In a YouTube video getting a lot of traffic this month, Old Saybrook Police Chief Michael Spera appears before the town finance board, complaining about a vote against a new police boat.

"I know you all personally," Spera says in the video to board members who voted against the boat. "You should be absolutely ashamed." It seemed like a chilling scolding, coming from the chief of police in the town where the board members live.

But the worst of the chief's public fit - he rose from the audience to take the floor - came when he reminded everyone that he is untouchable.

"I am your police chief. State statute protects me. I ain't going anywhere anytime soon," the chief told the volunteer citizens on the board. He might as well have pulled a gun from a holster and waved it around.

Wow. This is the kind of police ego you get when you have a state law that makes police chiefs, well, essentially politically immune. They have more job security, it seems, than tenured college professors.

The odd immunity that established police chief kingdoms - Old Saybrook's is run by someone who was on an aggressive schedule of raises throughout the recession, while earning overtime - was created by the Connecticut General Assembly in 1983.

Lawmakers inserted language requiring "just cause" when municipalities want to fire the police chief. Lawyers say it is a very high legal bar, one which no municipality has yet met.

It's one that allows police chiefs to tell citizens, with some impunity: "I ain't going anywhere."

When you look back on the legislative record from the time the "just cause" language was added, you can see there was a lot of hand-wringing about the notion of political influence over police departments.

But, hey, it's a democracy. Aren't voters supposed to have some input into who runs their government? That would be especially true, it seems to me, of the people with guns and the power of arrest.

We make sure, after all, that the nation's military answers to elected leaders. Generals are held accountable.

Here in Connecticut, state police commanders must answer to the government. Why do we think police chiefs should be appointed for life?

The most frustrating use of the chief-for-life law has been in New London, where Mayor Daryl Finizio has essentially locked the unloved chief, Margaret Ackley, up in the city's attic.

Finizio, who has a tortured, roller-coaster history with the police chief - remember when they celebrated his election with a hug on Bank Street? - put her on paid leave in July.

Finizio said at the time he was starting a formal investigation into the chief's conduct, presumably in search of the just cause to make a dismissal stick.

So here we are, almost half a year into the chief's paid leave, and there is no resolution in sight, no firing. Never mind that she was publicly missing long before the suspension, while the department has been run competently by the next in line.

That's a lot of wasted chief salary.

Who knows whether the chief will remain locked away in New London's attic through the next election, or whether Finizio will be able to silence that rattling skeleton.

But there seems little question that lawmakers need to revisit the chief-for-life law and free Connecticut voters from the tyranny of police chiefs who believe they can't be fired.

I know Connecticut has a lot of excellent police chiefs. Old Saybrook's may even be among them.

But shouldn't they all be held directly accountable for their work?

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com

Twitter: @DavidCollinsct