The latest tawdry tale of a Massachusetts trooper

On the home page of his lovey-dovey wedding website from 2019, ex-State Trooper Dwayne Correia #3562 includes this sappy bromide from Nicholas Sparks:

“Marriage is about becoming a team. You’re going to spend the rest of your life learning about each other, and every now and then things blow up.”

Things blew up big-time for Dwayne Correia last Aug. 11.

It was such a bad day for this week’s disgraced state cop that the MSP wrote a 23-page report on his sordid misadventures in Rhode Island (where he’d gotten married, on Goat Island, almost exactly one year earlier).

Even though Correia was forced to resign, with a dishonorable discharge, the corrupt State Police fought desperately to stop release of the damning report, dragging their jackbooted feet for more than two months.

Last Aug. 11 was a very busy day for Correia, who is also a former RI state cop, married to a local cop in Bristol County. First, according to the report, he drove to MSP headquarters in Framingham “to sign his ‘Disposition without Hearing/Waiver of Right to Trial Board’ (waiver) for a previous investigation that occurred at SP Middleboro on Feb. 25, 2020.”

In other words, he was disposing of another little problem he’d had on the job. So Dwayne was ready for a celebration.

As he later confessed, Correia told his bride he’d be working that evening. Then he unplugged the GPS on his unmarked cruiser so that the brass wouldn’t know where he was. He drove south in his uniform, then ducked into a Raymour and Flanigan’s furniture store to change into street clothes.

He had female companionship awaiting him in Providence — a woman who later told the troopers she’d “dated” him (her word) in college although they were “currently just friends.”

Let’s call his friend “Ms. X.”

At the Capitol Grill in Providence the trooper and Ms. X met a third person and in two hours ran up a $763.49 tab, including a $200 tip, for martinis, wine and food.

Ms. X had conveniently rented a room at the Renaissance Hotel, where Correia parked his unmarked cruiser. The report says he removed a backpack. He left his service firearm in the car, which he left unlocked. Correia also neglected to activate the anti-theft alarm.

I guess he was in a hurry to get upstairs.

Correia then spent the entire night with Ms. X. On Sept. 1, she told the investigators that he stayed with her overnight “because he had had too much to drink.”

On Oct. 6, in a second interview, Ms. X changed her story. Asked if Correia had really stayed over because he was drunk, “She stated no, that they were going to hang out.”

Hang out. That’s her (second) story and she’s sticking to it.

At 4:22 a.m., as Correia and Ms. X were still hanging out, surveillance video shows three yutes prowling the hotel parking lot, testing car doors to see if any idiots had left their vehicles unlocked. They quickly broke into idiot Correia’s unmarked MSP cruiser and stole his fully loaded Smith & Wesson.

At 6:05 a.m., after his all-night hang out, Correia came downstairs and discovered his gun missing. According to the Internal Affairs report, he never went back on the job, using vacation days for the rest of the month until the gun theft was discovered.

He did, however, use his state credit card to fill up his cruiser with gasoline. And he did drive into Boston on Aug. 15 to meet Ms. X at the upscale Liberty Hotel “for a couple of hours” after playing a round of golf.

Over dinner, the soon-to-be-busted trooper “mentioned being overwhelmed with his marriage, house move and child whom he was having shortly with his wife.”

By Aug. 31, a woman — it’s not clear if it was Ms. X or the third person at the pre-hang out $763 dinner in Providence — informed another trooper that Correia was in deep trouble.

“She stated that she did not call Trooper Correia’s wife because she didn’t want her to be emotional that Trooper Correia was confiding in (redacted) with this information and not his wife.”

On Sept. 1, Lt. Col. Richard Ball “received information” that Correia had lost his gun. At the time, Ball was running the Division of Field Services.

Less than three months later, Ball himself had retired, with an annual tax-free pension of $113,446.

Everybody was running away from Correia now. It’s all about protecting their phony-baloney jobs. The investigators tried to set up a “formal interview” with at least one of his MSP pals. To which Correia’s buddy responded: “He declined to be interviewed and stated he was no longer friends with Trooper Correia and had nothing to say.”

Who can blame him? Remember ex-Trooper Andrew Patterson, the Foxboro Flasher? The corrupt cop who drunkenly slugged a security guard in Vegas and then two weeks later exposed himself to women and children at a Clay Travis concert?

When he was finally asked about how he lost his weapon, Correia responded in classic modern MSP fashion: “I’ve been advised by my attorney not to answer that question.”

The gun was recovered, and Correia has now suffered that rarest of MSP punishments — actually losing his job.

One suggestion for #3265 now that he’s unemployed: Trooper, change that syrupy quote on your wedding page to something more appropriate.

May I suggest a classic country song from Faron Young: “Loving Here and Living There and Lying In Between.”

Coming soon: More tawdry tales from your Massachusetts State Police.