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Strafford County Sheriff Mark Brave and his deputies are getting the boot from Frisbie Memorial Hospital as the Rochester healthcare facility is moving its security staff in-house. Hospital administrators say it’s about money, but observers suspect the recent scandals involving Brave and his wife, Jamie, also played a role.

Brave’s contract ends on July 22, according to a letter sent to Brave this week. The hospital’s Chief Financial Officer Matt Untch told Brave the reason for the termination is finances.

“I am writing to inform you that Frisbie Memorial Hospital will be terminating our contract with the Strafford County Sheriff’s Office effective July 22nd, 2023, due to budgetary constraints and improvements to Security staffing,” Untch wrote. 

The contract with Frisbie is worth up to $100,000 annually for Brave’s department. Brave thanked the hospital administration for the contract in place for the last year and a half.

“I would like to thank the Frisbie Hospital administration and staff for utilizing my office as a resource and a tool during a time of need,” Brave said in a statement. “The SCSO team will always be available in the future to your organization if needed.”

News of the cancellation comes months after Mark Brave’s wife, Jamie Brave, left her job as Frisbie’s Chief Nursing Officer following a drunk driving arrest in December. According to police reports, Mark Brave was a passenger in the couple’s Mercedes at the time of his wife’s arrest, but he was too intoxicated to drive home. Police took the sheriff to a friend’s home nearby while his wife was booked.

The hospital has stated Jamie Brave was not involved in the original negotiations that gave the six-figure contract to her husband’s department. However, a whistleblower recently told NH Journal that Jamie Brave was key to initially bringing the sides together.

Senior Director of Marketing and Communications for Frisbie, Ellen Miller, did not mention the DUI arrest as a reason for the contract termination. Instead, she said hiring Brave’s department was always meant to be a temporary fix until the hospital could hire more of its own staff.

“Frisbie’s contract with the sheriff’s office, while valuable, was intended to be a short-term solution. As of this April, we are pleased to share that our hospital security team is once again fully staffed and able to provide 24-hour coverage,” Miller said. “By moving security services back in-house, we are able to employ full-time security staff who receive health benefits.”

According to Miller, the contract was necessary to give the hospital time to find qualified people to work as in-house security. However, the hospital previously maintained it contracted with Brave’s department to boost security following a 2020 incident that left a hospital security staffer fatally injured. Rick Semo, a Frisbie security guard, was assaulted by Tyler Thurston outside the hospital’s emergency room in December 2020. Semo died days later from his injuries.

Raising more questions is the fact that, at the time Frisbie was giving Brave’s department the $100,000-a-year contract, the hospital’s parent company was recommending cuts to the security team. 

Weeks after Semo’s death, an executive with Frisbie’s parent company, Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare, issued a report recommending the cuts to security staff. To cut security, according to an internal report obtained by NHJournal. HCA’s Kat Kemper’s report stated Frisbie needs only one security officer on duty at all times, 24/7, and one supervisor on duty 40 hours a week.

The Frisbie contract was not Brave’s only security contract. The Strafford County Sheriff’s Office also provides a deputy to the Farmington School District to serve as a School Resource Officer/Truancy Officer.

Brave, a Democrat who is New Hampshire’s first elected Black sheriff, ran for office on a platform opposing placing police officers in schools.

Sheriff Mark Brave won’t answer questions about his condition during his wife’s December arrest for driving under the influence. But documents obtained by NHJournal suggest the Strafford County Democrat was on the scene and intoxicated.

“We knew he didn’t drive the car home that night, but nobody told us why,” said Strafford County Commissioner Ray Bowers. 

According to police reports, Jaime Brave was stopped while driving on Route 16 in Portsmouth on Dec. 9 after she was seen swerving in her 2017 Mercedes GLE. Jaime Brave was arrested after failing a series of field sobriety tests. She later blew a .15 percent blood alcohol content, nearly double the legal limit of .08 percent.

According to the reports, her sole passenger that night was prohibited from driving the Mercedes home due to a blood alcohol content of .157 percent. Based on the report and available information, it appears that passenger was Sheriff Brave.

New Hampshire State Police released the reports on Monday related to Jaime Brave’s arrest for DUI in response to the 91A request from NHJournal. The reports redact the name of Jaime Brave’s sole passenger during the night of the arrest, but the context of the reports, and Bowers’s understanding of the events, indicate Mark Brave was the passenger too intoxicated to drive home.

