It’s great to be a cop – at least a politically connected cop.
Of course, if you’re a cop who’s not wired, you might as well be wearing a red MAGA cap, because they’re going to throw the book at you, or at least try to make your life miserable for a while.
That’s my first takeaway from reading the 318-page report from the new MA Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission.
It details more than 3000 disciplinary proceedings against cops, and once again, the old saying seems to apply:
“In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.”
First thing that’s obvious: the Mass. State Police motto should be “Omerta” – silence.
I heard this spring from a guy who’s been all tangled up in a family domestic dispute with a state cop. He complained to what is called the Office of Professional Integrity and Accountability (don’t laugh; not a joke!) claiming that this trooper had been running his family’s license plates, compulsively.
The guy showed me the official letter he got years later from MSP, confirming 13 – 13! – unlawful, illegal searches.
I looked up this cop on the POST site – “Abuse of position, use of equipment, CORI violation, Policy, Procedure, Operations.”
His punishment for harassing this guy and his family: “Loss of Time Off.”
So far this year this guy who ran 13 illegal CJIS searches has made $148,481. Death, where is thy sting?
Here’s another statie I came across, whose name didn’t ring a bell with me. What jumped out were these three words: “submitting false timesheets.” This was in 2018, when the MSP’s vast RICO conspiracy out on the Turnpike was busted.
Dozens of corrupt Troop E cops were filing fake time sheets and grabbing money from the feds. This is known as embezzling, or more colloquially, stealing.
Again, remember, these are not random charges on the website. These are what the POST Commission describes as “Sustained Allegations and Disciplinary Actions.”
A handful of sticky-fingered Troop E felons went to prison. Even worse, some had to pay back the money they stole!
And what did this trooper get? “Suspension, 30 days plus.”
Wow! I looked him up on the state comptroller’s website. Yes, he vanished from the payroll for the entire year of 2019, but apparently embezzlement is no big deal to the MSP.
Last year the timesheet-falsifying trooper was back up to $245,000. So far for 2023 he’s made $160,482.
I’m not sure these are the sorts of messages the wokesters thought would be delivered by their new website. Or maybe they did. So often, though, these new “reform” agencies just turn out to be good dumping grounds for otherwise unemployable hacks.
Think Stephanie Everett, three-time unsuccessful candidate for office in Boston. Then she was handed a no-heavy-lifting sinecure at a City Hall hack holding-pen called the Office of Police Accountability and Transparency.
Like the POST Commission, this was set up in the wake of the nationwide “mostly peaceful” looting-murder-arson sprees by thugs from the non-working classes after a career felon on fentanyl died in police custody in the Midwest in 2020.
Everett’s fellow hacks finally appointed Stephanie to a vacancy that she might be able to hold onto in an election – Suffolk County Register of Probate. It pays $174,000 a year.
Here’s another MSP story from POST. A combat military veteran with a spotless record who refused the vaccine is listed as “terminated.” He was removed from duty by a superior officer who had himself been charged earlier for allegedly sticking his wife’s head in an unflushed toilet.
The combat veteran who refused the unsafe jab remains off the job. The trooper who was charged with abusing his wife made $293,000 last year and this year took a buyout – by April he walked out the door with $170,000.
His name, of course, does not appear on the POST list. It’s good to have friends – or relatives – in high places.
Speaking of which, there’s a Boston Police Department guy who briefly quit to go to, well, I won’t mention the law-enforcement agency. He didn’t last long, but he was connected, so he came back. Only problem was, after returning to the BPD, he forgot to mention his, uh, break in service while under oath.
Now, he can’t go out on the street, because he can’t testify, lest he be asked by a defense lawyer about his “career” at the other agency. But he has a close relative (who himself won a photo finish with a federal grand jury) so not only is he back on the job, he’s been promoted.
I only mention this because this guy with the infamous hack relative is not on the POST list either. I know, it’s because he was never disciplined – again, it’s not what you know, but who you know.
So obviously, the list has its limitations.
On the other hand, it is amusing, if you’ve got time to randomly peruse the site. I am fascinated, for instance, by the crime wave that seems to have engulfed the MIT police department – three instances of “failure to abide by Institute Parking Policy.”
You can be disciplined for almost anything, if your uncle or cousin wasn’t once the… oh never mind. Here’s a list of what cops get punished or written up for:
“Discourtesy… explicit text to female colleague… rudeness… insubordination… rumors or malicious gossip… conduct unbecoming… poked officer in forehead with finger… mask violation….”
A Worcester officer “called dispatcher a ‘bleeping’ moron over the air… threatened to shoot gas comp. empl.”
That was a female, by the way. She also “berated a citizen.”
But perhaps the most serious offense I’ve come across so far involved an Abington police officer alleged to have made “an offensive Facebook post regarding Town’s Board of Selectmen.”
Now that’s a real no-no. Any of the other above misbehaviors, the powers that be can – and obviously do – look the other way.
But “offensive Facebook posts” about local politicians? Forget about it. And one last rule of thumb – the smaller the town, the thinner the politicians’ skin. Some things never change.
(Order Howie’s new book, “Paper Boy: Read All About It!” HERE.)