A nine-person jury has begun deliberations in a former Maine State Police trooper’s federal whistleblower trial in Portland.
After five days of testimony, the panel will decide whether to believe George Loder’s claim that his bosses pulled him from a federal task force and then denied him another detective job because he spoke up against data-sharing practices he believed violated federal law.
His state police supervisors, meanwhile, have reiterated to jurors that Loder only brought forward those allegations after they informed him they would be transferring him to a new job at the agency’s intelligence unit that he clearly did not want. They later denied him a spot in the southern major crimes unit because of a credibility issue, not as retaliation, they said.
While the verdict hinges on Loder’s retaliation claim, it is the spying allegation at the heart of the trial that captured the public’s attention when he filed suit in May 2020. Civil liberties advocates have long criticized the Maine Information and Analysis Center and other so-called fusion centers across the country for surveilling the public, illegally or not. Maine Democratic lawmakers unsuccessfully tried to defund the unit in 2021.
The long-awaited trial has put a magnifying glass on a unit that is used to fending off accusations of spying and secrecy. State police officials have testified that they aren’t breaking any laws by storing personally identifying information, which often comes into the unit as a...
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