Massachusetts State Police not making the grade

This culture of corruption and cover-up in the Massachusetts State Police must be eradicated, once and for all.

Who do these jack-booted thugs think they are — the FBI?

Our local multi-millionaire highway robbers need to go back to the pizza-delivery gigs they had before they got into the rackets.  And that’s what the MSP is now, organized crime, a massive racketeering enterprise of grifts, shakedowns, gun-trafficking, drug deals, drunk driving, girlfriend-beating, embezzlement, etc.

And if a trooper is busted, most of the time the only “punishment” he gets is a lifetime six-figure annual pension at age 45 or 50, tax-free if he can scam a “disability,” which most of these sticky-fingered crooks can.

C’mon down, ex-Trooper Matthew Kelley, late of the “gang unit.” I think that means he was in the gang.

Kelley’s tawdry career ended in ignominy in early May, after he suffered what the brass at first described as a “medical emergency.”

This week, almost three months after the Herald began asking the State Police to confirm what we already knew as fact, they finally copped to the fact that Kelley had been dishonorably discharged for “improper storage of contraband.”

But at first they wouldn’t even say what the contraband was. Finally they admitted, “the contraband was narcotics.”

So Kelley had a “medical emergency,” after which he was fired for “improper storage” of narcotics. Hmmmm, I wonder where exactly Trooper Kelley was improperly storing the narcotics.

The Herald knew all this almost instantly — there are still some honest troopers out there, and they know how to get in touch with us.

If these honest cops weren’t keeping us (and you) informed, I guarantee that now-ex-troopers like the Foxboro Flasher Andrew Patterson, and Dwayne “Who Stole My Glock While I Was Shacking Up in Providence?” Correia would still be on the road making $200,000-plus a year.

On Kelley, we just needed an official confirmation from the State Police. That was three months ago.

The troopers’ stonewalling on Kelley began as soon as the first inquiry was made. The “medical emergency” was grudgingly acknowledged by a hack flack, with a one-sentence addendum:

“I have nothing further to add.”

We began filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, which by law are supposed to be answered in 10 days. When the phone didn’t ring, we knew it was the State Police.

Kelley vanished from the state payroll immediately. May turned into June. We filed more FOIA’s, got more non-responses. At the end of June, we learned that Kelley had, ahem, resigned, which seemed a rather harsh punishment for a “medical emergency.”

We asked the MSP to confirm his termination. No response. We filed more FOIA’s, to no avail.

As recklessly lawless as the MSP has become, they sometimes include a formal notice of dishonorable discharge in the orders of the day. Kelley, though, got a good, thorough leaving alone.

We kept making calls, perusing court documents. We assumed that Kelley had made arrests, and that at some point even the sleazy MSP was going to have to let the perps he’d lugged know about his “medical emergency” and subsequent termination.

If you’re a real reporter — and there aren’t many left — you know what to do next. You google Kelley’s name, find out who he’s been arresting. Once you have the defendants’ names, you get the docket numbers of their cases and pull the latest filings.

It may take a while, but eventually you may hit pay dirt.

It happened last week, in an obscure discovery motion filed July 26 in Bristol Superior Court. The attorney general listed 79 different pieces of evidence in a criminal case and then at the bottom of page 4 dropped this news:

“Please also be advised that Matthew Kelley, who was dishonorably discharged from the MSP on June 28, 2021, participated in the car stop….”

Bingo!

So it was finally public record. But the MSP asked for still more time to confirm — as if three months since of stonewalling and foot-dragging since the “medical emergency” wasn’t enough.

We have more questions about other staties for the MSP. This fired probationary trooper Nidu Andrade — to whom exactly were his “inappropriate texts sent?” Was it someone he met on the job? Under what circumstances?

When will you release Andrade’s actual texts? We need some more comic gold from you bent grossly overpaid clowns.

Another question: What percentage of state troopers applying for “disability” are approved? (The over-under line in Vegas is 100%.)

Does the very ethical MSP use the same medical board as the rest of the state? If not, why not?

Do any state troopers (retired and/or current) have any children who are about to be tried in criminal cases in Suffolk County?

Should the academy at New Braintree add more courses for the recruits, teaching them, for example, how a GPS can be used against them in a court of law if they’re embezzling federal overtime money?

Also, shouldn’t MSP recruits be instructed in the latest trends in drug trafficking, namely, the use of pill presses to produce counterfeit prescription tablets, and how what you take to be a safe FDA-approved opioid might in fact be fentanyl, which could lead to an unforeseen medical emergency?

By the way, Gov. Charlie Baker vows to get to the bottom of this pandemic of corruption among his dear pals on the State Police.

Rest assured, the governor will leave no stone unturned, except the ones all his crooked cops are hiding under.