements from his February 26, 2015, deposition, which show that he made every effort to alert his superiors to potential wrongdoing. Let’s review some of these statements:

• “When I made my complaints to the police department and the higher ups, nobody would listen to me.”

• “One commissioner said ‘good for them’ if the officer and his lawyer could get some of the neighbor’s ton of money.’”

• “I told [the then police chief], ‘You’re not going to believe what’s going on next door to my house,’ the stuff with Aaron Goodwin. I said, ‘He’s over there all the time,’ and he just didn’t want to hear it. He just looked at me and kind of smirked and shrugged his shoulders.”

• “[The former police commissioner] bends over and he goes, you know what, she’s got a ton of money, if they can get in there and get some of it and get away with it, good for them.”

• “I didn’t want this going public. I didn’t want this on the PD, as bad as it was looking, because 95% of the guys that work there are the greatest guys in the world. You got a handful that aren’t OK, and that’s what this is all about.”

Once Goodwin shopped around for a lawyer (several refused) who would transfer the bulk of Webber’s estate to him just months before her death in 2012, his visits to his elderly “friend” dwindled to around once a week for 10 to 15 minutes. Connors, meanwhile, was served with a notice of complaint from the Portsmouth Police Department that accused him of insubordination, malfeasance and violation of the department’s media policy, but he refused to stay silent.

Standing up and speaking out about known or suspected elder abuse is a brave act, and Connors should have been commended rather than punished. We need to protect whistleblowers who point out a simple truth: the difference between right and wrong.

Was it correct for Goodwin to use his official position to leverage millions from a woman suffering from dementia? The department finally decided that such behavior was unacceptable. Police chief Stephen Dubois (who resigned in 2015) commented:

This termination is only one of many changes that we have made and will continue to make as we seek to close what has been an unfortunate chapter in the otherwise proud history of the Portsmouth Police Department. We wish to thank the citizens of Portsmouth and the men and women of the Portsmouth Police Department for everyone’s patience.