BIDDEFORD — City Attorney Keith Jacques has sent a letter to Matt Lauzon’s attorney, Walter McKee, claiming Lauzon, whose allegations of child sex abuse against a former Biddeford police officer are being investigated by the state Attorney General’s Office, has ignored repeated requests to stop communicating with city officials directly when, according to Jacques, he should be communicating with them through his lawyer.

“As you know, since Mr. Lauzon has retained you as his counsel and he has ‘guaranteed’ that he will sue the City, its elected officials and employees, Mr. Lauzon’s repeated attempts to communicate directly with me and my client are inappropriate,”

Jacques wrote to McKee in a letter dated Aug. 11. “I again request, therefore, that all such communications immediately stop.”

Lauzon, however, maintains the communication is justified and that city officials have at times reached out to him directly.

“Ironically, just today a city official proactively reached out to me and copied a second city official,” Lauzon said in an email Monday. “On one hand they are telling me I can’t contact them and on the other hand they are contacting me.”

Similarly, City Councilor Bob Mills said in an email Monday that sometimes councilors do not get all the information that they need, and “it is helpful getting information directly.”

In a separate letter, which Jacques sent to McKee on Monday, Jacques said Lauzon has continued to contact city officials through what he called “inappropriate channels of communication.”

Jacques alluded to recent emails in which Lauzon sent city officials excerpts from an unattributed statement that Lauzon claims supports suspending the current police chief or putting him on paid administrative leave while the state conducts its investigation – an action Lauzon has championed for months, arguing that the chief ’s continued presence deters more alleged abuse victims from coming forward.

“Most recently, (Lauzon) has forwarded redacted excerpts of a purported 16 page statement from an individual identified as a former police officer,” wrote Jacques. “The segments provided are obviously incomplete and unsigned. The identity of the former police officer is not provided. By sending such fragments to City officials, the purported ‘evidence’ in support of his demand that the Chief of Police be placed on leave or suspended is both incomplete and misdirected.”

Jacques went on to ask McKee for the complete, signed statement and also urged Lauzon to provide the statement in its entirety to the Attorney General’s Office.

But Lauzon said in the email that multiple city councilors have already read the entire statement, while other city officials have chosen not to.

In a Facebook post Monday, which he also emailed to Jacques, Lauzon said he did not send the entire statement to city officials out of respect for the former officer’s privacy, but added, “I have long been offering to sit with the entire council and mayor (individually or as a whole) to let them read the full document.”

In his initial response to Jacques’ letters, which he also emailed to the Journal Tribune, McKee only addressed Jacques’ request to have Lauzon send the entire statement to the Attorney General’s Office, arguing that the AG’s Office would essentially do nothing to address the issue of the police chief ’s continued authority.

“Indeed, the Chief ’s actions – and inactions – are a separate matter that should be dealt with by having an independent, formal investigation,” wrote McKee. “This is not unique and is done regularly and routinely with countless municipalities in identical situations to that facing Biddeford.”

Last week, Mayor Alan Casavant announced in a YouTube video that in July he sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in part asking for her opinion on whether such an investigation should take place, but Lynch has not yet responded.

— Staff Writer Angelo J. Verzoni can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 329 or averzoni@journaltribune.com.