North Andover Public Schools

North Andover police chief search down to three

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NORTH ANDOVER — Selectmen have narrowed the police chief search to three finalists from within the department who will be interviewed at a special meeting tonight.

They are Interim Police Chief Paul Gallagher, 59, and Sgts. Michael Davis, 36, and Charles Gray, 37.

The meeting is scheduled for 7 at Town Hall.

Selectmen appointed Gallagher interim chief in May after the departure of Chief Richard Stanley. He is a 1966 graduate of North Andover High School and has a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Northeastern University. After five years at the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Baltimore Police Department, Gallagher joined North Andover as an officer in 1979. Gallagher became a sergeant in 1983 and a lieutenant detective in 1989.

Davis joined the North Andover department in 2001 and became a sergeant in 2008. Davis, the late-night shift supervisor, is a lifelong North Andover resident, graduating from North Andover High School. Davis was selected as Police Officer of the Year in 2003 for actions involving an armed suicidal patient at a doctor's office. He is in charge of internal affairs, the criminal reporting unit, the project lifesaver unit, and the honor guard. Davis graduated from UMass-Lowell with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice, and from Western New England College, with a master's degree in criminal justice.

Gray is a 10-year veteran of the department, promoted to sergeant in 2007. Gray is the day shift supervisor and both a drug recognition expert and a K-9 officer. Gray has a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Massachusetts and a master's degree in criminal justice from Western New England College. He also has a certificate in Public Safety Administration from Suffolk University.

"I'm confident that all three candidates would make a fine chief," said Selectmen Bill Gordon.

Sex, lies & politicos: Porn king Larry Flynt book bares Founding ...

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Weary of sex scandals that have rocked all portions of our government in recent years, there's a lot of talk on the campaign trail about getting back to the principles of our nation's Founding Fathers.

That sentiment may change if people read the new book, "One Nation Under Sex," by Larry Flynt and historian David Eisenbach, because men such as Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson would make Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer and Arnold Schwarzenegger seem like choirboys, and the partisan press of their era would make the tabloids of today read like children's books.

Flynt and Eisenbach, however, are not simply concerned about getting under the covers, or hiding in the closets, of the White House. Their book deals with how the private lives of politicians have affected the nation's public policies — how Franklin's womanizing helped the colonists gain the support of France, how President James Buchanan's alleged homosexuality helped bring about the Civil War, how Franklin Roosevelt's affair(s) forced shy wife Eleanor out of her shell to become one of the great first ladies.

Of course, there are whole chapters on Clinton and the Kennedys (according to the authors, John Kennedy said that he would get migraines if he didn't have sex with different women; brother Bobby Kennedy had an affair with Jackie after the president's death; and Mary Jo Kopechne, who died in brother Ted Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick, had previously been Bobby's mistress).

Flynt, the well-known pornographer and activist, said in an interview earlier this month that he's always been interested in politics and that when he was talking with his publisher about a book on the subject, the publisher "suggested I do it in a historical context."

He found a kindred spirit in Eisenbach, a Columbia University professor, who created and hosted the History Channel program "The Beltway Unbuckled.

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