I didn't really expect to hear back from an email I sent to New London police Chief Margaret Ackley this week, asking if she had a few minutes to talk about her return to service.

And, of course, it's fine that I didn't. The chief has no obligation to return email or phone messages from a newspaper columnist.

But it is more troubling that she has not chosen to return any other calls from The Day's newsroom, after Mayor Daryl Finizio abruptly ended her strange paid leave, a job suspension that lasted almost a year, and ordered her back to work last week.

She is, after all, the city's police chief — essentially a job for life, if you take the state statute granting Connecticut police chiefs job protection as literally as Chief Ackley and her attorney do.

So, chief, do the job. You owe the community some accounting of your agenda for community policing and public safety going forward. You do that by taking calls from the local newspaper.

You don't have to answer questions about your lawsuit against the mayor and the city. In fact, you don't have to specifically answer any questions that you don't want to.

But you have a responsibility to make yourself accessible, to reach out and speak to the community you are supposed to serve. Tell us your plans.

It is part of the job.

The irony here is that your lawyer filed a motion on your behalf last summer complaining that the mayor had ordered you to stop talking to the media, to the City Council and to city boards and agencies.

The motion asked for the court to step in and lift that gag order, to make the mayor start treating you more seriously and give you his personal phone number.

The mayor, in ordering you back to work — as strange a development, I know, as his putting you on paid vacation in the first place — noted that you are "free to make any comments, to anyone you choose, in your absolute discretion."

The mayor also gave you his personal cellphone number.

So, we all want to know: What was it you wanted to say when the mayor ordered you to stop talking and you went to court to remove the gag?

Can't you pick up the phone and answer a reporter's questions about what's next for the police department that you direct, what's next for public safety in the city now that there's been a changing of the guard again at police headquarters?

Public communication has never been your strong suit.

It seems to me your long public silence after the brutal public slaying of Matthew Chew in 2010, in which you let stand an erroneous department statement that the killing was drug related, when in fact it was random street crime, was probably grounds then for your firing. Killers were on the loose and the community was lied to.

But that was then, and today, as you remain in command, the community needs to hear what the police chief has to say.

You and your lawyer complained in the motion to have the court give you more authority that the mayor, at a meeting, once turned his back on you, treating you "like a petulant child."

Well, now you're back. No one's back is turned. We're listening.

You are suing the city to collect a retirement deal you say was denied you after the mayor signed it.

The litigation eventually will determine how much you may or may not be owed from that failed retirement deal. But in the meantime, you are on the payroll as chief.

Answer your phone. Speak up. Don't be afraid. You and your department have the most guns.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

D.collins@theday.com

Twitter: @DavidCollinsct