Jon Stone is a New Hampshire State Representative and a former Claremont City Councillor. He also holds appointed positions in Claremont city government. He owns a gun shop called Black Op Arms. He is also a former police officer.
He lost his job on the Claremont police force after he was investigated for an inappropriate relastionship with a sixteen-year-old girl that started when she was fifteen. He had been seeing the girl for months, claiming she was a drug informant, though he never provided any information from her. While there is no evidence of him molesting her, the girl said they were planning to have sex when she turned seventeen. He was ordered not to contact her, but ignored the order. He was suspended.
He responded to this investigation by threatening a mass shooting of his fellow officers and by threatening to rape the police chief’s wife and children and then kill him. He was investigated for this and was found to have lied during the investigation. He was terminated. Appealed and by mutual agreement, he was allowed to resign and to have his records expunged. They were, but were retained elsewhere and brought out after a court battle by reporters for their release.
Both the investigation into his relationship with the minor child and into his threats of violence concluded that he was lying to investigators and both recommended he be fired.
So he got a job as a prison guard and opened up a gun store. Then was elected to City Council and to the State House of Representatives. Since the information was released, he has been removed from his committee positions by the Clarement City Council.
- InDepthNH: Documents: Rep. Jon Stone Threatened Mass Shooting and Rape After Investigation
- NH Public Radio: Reports show Claremont lawmaker made violent threats following 2006 police probe
- Valley News: Claremont residents call on City Council to remove ex-officer from appointed posts
![Colleagues alleged threats by ex-officer - Valley News [30 Day Embargo] (West Lebanon, NH) - April 9, 2024 - page 1
April 9, 2024 | Valley News [30 Day Embargo] (West Lebanon, NH) | JOHN LIPPMAN | Page 1
Valley News Staff Writer
CLAREMONT — A state legislator who boasts of being “tough on crime” when he was a Claremont cop in the
early 2000s openly talked about killing the city’s police chief and raping his wife, and staging a mass shooting
at the police station, according to the officer’s employment records that were ordered released by the New
Hampshire Supreme Court.
The records also detail how Jonathan Stone, a state legislator representing a House district made up of
Claremont and eight other communities, was found to have repeatedly socialized with a 16-year-old girl while
on-and-off duty, including discussions about going to bars together when she was old enough to drink legally.
The revelations are contained in Stone’s police department disciplinary records which he fought for years to
keep private.
Last month, the state’s highest court ruled Stone’s records are not exempt from public disclosure.
According to his file, Stone failed a polygraph exam administered to him by investigators, and investigators
said his answers to specific questions were marked by “selective memory” as in some instances he gave
detailed answers while to others he replied, “I don’t recall that” or “not that I recall.”
The documents — portions of which are redacted to protect witnesses’ identities — paint a portrait of a police
officer who repeatedly threatened violence against his colleagues. Fellow police officers expressed concern
Stone could go “postal,” with one even telling investigators that following a confrontation with Stone he
stayed up “late at night with a loaded shotgun” listening for cars, afraid that Stone would attack him and his
family.
“If he gets fired, people are afraid he will go postal,” one detective told investigators during the 2006
investigation that had been opened into Stone’s behavior. Top brass of the Claremont Police Department had
been informed that Stone was threatening violent attacks against then-police chief Alexander Scott, his family
and other police officers.
“Generally, people think he is crazy and wonder why he is a police officer,” the investigation paraphrased the
detective reporting.
This week, Stone’s attorney, Peter Decato, noted that Stone had resigned under a “negotiated agreement”
with the city and that statements made by fellow police officers reporting Stone’s behavior when he was a
police officer have never been adjudicated.
“Jon Stone’s personnel records go back 17-plus years. They are full of unproven ‘factual allegations,’ ” Decato
said via email on Monday. “Whatever is disclosed should have a very large asterisk next to it.”
“The City of Claremont did not terminate Jon’s employment; rather, the City of Claremont found it to their
advantage to enter into an agreement with Jon. As a result of that agreement, Jon resigned. The advantage to
the City of Claremont is that they didn’t have to prove what is written in these records,” Decato said.
