It’s a robbery! Of justice

It was the biggest Mass. State Police scandal ever … until all the rest of them since then.

Still, the attempt in 2017 by assorted corrupt hacks at the MSP and the Worcester County district attorney’s office to alter an arrest report involving the hack daughter of one of their hack judge pals who used to “work” at the DA’s office was quite a story… until the hackerama got their brooms out.

And now it’s finally over, and the verdict is in.

Nothing to see here folks, move along.

The corruption case was officially swept under the rug earlier this week by the State Ethics Commission. The agency announced it was dismissing all charges “after finding that it had not been proved that they (the hacks in question) violated the conflict of interest law by their actions relating to the police report of the arrest of a judge’s daughter.”

Those who were officially cleared include Worcester DA Joe Early Jr., the son of a bust-out deceased Congressman. Early makes $191,000 a year. Also acquitted was his assistant, a dead judge’s son named Jeffrey Travers who according to the state comptroller makes $190,000 a year.

Also found not guilty was the former MSP Col. Richard McKeon. He resigned in disgrace after the attempted cover-up was exposed and now collects a state pension of $171,597 a year. Also forced out in the scandal was MSP Maj. Susan Anderson, who now subsists on a yearly kiss in the mail of $142,137.

Do you see where I’m going with this? The appalling behavior by all these payroll patriots has had absolutely zero consequences. None of them missed a single paycheck, and all are indeed making more money than ever before.

This is life in the hackerama.

The Ground Zero of this original State Police scandal is the Worcester District Attorney’s office. Judge Timothy Bibaud of the Dudley District Court was a career coat holder there before taking early retirement as a judge.

His daughter is Ali Bibaud, a second-generation hack who’d been both a Mass Pike toll taker and an employee of that same DA’s office.

In 2017 after her OUI arrest she made some rather embarrassing comments about her father the judge’s potential reaction. She also went into X-rated detail about what she’d done to obtain the money to buy the drugs she had been consuming.

An honest state trooper wrote up the incident, including all of Ali’s comments. When the report reached the judge’s pals at the courthouse, the bleep hit the fan, and the attempt to cover up the scandal was immediately undertaken.

Rather than go over those dreary details, let’s look at who else was involved, and how handsomely they’ve been rewarded for their disgraceful behavior.

Remember, Col. McKeon used to work in the Worcester DA’s office. At the time the executive secretary of public safety overseeing the MSP was Daniel Bennett, another former Worcester County hack ADA. Like McKeon, Bennett has since retired, on a pension of $53,999 a year.

He now runs a year-old firm, Comprehensive Investigations and Consulting (CIC), that gets a lot of public contracts, like investigating the ousted Brookline police chief as well as assorted sex scandals at hack-infested UMass.

One of Bennett’s partners in CIC is one Kerry Gilpin. After McKeon was ousted in the scandal, she became the new colonel, until she too was forced out in the unending torrent of MSP corruption. In addition to all the dough she’s making with Bennett, Gilpin is grabbing a state pension of $178,940 a year.

One of Bennett’s assistants in the EOPS during the Bibaud-Early scandal was one Jennifer Quealley, yet another ex-Worcester ADA. During the McKeon reign of error, Quealley was tasked with providing “strategic leadership to the State Police.”

After she and her husband strategically donated $3,350 to Gov. Charlie Baker, she too is now a judge, making $207,855 a year.

That’s the pay Bibaud is still making as well. His clerk magistrate, by the way, is Jen Caissie, who used to represent Worcester on the Governor’s Council that confirms judges. She now collects $174,532 a year.

In the scandal over the attempted cover-up, some of McKeon’s dodgy deputies were forced out. One of them was Francis Hughes, who now makes ends meet on a state pension of $176,298 a year.

Also checking out of the MSP was an extra in “The Departed,” the famous movie about, among other things, police corruption in Massachusetts. I refer of course to Daniel Risteen, who was very close to fired state trooper Leigha Genduso.

Genduso, you may recall, was an admitted mob moll, perjurer, drug dealer and money launderer who somehow was still hired as a trooper after copping to all of the above under oath before a federal grand jury.

Another nationwide search!

Risteen now collects a pension of $162,248 a year, and has since been associated with the very ethical Teamsters Local 25 out of Charlestown.

This week’s brooming by the State Ethics Commission decision comes as the old hackerama prepares to give way to the new hackerama that will assume power after Maura Healey crushes the hapless invisible Republican candidate for governor, Punxsutawney Geoff Diehl.

You might say the Ethics Commission is clearing the decks of the old scandals to make room for all the new ones to come.

It’s like that famous scene at the end of The Godfather, when Michael Corleone tells his brother-in-law:

“Today I settled all family business, so don’t tell me you’re innocent. Admit what you did.”

The difference between the Corleones and the hackerama is, everyone here still claims they’re innocent, nobody admits nothing, and nobody ever gets two in the hat.

One final note: this week lame duck Gov. Charlie Baker, who placidly presided over all these scandals, nominated a new judge for the Appeals Court.

Charlie’s latest nominee is Christopher Hodgens. His current $153,500-a-year job is, wait for it, assistant district attorney in Worcester County, working for Early and Travers and a former colleague of almost every shiftless layabout mentioned above.

The more things change….