Mark Brave did not respond to a request for comment on Monday, and he had declined multiple calls for comment since the arrest was first reported. There is no record of Mark Brave having been charged with any crime or violation as a result of the incident.

Bowers told NHJournal he and the three elected Strafford County Commissioners were informed about the DUI arrest shortly after it happened, and they were told that Brave was the passenger in the car with Jamie Brave. Bowers has not seen the police reports from the arrest. He is expecting copies from the County Attorney’s Office at some point.

“Certainly, the arrest was brought to our attention, and that Sheriff Brave was in the vehicle, we were aware of that,” Bower said.

Bowers understood the couple was attending a private Christmas party and there was no use of county property, such as a county vehicle, in the incident.

Strafford County Commission Chair George Maglaras referred all questions to Bower.

According to the reports, the law enforcement officers who stopped Jamie Brave recognized her passenger and knew where he worked, though that information is also redacted from the copies obtained by NHJournal. The reports state another trooper responded as an additional witness because of the identity of the passenger.

The couple told police they were coming from a Christmas party held at a private house when they were stopped. Jaime Brave was taken into custody and processed at the Newington Police Department while a trooper drove her passenger, presumably Mark Brave, to a private home in Newington where he could be released to a sober friend.

Bower said the reports, once received by the commissioners, will be reviewed for possible violations. However, based on the description of events from NHJournal, Bower said there may not be a county policy violation. Mark Brave was not drinking at a county function and he did not use any county resources.

“If it had been at county function there would have been grave concerns,” Bower said.

Mark Brave, New Hampshire’s first-ever elected Black sheriff, is a rising star in Democratic politics. It remains to be seen if his apparent intoxication after his wife’s arrest will cool the support he has enjoyed.

Nancy Vawter, co-chair of the Dover Democrats, said the issue is a personal matter for the Braves.

“I know Mark, I feel bad about what happened. We’ve all had a little too much to drink, maybe he didn’t realize his wife had too much (as well,)” Vawter said.

After initially answering questions from an NHJournal reporter, Vawter demanded to have the conversation taken off the record. The reporter had started the conversation by identifying himself, the publication, and the topic of the call. Vawter was informed that she could not retroactively make the call off the record.

The Braves are already dealing with the fallout from the arrest. In the days after the arrest was first reported, Jamie Brave resigned her position as chief nursing officer at Frisbie Memorial Hospital.

Jamie Brave, the wife of Strafford County’s Democratic Sheriff Mark Brave, is out as Frisbie Memorial Hospital’s Chief Nursing Officer, sources tell NHJournal. The decision came after her arrest on driving under the influence charges. 

Ellen Miller, director of marketing and public relations at the hospital, said Jamie Brave resigned on December 14, days after NHJournal reported on her arrest during a New Hampshire State Police saturation patrol in the Portsmouth region.  Jamie Brave has pleaded not guilty in the case now set for trial in March.

Jamie Brave’s husband Mark was elected Strafford County sheriff in 2020. Following news of the arrest, multiple sources told NHJournal there are concerns about the Brave’s business relationships.

The Strafford County Sheriff’s Department was hired by Frisbie this year to provide security services at the hospital’s Rochester campus.

Strafford County Administrator Ray Bower declined to comment about the contract, referring the matter back to Mark Brave. The sheriff declined to respond to multiple requests for comment about the contract.

All of the elected Strafford County commissioners — George Maglaras, Bob Watson, and Deanna Rollo — were also unwilling to comment on the contract between the sheriff and his wife’s (now-former) employer.

The Strafford County Sheriff’s Department, like most in New Hampshire, does not perform traditional law enforcement duties. Instead, the department oversees civil process, emergency communications, court security, prisoner transports, and some investigations. Sheriff’s departments can contract with municipalities to offer regular law enforcement services and usually do so in smaller communities that lack the money to pay for full-time police departments.

The Strafford Department started assigning deputies to the hospital this year to support Frisbie’s security staff. Miller said the terms of the contract has the hospital paying $55 an hour for each deputy assigned and it tops out at $100,000 a year.

Jamie Brave was not involved in negotiating the contract, Miller said. In fact, Jaimie Brave signed a conflict-of-interest form before the hospital entered into the agreement with the Sheriff’s Department, Miller said.

Frisbie wanted to beef up security after the December 2020 incident in which security guard Rick Semo was critically assaulted by a man outside the hospital’s emergency room, Miller said.