Stone did not respond to an email seeking comment on Monday.
Democrats, hoping to leverage the tawdry revelations in Stone’s personnel records to flip the slim GOP
majority in the New Hampshire House, wasted no time in denouncing Stone, a Republican who in the past
has expressed support for GOP front-runner Donald Trump, as unfit to serve in public office.
“The disturbing report on State Representative Jon Stone’s dangerous and out-of-control behavior — which he
tried to hide from the public for years — raises serious concerns about Stone’s position on the House
Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee and leaves no doubt that Stone is unfit to serve the people of
Claremont,” Ray Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said in a statement on Monday.
The revelations about the internal investigation into Stone quickly went viral across social media over the
weekend after Damien Fisher, the journalist who challenged city officials to release Stone’s records under the
state’s right-to-know law and who was later joined in his legal fight by the American Civil Liberties Union of
New Hampshire and the Manchester Union Leader newspaper, was the first to report the contents of the
records via InDepthNH on Friday evening.
Scott, who retired from the Claremont Police Department in 2017 and is now an attorney in Claremont, said
on Monday that “the documents speak for themselves. I really have nothing to add.”
He noted that, “this is something that happened 18 years ago.”
The 2006 investigation, launched after a Claremont Police Department captain reported to his superiors that
he had received “information from a source who requested to remain anonymous,” that Stone was making
statements to fellow officers about killing the chief and assaulting his wife in addition to “terrorizing
comments about backing a truck up to the door of the Police Department and killing employees inside.”
Stone had “spoken of a list” of people to kill in addition to a list of people to call to warn them to stay away
from the office; he was observed by numerous department personnel to act as if he was screwing on a
silencer attachment to an assault rifle, which was seen as a threatening gesture, the investigation said.
The internal investigation was based on interviews with 18 people, 15 of whom were Claremont Police
Department personnel. Of those 15, the vast majority told investigators that they had heard Stone
threatening physical violence and it unsettled them.
All the Claremont Police Department witnesses are identified by name in the investigation report.
The personnel records released by the city are comprised of two investigations: one into Stone’s comments
made to colleagues threatening violence; and a second into Stone’s socializing both through texting, phone
calls and meetings with a 16-year-old girl who was being referred to as a “rat” by schoolmates who were
aware of her relationship of Stone.
Stone met the teenager numerous times, investigators found. The teenager, when interviewed by
investigators, denied the more salacious rumors about the relationship that were circulating among high
school students.
But acknowledged “a plan they have when she turns 18. The plan for when she turns 18 is that she and
Officer Stone would go to Canada where it will be legal for her to drink. They have also spoke about going to a
bar when she turns 21,” the investigation found.
In his interview with police investigators, Stone acknowledged that he talked with the teenager girl frequently
— sometimes up to an hour or more — but said every time they met she was always with friends and they
never met alone.
When investigators asked Stone about the nature of his relations with the 16-year-old girl, he described it as a
friendship. He said the plan to go with her to Canada to drink when she turns 18 was the girl’s idea and that
he “plays along or agrees with it with laughter,” the report said.
“When asked if going to a bar when a 16-year-old person turns 18 is an odd conversation, (Stone said) that it’s
just a general conversation, nothing set down,” investigators reported.
Investigators, however, reported that Stone and the girl had conversations about sex with the girl sharing
with Stone details about her sex life and “being cheated on while being in a relationship,” according to the
internal report.
Stone also acknowledged that the teenage girl had told him she loved him but that Stone “stated that when
she talks like that it is more as a friend and it does not concern him, but then admitted she may have a crush
on him,” the investigation said.
Both investigations — the one into Stone’s threats of violence and the other into his relationship with the
teenage girl — concluded that Stone had not been truthful in his responses to investigators’ questions and
recommended his “removal from office,” according to the documents. Contact John Lippman at
jlippman@vnews.com.
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