Mass law enforcement misconduct news, Oct. 12-18
State not issuing reports about racial profiling in traffic stops, state trooper fired for “offensive language,” and more
Here are the media reports of alleged law enforcement misconduct in Massachusetts that I’ve tracked during the last week.
State and local
- “The Executive Office of Public Safety hasn’t issued required reports analyzing racial profiling in traffic stops since 2024. Before lawmakers passed a 2019 law banning motorists from using handheld electronic devices, there were months of controversial negotiations and calls by the NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union about how best to include language ensuring officers collected demographic traffic stop data in an attempt to address racial profiling.” (State House News Service)
- “New video shows a crash between a Massachusetts State Police cruiser and Brockton Mayor Moises Rodrigues months before he took office. In May 2025, Rodrigues, who was Brockton’s city council president at the time, was driving on Route 138 in Raynham. … According to Rodrigues’s lawsuit, medical costs from the crash exceeded $32,000.” (WCVB) “In a recent legal filing, an attorney for the State Police answered Rodrigues’ lawsuit point by point. The defendant, Trooper Augustine K. Moore, neither admitted nor denied most of the 10 allegations Rodrigues made, saying he did not have enough knowledge or information to form an opinion.” (Enterprise; paywalled)
- “A Mass State Police trooper was fired from the agency after he made offensive remarks to young people, according to an MSP spokesperson. Former Trooper Jack B. Cesarz, who was still in his probationary period, was dishonorably discharged effective Oct. 8.” (Boston Herald)
- “A Massachusetts State Police trooper is under investigation for allegedly leaving a handcuffed prisoner alone at a Boston hospital, creating a potentially dangerous situation for staff and visitors. … The I-Team has learned a trooper was assigned to keep watch over him, but, sources said surveillance video shows the trooper left the hospital and appeared to be sleeping in his cruiser. The trooper has not been identified.” (WBZ)
- “A former Auburn police officer has been barred from ever working again in law enforcement in Massachusetts after telling an undercover investigator posing as a 15-year-old that he’d pay her $200 for sex, records show. The state’s police oversight board, known as POST, on [October 15] permanently revoked the law enforcement certification of Dominick Anthony Boschetto, 32, of Brookfield, according to the ruling.” (Boston Globe; paywalled)
- “A former Worcester County correctional officer appeared in court [October 16] on charges that he helped smuggle narcotics to a prisoner at the West Boylston jail where he worked, records show. Nevin D. Robles, 32, pleaded not guilty in Clinton District Court to felony charges of delivering drugs to a prisoner and drug possession, as well as a misdemeanor of conspiring to violate drug law, court records show. … He was also charged with leaving a gun in a vehicle and improper storage; he pleaded not guilty.” (Boston Globe; paywalled)
- “Turns out, Springfield Police Officer Juan L. Cruz might’ve needed a Breathalyzer device hooked up to his cruiser. While being questioned [October 16] at a Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission hearing, “Cruz said that he had a restriction on his driver’s license that required him to pass the alcohol-sensing test to start his car. He also said he had driven police cruisers on the job for about a year without the device on the department’s cars.” (Republican)
- “Testimony in the trial of Matthew Farwell, the former Stoughton police detective accused of killing Sandra Birchmore, continued [on October 16] in federal court in Boston.” (Boston.com)
Federal
- “In an order issued shortly before 9 a.m. [on October 16], a Boston federal judge gave ICE a 3 p.m. deadline to free a Cuban national it first stuffed in a cell last December, because even the Supreme Court says you can't just keep an immigrant locked up indefinitely if you don't have a place to send him.” (Universal Hub)
Yet another story of the Plymouth County sheriff illegally jailing someone on behalf of ICE. Here is your regular reminder that Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey dismissed this as a “county issue” that she has no interest in doing anything about.
Maura Healey on ICE: “I support them”
Massachusetts governor declines to end state’s partnership with ICE
Andrew Quemere
Other news
Gov. Healey on State Police misconduct: “Sometimes things happen” (MassLive)
Gov. Maura Healey defended the Massachusetts State Police on [October 15], saying she’s proud of the agency despite recent controversies, including an arrest connected to a reported sexual assault at a Martha’s Vineyard barracks. …
The statewide police agency has been hit by repeated bad headlines over the last few years, from controversial and inflammatory texts sent by a former investigator to the March arrest of a trooper on OUI charges.
Asked about those incidents and others, Healey observed that “sometimes things happen.”
Man who has maintained innocence in rape case asks justices for hearing about eyewitness-identification evidence (Republican)
The attorney for Robert Stevens did not ask for much as he stood before a three-justice panel of the Massachusetts Appeals Court on [October 14].
A hearing to consider the evidence would do.
