‘Personal reasons’ don’t merit free pass

Now it turns out that State Trooper Leigha Genduso was breaking even more rules, in addition to the perjury, drug dealing, money laundering and income tax evasion that she admitted to under a grant of immunity in federal court before she was welcomed with open arms onto the MSP.

Genduso’s “employee misconduct” was running the numbers of license plates for her own personal reasons. The cops call running plate numbers Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) inquiries, and cops can’t do them without a law-enforcement reason. Any use of CJIS inquiries for personal use is, the MSP ruled in May 2016, is “a violation of Department Rules and Regulations.”

But not to worry, the onetime gangster’s moll who then became the main squeeze of a top-ranking Statie had her latest bit of wrongdoing broomed – again!

“Trooper Genduso was interviewed and she explained the reasons she conducted these three inquiries,” wrote Det. Lt. Steven Harrigan. “Her reasons were not malicious at any level, nevertheless, they were conducted for personal reasons and not for official police business.”

Harrigan’s italics. By the way, he made $203,401.83 last year. He sent his report to the CO of Internal Affairs, Capt. David DeBuccia, who made $182,935.37 last year.

“Trooper Genduso was straightforward and she made no attempts to downplay her actions.”

Why would she? She knew the case was going to be swept under the rug, no matter what she did. She was connected. And it wasn’t like she was working for an on-the-level police force. She was “working” for the MSP.

Does the name Mel Steele ring a bell? He was a Boston PD cop, in the gang unit, and he ran a license plate for a gangbanger. One, not three. But in 2015, he was forced to resign and plead guilty to one count of lying to a federal agent.

Steele’s underlying crime? After running that single license plate for a member of the Academy Homes Street Gang that he knew, Steele lied about it. The judge slapped him with a year’s probation and a $2,000 fine and his career was destroyed.

At his sentencing, Steele told the judge that his actions “didn’t come from a malicious place.”

There’s that word again – malicious. Steele, a black guy, runs one plate in a non-malicious way and his life is destroyed. Genduso, a hot-looking gangster’s moll-turned-MSP brass’-main-squeeze, runs three plates and… nothing happens.

Zip, zero, nada. She goes back on the job, on the coveted K-9 unit, where she made $151,164.99 last year.

I inquired of the MSP yesterday what exactly constituted the “personal reasons” that led Genduso to commit three times the number of violations that caused Steele to lose his job, his career and his pension.

I asked the MSP brass, what is the definition of a “malicious” violation of departmental regulations, and who gets to make that determination? Your boyfriend?

I also asked, if I robbed a bank and then said I did it for “personal reasons” that were not “malicious,” would all charges be dismissed? Would I be treated as leniently as Leigha Genduso?

The MSP declined to answer any of my questions.

Genduso, who has finally been suspended since her sordid pre-MSP life of crime was revealed last month, ran the CJIS inquiries in April, May and July of 2015. Her live-in gangster former boyfriend, Sean Bucci, was released from Club Fed in October 2015.

I asked the MSP if she had run the plates because she was worried about the impending release of her fellow drug dealer Bucci, whom she had ratted out on the witness stand in federal court.

I asked, if she did admit that she was worried about the release of her former drug-dealing partner, shouldn’t that have been a red flag to the MSP as to her fitness to be a cop, even if they claim, however unbelievably, that they had no idea of Genduso’s sordid background when they hired her, first as a dispatcher, and then as a trooper.

Again, no answer. The way the State Police are collapsing, I can only think of one word to describe their breathtaking corruption.

Malicious.