Another new month, another big fat pension kiss in the mail for all the crooked “retired” Massachusetts State Police.
The latest kiss went out at midnight Friday — just ask disgraced trooper Daren DeJong of Uxbridge, who’s already pleaded guilty to robbing $14,000 from the taxpayers, although it now turns out he actually embezzled more than $63,000.
I guess he had to steal because he wasn’t making enough money with all his phony-baloney details and overtime out on the Pike — $200,416 in 2016 alone. It was such a sweet gig his son has followed him onto the most corrupt state law-enforcement agency in America. Young Nathan made a mere $96,000 last year.
Daren DeJong pleaded guilty to open and gross thievery months and months ago, yet he just got another direct deposit of $6,284 from the taxpayers he was stealing from.
The felon DeJong’s pension works out to $75,404.28 a year, according to the state comptroller.
Here’s how the staties’ grift works: the State Retirement Board doesn’t move to strip these greedy cops of their pensions until they are actually sentenced.
Even then, the board just begins the “hearing processes,” which then drags on for months and months longer, especially, it appears, if you’ve got an ex-wife who can file her own appeal to keep her share of the stolen loot.
Anyway, DeJong was finally supposed to be sentenced next week in federal court by Judge Mark Wolf, which would have belatedly started the clock ticking on stopping his payoffs, I mean payouts.
But last week the judge again postponed DeJong’s sentencing, once more ordering the feds to explore whether the staties’ multimillion-dollar overtime scam was a criminal conspiracy. Of course it was — in fact, I think an argument can be made that the entire MSP has become a racketeering enterprise as defined under the RICO statute.
DeJong can only pray that Judge Wolf keeps postponing his sentencing, because every time he does, the corrupt cop pockets another $6,284.
It’s scandalous how lightly these crooked staties are getting off. Most have gotten zero prison time. The one who got the most, a thug named Greg Raftery, was sentenced to a mere three months for stealing $51,337.
And their arrogance has been breathtaking. They show up at federal court dressed like slobs. Even the crooked Boston City Hall hack, John Lynch, wore a suit to his sentencing, and he got real prison time — 40 months.
The official number of corrupt staties in this particular overtime scam is 46, but that’s after the crooked cops destroyed and “lost” years of payroll documents that would have brought down possibly hundreds more. Defying subpoenas in a criminal probe, who do these crooked cops think they are — Hillary Clinton?
As corrupt as the Archdiocese of Boston was during the Cardinal Law years, they never destroyed the records of their hundreds of pederast priests. Yet the MSP had no qualms about obstructing justice. And then they had the gall to “find” many of the incriminating records — but not until after the statute of limitations had expired on prosecuting many more of their “brothers.”
In case you think I’m being overly cynical, here’s the description of the recent miraculous find of the smoking-gun documents by the crooked cop DeJong in his latest court filing last week:
“The MSP reported to the government it had ‘discovered’ a ‘number of boxes’ with these materials. What has not been reported is how these materials were discovered, who discovered them, why they were not previously located, or what state these materials were in when they were discovered.”
DeJong has offered to rat out a number of his crooked superiors to the state attorney general, but her office announced Friday that investigations have been concluded. How convenient!
As we all know, a Maura Healey investigation leaves no stone unturned, except the one the perps are hiding under.
So now it’s up to the state police themselves to clear out the crooks, not just in Troop E, but all the other dozens if not scores of those involved in sundry other criminal enterprises. So Friday the new colonel, Chris Mason, announced that the MSP is moving to “terminate” 22 bent cops and strip 14 others of their pensions.
You can judge how seriously the MSP takes its reform efforts by the fact that 13 of the busted troopers will remain on active duty. I kid you not. We checked Friday night, just to make sure. Apparently, credible evidence of embezzlement is not enough to take you off the job, not if you’re a state cop.
The most encouraging thing about Friday’s press conference was that Col. Mason appeared in civilian garb, rather than one of those preposterous Col. Klink-like get-ups favored by his predecessors — the sort of Halloween-style costumes you wouldn’t wear to a Halloween party.
So now the “termination process” begins, after which comes the “hearing process” at the Retirement Board, as the busted troopers continue to hang out down in Florida, living large on their $100,000-plus pensions.
Deep-sea fishing in the morning, 18 holes of golf in the afternoon, getting hammered at Happy Hour at the local wings bar, stumbling over to Publix to play Powerball — all the crooked troopers wasting away in Margaritaville, on our dime, forever and ever, amen.
Who says crime doesn’t pay? It sure does if you’re a Massachusetts state cop.