Stevens maintained his innocence for decades after he was charged and convicted of raping a woman in Springfield in July 1990. The only evidence against him, according to his attorneys at Goodwin Procter, was the eyewitness testimony of the woman.
Stevens spent three decades behind bars, receiving parole only in 2022. In the time since his conviction, state courts changed the way they treated eyewitness testimony to take into account situations where it could prove unreliable.
Another suicide reported at MCI Norfolk behavioral health unit (MassLive)
Another apparent suicide has occurred within a behavioral assessment unit inside a Massachusetts prison, officials confirmed [October 7].
Shortly before midnight on [October 5], corrections officers at MCI-Norfolk responded to an “incident of self-harm” in a behavioral assessment unit (BAU) cell, according to the Massachusetts Department of Correction. The individual was identified as Emil Encarnacion, 29, who ultimately died from his injuries the following day at a local hospital. …
Encarnacion’s death, if officially ruled a suicide by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, will be the fourth suicide death in a BAU since April 2025 and the third specifically in the MCI-Norfolk BAU. All of these deaths have occurred as the DOC is under active monitoring by the U.S. Department of Justice for how it treats prisoners experiencing mental health crises.
Third-party candidate Andrea James talks clemency for women incarcerated at MCI Framingham (GBH)
As the third candidate in the [governor’s] race, [Andrea] James, a former Democrat, is running largely to the left of [Maura] Healey. She’s motivated by what she considers injustices in prisons and is an advocate for universal housing, health care and child care. She also believes that the newly passed PROTECT Act, which is supposed to limit local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, doesn’t go far enough when it comes to achieving that goal. …
She founded the prison-abolition groups Families for Justice as Healing and the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, focused in particular on eliminating prisons for women. She’s won national recognition for her work. …
So far, though, James and her allies have been unable to convince the Healey administration to shutter MCI-Framingham, the oldest women’s prison in the United States. Instead, the Healey administration plans to downsize and renovate the facility, a move James calls shortsighted.
The better option, she contends, is to grant clemency to as many women incarcerated there as possible, thereby paving the way for the closure of the prison in the near future and the use of hundreds of millions of dollars for other purposes. It’s a step James said she would take in her first week as governor.
“We’ve got one of the highest populations of elderly people incarcerated [at MCI- Framingham], she said. “They’re not going to cause any more harm; they’ve been in prison for decades. Let ’em go. We have women in Framingham right now ... who have dementia. We have people who are terminally ill. Bring them out.”
Public records ballot question could lead to post-election fight (State House News Service)
If voters approve a sweeping public records law in November and Beacon Hill tries to replace it, supporters are ready to sue, adding to a web of possibilities heading into the next legislative term.
State Auditor Diana DiZoglio says she would “absolutely” consider legal action if lawmakers pass a narrower bill after Question 1 passes, calling the prospect a potential “constitutional crisis.” Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance Executive Director Paul Craney says his group is already talking with national organizations about litigation.
The potential for lawsuits, and the possibility that lawmakers might quickly substitute their judgment for that of voters, means records access reforms are looming as a tricky and impactful topic for governing in 2027.
The post-election fight would put a popular ballot question, the Legislature and Gov. Maura T. Healey on a collision course over who gets the final word on what records the public would actually get to see and how.
Rather than a defense of their productivity, the Legislature's reliance on omnibus bills should be an indictment
Democracy depends on being able to give positive and negative reinforcement to elected officials. Constituents should be able to praise legislators for what they do right and criticize them for what they do wrong. Omnibus bills weaken that ability, and that’s the point.
Jonathan Cohn
Beyond The Bachelor’s: First Massachusetts In-Prison Graduate Program Launches
Breaking the Academic Ceiling: Inside Massachusetts’ First Graduate Program for Incarcerated Students
JEAN TROUNSTINE
Unlike the raid on John Bolton, the targeting of Omar has elicited zero condemnation from NYT, WSJ, and Washington Post.
— The Intercept (@theintercept.com) October 15, 2026 at 2:16 PM
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I am trying to decide what it is about *Italian* immigrants that makes Sam Alito feel so passionately about honoring their experiences, but not the experiences of, to take one randomly selected example, immigrants from Haiti
— Jay Willis (@jaywillis.net) October 16, 2026 at 1:29 PM
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Masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villagers on Friday, setting olive groves on fire and slinging rocks. Caught in the attack was Post photographer Heidi Levine. “They just kept kicking me and kicking me, like probably 50 times,” Levine said. https://wapo.st/4yt6dHY
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost.com) October 16, 2026 at 9:46 AM
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Someone please adopt this beautiful baby.
— Andrew Quemere (@andrewqmr.bsky.social) October 18, 2026 at 8:44 PM
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