The latest alleged law enforcement misconduct in Mass, Nov. 9-22

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 federal judge in Maine has ordered immigration officials to release a woman whose chaotic ICE arrest in Fitchburg [on November 6] made national headlines. Juliana Milena Ojeda Montoya, 24, filed her habeas corpus petition soon after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained her in front of her daughter and husband, who appeared to suffer a seizure as he clung to his wife and their toddler. … In her order [on November 10], Judge Stacey D. Neumann agreed with Ojeda Montoya’s claim ‘that her current detention without an opportunity to be heard violates her rights to due process.’” (Boston.com)
• “A Boston federal judge [on November 12] ordered ICE to free a Lynn boat mechanic it’s grabbed twice this year, the second time after the regime’s Board of Immigration Appeals overturned the freedom he had been granted a couple months earlier.” (Universal Hub)
• “A federal judge [on November 12] ordered ICE to release a man it’s held since Sept. 9, since he has permission to stay here from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.” (Universal Hub)
• “A Cape Verdean mother from Rhode Island has spent nearly two weeks in detention at Boston’s Logan airport [as of November 17]. The federal government now plans to move her to a facility in Maine, as a court deadline expires for officials to explain why she remains in custody. According to court filings, customs and immigration authorities have been trying to find an appropriate place to detain 48-year-old Eva Mendes, admitting that the location where she’s been held for 12 days isn’t suitable for long-term stays.” (NBC10 Boston)

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

• I missed this one last time: “A Brookline police sergeant [Megan Keaveney] is suing the town and several members of the police department alleging discrimination and retaliation for her support of Amy Hall, another police officer who recently won a $1.8 million settlement in her own discrimination suit.” (Brookline.News)
• “A veteran Boston Police Department (BPD) Captain is suing the department’s highest-ranking officials, alleging he was pressured to scrub a finding that a rookie officer lied in a police report and an internal affairs interview. Captain Timothy Gaughan—a 34-year employee of the BPD—filed the suit in Suffolk Superior Court. In it, he claims the directive came indirectly from Police Commissioner Michael Cox.” (Boston 25 News)
• “Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux has settled a $10 million lawsuit lodged against his predecessor that stemmed from a violent altercation inside the former C. Carlos Carreiro Immigration Detention Center back in May 2020. The lawsuit, filed more than three years ago on behalf of 16 formerly detained immigrants, accused then-Sheriff Thomas Hodgson and correctional officers of using excessive force against them after they refused to get tested for COVID-19 during the height of the pandemic. … Heroux said he settled the lawsuit for $800,000.” (WPRI)
• “A Suffolk County jury on Tuesday awarded $1 million in damages to a fired Boston police officer [Enxhi Qirici] who testified that she experienced a hostile work environment because other officers would make inappropriate comments about her sex life, among other allegations. However, the jury was not persuaded by the plaintiff’s claims that her 2019 termination was discriminatory or constituted retaliation.” (Boston Globe; paywalled)
• “ A jury has ordered the Massachusetts State Police to pay $6.8 million after a finding that it discriminated against female and minority troopers. The verdict … came in a lawsuit accusing the agency’s leadership of enabling a discriminatory process for hiring and promotions that kept women and people of color from rising through the ranks.” (Associated Press)
• “Lawyers for the former Stoughton police officer accused of killing Sandra Birchmore after grooming her for years are asking to move the case out of Massachusetts, saying that media coverage has biased the public into believing he’s guilty. Matthew Farwell, faces federal charges of killing a witness or victim and violating a federal law protecting unborn children by causing the death of the child that Birchmore was pregnant with.” (NBC10 Boston)
• “Webster Police have released video from an officer’s body-worn camera of the arrest of a teenager in response to cell phone video posted online showing some of what happened. Webster Police is defending their officers but the 17-year-old involved is calling what happened in the video ‘police brutality.’” (Boston 25 News)
• “Karen Read, recently acquitted of murder and manslaughter in the 2022 death of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, has filed a sweeping civil lawsuit in Taunton’s Bristol Superior Court. The 46-page complaint accuses multiple Massachusetts State Police troopers and several Canton residents of conspiring to frame her for a crime she says she did not commit.” (Boston 25 News)
• “Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox won’t face a disciplinary review over his comments on the Karen Read case, the state’s police oversight board said Thursday, responding to a call to action from Read attorney Alan Jackson[.] As head of the city’s police department, Cox “is a civilian executive, not a sworn law enforcement officer,” wrote Enrique A. Zuniga, executive director of the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission. … He said the POST Commission thus far has not required non-sworn civilian executives to obtain law enforcement certification, nor has the commission subjugated them to other statutory and regulatory provisions governing sworn officers.” (Boston.com)
• “A former Methuen, Massachusetts, police officer accused of lying about his police qualifications was in court [November 21], but an expected guilty plea didn’t go forward. Sean Fountain faces charges including criminal fraud and perjury for allegedly saying he graduated from a police academy when he didn’t.”(NBC10 Boston)

Thanks for reading! As always, if you’d like to keep The Mass Dump running, please consider offering your financial support, either by signing up for a paid subscription to this newsletter below, becoming a Patreon supporter, or sending a tip via PayPal or Venmo. Your support pays for this aggregation project and original investigative reporting. A monthly subscription is just $5.

Even if you can’t afford a paid sub, please sign up for a free one to get news about wrongful convictions, police misconduct, public records, and stuff like that—and please share this article on social media.

You can follow me on Bluesky and Mastodon. You can email me at aquemere0@gmail.com.

Anyway, that’s all for now.