“We wanted to do everything to ensure the safety of our patients and staff,” she said.

Tyler Thurston, 31, of New Durham, allegedly punched Semo in the face during an altercation. Semo, 64, fell onto the pavement, striking his head. Semo died five days later as a result of the injury.

The Strafford County Sheriff’s Department also provides a deputy to work as the school resource officer in the Farmington School District and another to work as the truant officer in Farmington. That contract, also started this year, comes despite Mark Brave signing off on a Black Lives Matters letter demanding that New Hampshire do away with school resource officers.

Like Frisbie, the Farmington School District also pays the Sheriff’s Department to provide the deputies and their services.

Jamie Brave was stopped in the early morning hours of Dec. 10 during the State Police patrol and charged with DUI. It is not known if she was alone in the car at the time of her arrest. NHJournal has requested documents from the New Hampshire State Police related to the stop and arrest.

Jamie Brave, the wife of progressive Strafford County Sheriff Mark Brave, is in trouble with the law after she was arrested this weekend for driving drunk. 

Jamie Brave, 44, was stopped in the early morning hours on Saturday as part of a New Hampshire State Police saturation patrol of the Portsmouth area, according to a State Police release. Jamie Brave was one of 11 people charged during the special operation, and she is charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.

Neither Jamie nor Mark Brave responded to a request for comment.

Mark Brave (D-Dover) became the first Black sheriff elected in New Hampshire’s history when he beat Republican Paul Callaghan in 2020.

As a candidate, Mark Brave told Seacoast Online when he was elected that his top three priorities were “open the dialogue with the community and the social services the office can help provide; increase transparency through things like implementing body-worn cameras for the office’s civil unit, which he’d then use as a community response team to support local school resource officers; and community policing efforts.”

Brave also signed a list of demands created by the Seacoast chapter of Black Lives Matter regarding policing policy. Among the demands are:

• No more school resource police officers.
• Banning the possible use of tear gas.
• Government monitoring of police officers’ personal Facebook, Instagram and other social media accounts for “threatening or potentially violent posts.”
• Ending qualified immunity, stripping police of protection from lawsuits.

However, Brave said he did not support all of the demands on the list. He has said he does not support removing police from schools — he would like the sheriff’s office to help small towns add their first school resource officers — and he only wants qualified immunity “reexamined,” not eliminated.

And the new sheriff did not want to end the controversial practice of transporting people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and holding them at the county jail.

According to the Rochester Voice, the specific location and circumstances of Jaime Brave’s arrest were not disclosed by State Police.

The high-visibility DUI patrols, comprising NHSP Troop A Barracks, the New Hampshire State Police Special Enforcement Unit, and Portsmouth Police Officers, were conducted Friday night into Saturday morning. Such patrols are typically announced to the public and local law enforcement in advance.

Republican state Rep. Erica Layon said this week she regrets driving under the influence, for which she was arrested at her home in Derry on May 26. 

“I truly regret this lapse in judgment. I am following the court’s orders,” Layon said Tuesday.

Layon pleaded guilty last month to one count of driving under the influence and had her driver’s license revoked for the next nine months as part of the sentence. She is eligible to apply for early reinstatement under the plea for the first-time offense.

Layon was arrested at her home on the night of May 26 after police responded to reports of an erratic driver. The conversation with Derry police was captured on cruiser video which has since been uploaded to the Internet. In the video, Layon is seen still wearing her state representative’s name badge.

Layon appears to slur her words during the conversation with officers, and initially said she had one glass of wine at the end of the workday in Concord. She also mentioned early on that she had purchased a table to the banquet honoring Derry Police Chief Ed Garone.

Layon initially tried to tell officers that she has a borderline case of diabetes and was suffering from the effects of high blood sugar after attending an ice cream social at the State House. She also acknowledged having one glass of wine after the House session had ended for the day.

The Derry Fire Department soon sent an ambulance to check Layon’s blood glucose levels, which were at 120 mg. According to the video, the paramedic who took the reading told Layon that was a good level.

“You’re golden,” he said.

During the video, Layon explained to the officer the pressure she had been under that day. The Legislature voted down the proposed parental bill of rights she championed on May 26, and Layon appeared dejected by the defeat.

“It’s been a hell of a day. We got our asses kicked by people who think the state should be the parents, and not the parents,” Layon said.

Layon told the officer she had been receiving threats over the parental bill of rights. When the officer asked what the threat stated, she said it was “rainbow laser pew pew.”

