Mass. Trooper sues after being told to alter arrest report of judges daughter

[Oneironaut]

http://www.wbur.org/news/2017/11/07/trooper-lawsuit-edit-police-report

Massachusetts Trial Court officials and state police are defending their actions after a trooper filed suit alleging that top police commanders disciplined him and forced him to revise an arrest report for a judge's daughter.

Trooper Sceviour's lawsuit alleges that after he arrested Bibaud for driving under the influence near Worcester last month, he was told to revise the arrest report

Two days after Bibaud's arrest, the lawsuit alleges that a trooper came to Sceviour's house and took him to meet with top police officials. There, Sceviour says, he was told to falsify records and remove the references to sex and Bibaud's father so as not to embarrass the judge.

Sceviour says he was told that the changes were "ordered by the colonel" — which he presumes meant State Police Colonel Richard McKeon, who supervises the state police. The suit goes on to say that a state police major told Sceviour that he was being “ordered” to make the changes in the arrest report — an order that came from the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security.



OP comment - For every time that you hear about something like this happening, there are probably 100 times that you don’t...

[unblock]

1. 'cause dad's a judge and knows exactly what the job of judging's all about!

[TheCowsCameHome]

2. The whole top tier needs to be fired.

I salute Mr. Sceviour for taking a stand.

[petronius]

3. It would be interesting to know if there other arrest reports containing

similar details of the arrest, that got through without question or supervisory interference. Seems like it should be pretty easy to demonstrate if this high-level concern for omitting scandalous, embarrassing, and irrelevant details is a general practice, or a one-off for this particular person. My money is on the latter.

Of course, it also seems like the plan backfired, since the salacious details likely are now being broadcast more widely than they would have been...

[cojoel]

4. I hope he kept a copy of the unmodified report

That could prove to be damaging