The latest alleged law enforcement misconduct in Mass, July 13-26

I’ve been spending time with my family the last few weeks, so all I’ve got for today are last couple weeks’ media reports of alleged law enforcement misconduct. However, I’m getting back in the swing of things and should have some new reporting in the near future.

• WBUR has been continuing to report on the ICE field office in Burlington, which is being used to detain people in horrific conditions. I encourage you to check out the full story, but this passage stuck out to me:

[Yury Melissa] Aguiriano Romero said she suffers from chronic headaches and repeatedly asked the ICE agents outside of the room for Tylenol. She said they told her she could call her husband and have him drop off medicine, but she never did. She was afraid ICE would arrest him too.

“Other women would say that their husbands had gone in to drop off some meds and had been grabbed there,” she said. A headache, she decided, was preferable to leaving her daughters parentless.

• “A lawyer for a Milford man who had been awaiting a hearing on whether he could stay in the US but who was grabbed by ICE and ultimately shipped to a detention center in New Mexico reports he has been trying for days to contact his client, but that the ‘detainee contact’ phone numbers listed on an ICE Web site don’t work, the messages he leaves on ICE voice mail go unanswered and the one time he got an actual person on the phone, he was told to call the numbers that led to the unanswered voice mail.” (Universal Hub)
• “A lawsuit filed by former Brimfield police officer Ryan Olszta — who alleged he was removed from the force because of his sexual orientation — has been dismissed, following years of resident complaints, legal disputes and a Red Flag Law hearing that revoked his guns.” (MassLive; paywalled)
• “A former state trooper pleaded guilty to a 2021 motor vehicle homicide that killed a 51-year-old Winthrop man, prosecutors said. Monson resident Kristopher Carr will serve a split sentence for the crash that killed Christopher Zike on October 29, 2021, Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden’s office said in a press release.” (Boston.com)
• “The family of the Haverhill man who died after he ‘became unresponsive’ while being restrained by police officers are investigating the incident, their lawyer said. … [Francis] Gigliotti’s family, including his fiancée Michele Rooney, hired lawyer Timothy Bradl and his firm, which is ‘pursuing a private autopsy and evaluating any and all information and video related to the matter.’” (Boston.com) “Amid an ongoing investigation into his death, officials released 28 minutes of videos showing Francis Gigliotti in the hours leading up to a struggle with Haverhill police outside a local restaurant. Essex County District Attorney Paul Tucker held a press conference [on July 21], where he offered condolences to Gigliotti’s friends and family and presented videos of Gigliotti before the incident.” (Boston.com)
• “The North Andover police officer who was shot by a colleague as they attempted to serve her a restraining order about two weeks ago was suspended by the state’s police watchdog [on July 14]. The Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission issued a suspension order to Kelsey Fitzsimmons, and a redacted version of the document was posted online.” (Boston.com) “[Fitzsimmons] has shared a statement describing what happened, saying she never pointed her gun at other officers as they served a court order to take away her child. … ‘My firearm was NEVER pointed in any direction other than my temple. When I pulled the trigger, my gun did not fire. However, I immediately got shot in chest, by my colleague and friend,’ Fitzsimmons wrote.” (NBC10 Boston)
• “Under the terms of a 2022 ordinance passed by the City Council, the Boston Police Department is required to seek approval from the body before acquiring and deploying new surveillance technology. … Yet in this year’s report to the council, filed with the body [in early July], police brass disclosed three [previously undisclosed] social media analysis tools deployed in 2023 and 2024 under what the department says were ‘exigent circumstances.’” (Flipside)

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Anyway, that’s all for now.