The latest alleged law enforcement misconduct in Mass, Dec. 21-Jan. 3

Happy New Year!

Here are the media reports of alleged law enforcement misconduct in Massachusetts that I’ve tracked during the last two weeks.

First, here are the incidents involving federal law enforcement, including immigration agents:

• “A Plymouth district court judge has refused to dismiss identity fraud charges against a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent who filed a strange traffic complaint with the Plymouth police last year posing as Town Manager Derek Brindisi.” (Plymouth Independent)
• “Fabian Schmidt, a mid-30s German national, had spent nearly 18 years in the U.S. and had a green card in good standing. Despite that, he was denied entry back into the U.S. after visiting family in Europe, and spent about four days at Logan Airport, where he says he endured violent interrogation by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. … Schmidt says he was denied the ability to call a lawyer, family or the German embassy. He said he was stripped, forced into a shower and faced more questioning before he collapsed.” (GBH)
• “A Boston federal judge [on January 2] ordered ICE to immediately release a Brazilian national to await a bond hearing, rather than keeping her behind bars to await that hearing since that would likely involve shipping her hundreds of miles away due to its lack of women’s holding facilities in Massachusetts.” (Universal Hub)

And here are the stories involving state and local law enforcement:

• I missed this one last time: “A Globe investigation found that Massachusetts State Police employ a military-style boot camp system that often pushes recruits physically and emotionally to their limits, resulting in at least 100 recruits being injured in just the four most recent recruiting classes, including at least two dozen who ended up in the hospital or urgent care. Parts of the curriculum, made public in response to a records request and subsequent lawsuit by the Globe, appear written for deployed soldiers, and the facility is run by drill instructors who recruits say look for any weakness they can seize on to haze them.” (Boston Globe; paywalled)
• I also missed this one: “Mayoral candidate Jean Bradley Derenoncourt says a Brockton cop slandered and libeled him in the run-up to the Nov. 4 election. … At issue is [Brockton police officer Franck] Coulanges’ seeking a harassment prevention order against Derenoncourt for allegedly leaving him five threatening voice mails. Judge Michael A. Vitali shot down Coulanges’ application on Oct. 20, according to court records.” (Enterprise)
• “A New Jersey police chief pleaded not guilty to domestic violence charges [December 22] after prosecutors accused him of assaulting a woman at a hotel room in Boston’s Back Bay earlier [in 2025]. Carmen Veneziano, 47, who leads Totowa, New Jersey’s police department, was indicted [December 18] on one count of kidnapping and three counts of domestic assault and battery.” (NBC10 Boston)
• “The state’s police oversight board has suspended the certification of former Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor, the embattled investigator who was fired earlier [in 2025] over his conduct during the Karen Read case. The Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, or POST, said it has ‘concluded by a preponderance of the evidence that the suspension is in the best interest of the health, safety, or welfare of the public,’ according to a Dec. 18 order.” (Boston.com)
• “[A federal appeals court] ruling means that former [Massachusetts State Police] Sgt. Daniel Griffin will have to finish out his five-year federal prison sentence, and former Trooper William Robertson his three-year sentence, for their role in an overtime scandal in a State Police unit that used federal funds to conduct sobriety checkpoints and do patrols looking for people not wearing seatbelts.” (Universal Hub)
• “A Chelmsford mother questioned how her town’s police department handled an investigation after a driver struck her teen daughter in the head with his truck’s side-view mirror in a gas station parking lot. Following questions from the NBC10 Boston Investigators, the driver, whose brother is a [Chelmsford] police officer, is now facing charges for negligent operation and leaving the scene of an accident.” (NBC10 Boston)
• “Former Stoughton deputy police chief Robert Devine had his law enforcement certification revoked by the state’s police oversight board [in December]. The board found that Devine engaged in misconduct involving Sandra Birchmore, a woman who was allegedly killed in 2021 by a different former member of the Stoughton Police Department.” (Boston.com)
• “The North Andover police officer accused of pointing a gun at another officer has been released on bail after court proceedings [December 23]. Kelsey Fitzsimmons, 28, was shot by another officer during a June incident at her home, where officers attempted to serve her with a restraining order filed by her fiancé. Fitzsimmons’ attorneys argued for her immediate release on [December 23], which an Essex Superior Court judge granted.” (WCVB)
• “A Christmas Day police response to an aggressive raccoon in a Hopedale neighborhood has ignited online outrage, after witnesses said an officer used a cruiser to run over the animal in front of bystanders, including children.” (Boston.com)
• “Four witnesses to the fight, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were incarcerated with [Shacoby] Kenny and fear retribution, … described [Suffolk County] corrections officers punching Kenny, kneeing him in the ribs, and kneeling on his neck when he was down on the ground [the day before he died].” (Boston Globe; paywalled)
• “This is the way confidential informants work: District attorneys blindly defend police sources they know nothing about. And instead of safeguarding against abuse, prosecutors enable misconduct in a system that grants police unchecked power, a new Globe Spotlight Team investigation has found. Other gatekeepers – most notably clerk-magistrates, who must approve police search warrants and almost invariably do – consistently fail to hold detectives accountable when they use confidential informants.” (Boston Globe; paywalled)
• “Five years after Boston created a civilian oversight system to review and investigate allegations of police misconduct, friction with department leadership is hampering the work as officials quibble over procedural roadblocks. … In particular, the oversight agency complained that many Boston police officers have refused to cooperate in its investigations and that Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox has failed to take its findings seriously.” (Boston Globe; paywalled)
• “Stoughton resident Derrick Wigfall alleges in [a lawsuit] filed Nov. 10 that three Stoughton police officers — Sgt. Ryan Flanagan, Sgt. Thomas Tedesco and Officer David Painten — held him down and tased him three times during a domestic assault arrest in November of 2022, despite claims he was not fighting with or threatening police.” (Enterprise)

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Anyway, that’s all for now.