After her blood sugar was deemed normal by paramedics, Layon was questioned about her slurred speech. At this point, she told the officer she had three glasses of wine that evening. When she refused the officer’s request to undergo field sobriety tests, she was placed under arrest.

When she was initially questioned, Layon suggested to police that the report about her driving her car erratically had been made by a neighbor with whom she had a feud over a tree. When she was told she was being placed under arrest, she revived her suspicions about the arrest.

“How much did Jim Morgan pay you guys?” Layon asked.

“I do not know who Jim Morgan is,” the officer responded.

As Layon was being handcuffed, she again mentioned Chief Garone and his upcoming banquet.

“Can I get my money back for Chief Garone’s table?” she asked.

Aside from the controversial parent’s bill of rights, which opponents claimed would out gay teens to their parents, Layon was a lightning rod for controversy last session. She sponsored a bill to revive a Cold War era anti-Communist loyalty oath for teachers which would ban them from advocating for socialism or communism in the classroom.

The bill would also ban teaching anything negative about the founding of the United States.

“No teacher shall advocate any doctrine or theory promoting a negative account or representation of the founding and history of the United States of America in New Hampshire public schools which does not include the worldwide context of now outdated and discouraged practices. Such prohibition includes but is not limited to teaching that the United States was founded on racism,” the now-defeated bill stated.

When asked by WMUR, Layon refused to say that the Three-Fifths Compromise was racist. The Three-Fifths Compromise from the 1787 Constitutional Convention states that every enslaved American would count as three-fifths of a person for taxation and representation purposes.

Dianna Ruddman was sitting in her car in a church parking lot in Enfield, N.H. when she was busted for DUI in 2020. The engine was running but the car was not moving. So she took the case to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

And she won.

The court reversed her guilty verdict, not because of what she was doing, but where she was.

“These facts are sufficient for us to determine that, as a matter of law, the church parking lot does not meet the definition of ‘way’ within paragraph I. See RSA 259:125, I.,” the majority wrote in their ruling released Wednesday.

“I’m thrilled about it to be quite frank,” said Ryan Russman, a defense attorney who specializes in DUI cases.

Ruddman was seen by a police officer removing a bottle of alcohol from the trunk of her car and then getting behind the driver’s seat with the engine running, according to court records. Ruddman told the office she planned to stay in the parking lot until she sobered up, but she would call for a ride if need be. Instead, she was arrested and the Department of Safety suspended her license for six months.

During a subsequent hearing before the Department of Safety in June 2020, Ruddman allowed that the arresting officer had reasonable grounds to believe she was intoxicated. However, she argued the officer did not have reasonable grounds to believe that she was in control of a vehicle “upon the ways of this state,” as is stipulated in RSA 265-A:31, II(a). 

“She argued that the church parking lot where she was arrested is not a “way” within the meaning of (the law)” the ruling states.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Barbara Hantz Marconi writes the legislature may want to act to close the DUI loophole that allows drunk parking on private property.

“In light of the majority’s opinion, the legislature may wish to clarify its intent that the expanded definition of ‘way’ in RSA 259:125,” Marconi wrote.

Russman said he hears from clients all the time that they have been arrested for DUI even though they were not driving. He hopes the ruling means police will allow for people to do the sensible thing and pull over if they have had too much to drink, without risking getting arrested.

“The law punishes people when they’ve potentially made the decision when they should not be driving,” Russman said. 

Len Harden, another defense attorney who works with many DUI clients, said people can park on the side of the road in order to sober up, but they need to be in the passenger seat or back seat while they wait.

“If they’re in the driver’s seat, they’re (in trouble)” Harden said.

Under the law, an intoxicated person behind the wheel of a parked car that is on the side of a road or in a parking lot with public access can be charged with DUI, even if their intent is to sober up or wait for a ride.

Pat Sullivan, with the New Hampshire Chiefs of Police Association, said law officers are in a difficult position when they encounter an intoxicated person in those situations. If the officer leaves them be, the driver might get into an accident or suffer carbon monoxide poisoning from the car’s exhaust. 

Russman says he suspects the legislature will act to close the loophole, but he believes police need to have more options when dealing with possibly intoxicated drivers who are trying to do the right thing. Sullivan agreed, saying officers need to have the ability to use more discretion, he said.

“It’s one of those things, we’re all about public safety. It could be better to take that person into protective custody and release them to a sober individual if possible.