Latest statie scandal adds to foul stench in AIRE

After so many scandals in such a short time, the Massachusetts State Police are finally figuring out how to get ahead of the bad-news curve.

So yesterday they held a press conference, which they facebooked, in addition to the live TV coverage, announcing that 20 members of Troop E, the Turnpike crew, are going to have “duty status hearings” in a widening overtime scandal.

So far, so good. But what’s up with this “duty status hearing” BS?

Whatever happened to, “fired?” Or at least “suspended – without pay.”

Even better, “stripped of fat six-figure pensions coming to them at age 50 or 55.”

Still better: “Trooper, you have the right to remain silent….”

The exact phrase used by MSP Col. Kerry Gilpin was “potential changes in their duty status,”
which sounds like a slap on the wrist to me, even if it is a prelude to ousting their snouts from the public trough.

Col. Gilpin also told the press that, “Integrity, honesty and accountability are core values of the MA State Police.”

Surely she meant to say, “were.”

This latest MSP scandal, which the Herald told you was coming a couple of weeks ago, is all about bogus OT. Apparently, for every X number of troopers who are out on overtime, a “superior officer” is required, wink wink nudge nudge. According to sources, the rank-and-file were on the job, but in many cases, their bosses just put in for the OT but never did anything.

They called this racket, I mean effort, the Accident and Injury Reduction Effort (AIRE) patrols. The primary goal for some of the higher-ranking staties was apparently to concoct OT shifts out of thin AIRE.

Gilpin said the probe will be extended to every other troop in the state – I see many job openings ahead in the MSP, or there would be, anyway, if the Commonwealth hadn’t long since degenerated into a Third World banana republic.

Every bogus MSP shift should be good for one count of mail or wire fraud, five years per. Or are these bums in jodhpurs going to get to ride off into the sunset with those obscene pensions?

These staties should be treated no differently than the corrupt Quincy cop Thomas Corliss. He was found guilty last year of stealing $8211 from the City of Quincy. At his trial, the feds described him as “nothing more than a thief in uniform.” Corliss is now locked up at the Club Fed in Lewisburg PA until Sept. 1. His BOP # is 99753-038.

If the laws can send a bent Quincy cop to prison, why not all these crooked staties?

More and more, the MSP is looking like the FBI, and that is not a good thing, given the endemic corruption among the G-men during the sordid Mueller-Comey-McCabe-Obama era.

One thing that puzzled me about yesterday’s woe-is-me MSP presser is that I thought this was a federal probe. Surely federal funds were misappropriated in a gigantic scam of this nature on an interstate highway, I-90.

Plus, the US attorney in Boston is a Republican. But Gilpin kept saying that all the evidence will go to the state attorney general, Maura “Hold It” Healey, a Democrat, and that her office “will review and take whatever action they determine to be warranted.”

As Gilpin well knows, unless President Donald J. Trump personally signed the overtime sheets, Hold It Healey has absolutely zero interest in prosecuting any of her fellow Democrat hacks. Professional courtesy and all that.

Remember the corrupt drug addict in the Amherst state lab, Sonja Farak? What did Hold It do to the two female assistant AG’s who were accused by Judge Richard Carey of committing “a fraud upon the court” by covering up evidence of Farak’s misdeeds and railroading innocent men into prison?

Healy did nothing. Both her crooked payroll patriots now have new six-figure hack jobs, one at the state treasurer’s office, the other at the Suffolk County courthouse.

Bottom line: if you want to hide something real good, just stick it in one of Hold It Healey’s law books. If Healey is in charge of this probe, those 20 staties might as well be booking their Jet Blue flights to Florida to start pricing their new retirement homes in gated golf-course communities.

It seemed only appropriate that yesterday’s MSP press conference should also be attended by Daniel Bennett, the secretary of Public Safety. After all, he is accused in a civil suit in federal court by two honest state troopers of “participating in multiple felonies, as part of an overarching and far-reaching conspiracy.”

Bennett was shocked, shocked. I guess it takes one to know one.

Sadly, Bennett’s boss, Gov. Charlie “Tall Deval” Baker was MIA, as he always is when a scandal breaks in his administration, which is almost daily of late. Maybe he was having lunch at the Wellesley Country Club with his hack cronies from the Department of Revenue.

As for Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, well, she was probably doing some more selfies with Leigha Genduso, who became a state trooper after admitting to perjury, drug dealing, money laundering and income tax evasion.

Leigha Genduso, by the way, could not be reached for comment. Nor could Richard McKeon, Francis Hughes, Susan Anderson, Daniel Risteen, “Big Irish” or Jonathan Brown.

Every day the State Police are looking more and more like “The Departed.” And now even more will be departing. Good riddance.