How did a gun-toting cocaine-dealing profession thug get a $115,000-a-year job as a high aide to Gov. Maura Healey?
Who authorized this appalling rent? Who signed off on gangbanger LaMar Cook dinner being granted entry to ship eight kilos of blow on to Maura’s workplace suite in Springfield, in addition to one other 19 kilos of coke to a lodge on the UMass-Amherst campus?
Early on, Healey blurted out that her hack minion handed a background examine by the State Police. However since that admission, all inquiries — even by fawning, regime-controlled media just like the Globe — have been met with complete stonewalling.
Nonetheless, we’re studying extra concerning the function the MSP might have performed on this ongoing scandal, if certainly Maura was telling the reality, which you’ll by no means assume with something she says.
Each the governor’s workplace and the State Police continued their omerta about LaMar Cook dinner’s background checks Friday. Such checks are routinely carried out by the MSP’s State Bureau of Investigations (SBI), which handles background investigations into state administration hires.
The State Police didn’t reply Friday to repeated inquiries concerning the obvious boss of the unit, Det. Lt. R. Bradford Porter. In keeping with the state Comptroller, he makes $199,430 a yr, plus the take-home automobile and the fuel card, which might be value one other 20 grand or so a yr.
The SBI operates out of One Ashburton Place, the basement. Out of sight, out of thoughts. A name yesterday to Porter’s workplace within the basement was not returned.
If this have been a standard police division, in a standard state, there isn’t a approach Porter would nonetheless have a job, not to mention be in an workplace that’s presupposed to be masking up, er, investigating, the crooked appointments of a failed governor.
In 2007, whereas not in uniform in Milton, then-Trooper Porter went loopy on a 44-year-old lady named Beth E. Shea. This now superior officer claimed the lady, a securities dealer in Boston, had been dashing in his neighborhood.
After chasing her, he shattered the entrance window of her automobile with a flashlight, then pulled her out as she begged for her life in terror. Porter claimed that whereas breaking into Shea’s automobile, he by no means ran her license plate as a result of he “forgot.”
In a later resolution in federal courtroom, Choose F. Dennis Saylor IV wrote: “He dragged her out, shouting obscenities at her and calling her a (bleeping) bitch… A number of witnesses to the occasion referred to as 911, pondering that Shea was a sufferer of home violence.”
When Milton police arrived on the scene, Beth Shea was on the bottom, screaming, “Assist me! He’s going to kill me!”
Porter warned off the native cops, shrieking at her, “You’re bleepin’ mine!”
Shea testified: “He grabbed my wrist, he violently pulled me out so exhausting that I fell on the bottom.”
After which, she mentioned, he touched her breasts and groped her “beneath the waist.”
On the witness stand in federal courtroom years later, defendant Porter claimed that he couldn’t recall utilizing obscenities towards his sufferer. Nonetheless, below oath he particularly did recall NOT groping Shea — it’s odd how these cops’ reminiscences work. Simply ask Kelly Dever.
Did anybody ever assume to do a background examine on the man doing the background checks?
So Porter is now the man the State Police have supposedly doing a deep dive on the clowns, grifters and various gender-bending jokers that Maura Healey palms six-figure hack sinecures to — judicial nominees, school presidents, the heads of the veterans’ properties, and many others.
What might presumably go unsuitable?
This atrocious case involving a rogue state cop has so many parallels to Karen Learn. First, the situation — Norfolk County. Like Karen, Beth E. Shea was a profitable skilled lady. At her civil trial towards Porter, her legal professionals mentioned the traumatic frame-up destroyed her profession.
Due to the PTSD introduced on by her brutal remedy, Shea might now not deal with her $400,000-a-year job in finance. She had grow to be a $13-an-hour veterinarian’s assistant.
Karen Learn likewise misplaced her job at Constancy. When taken into custody after being falsely arrested, 15 years aside, each ladies have been rudely handcuffed on the barracks, Karen Learn to a radiator.
Each Shea and now Learn sued the State Police for destroying their lives. The State Police slow-walked all the pieces then, and are actually utilizing the identical m.o. with Karen Learn.
Shea was overwhelmed in 2007, however her case wasn’t settled till 2015. She was awarded $300,000 and would undoubtedly get hundreds of thousands if the trial have been held right now. The choose additionally awarded her $366,000 in authorized charges — that’s how egregious the State Police’s infinite delays of the case have been.
As you may see for your self, a jury discovered Porter responsible of “malicious prosecution” of Shea, in addition to violating her constitutional rights to get pleasure from “Freedom from Extreme Power.”
As per common with the State Police misconduct, none of this had the slightest unfavourable impression on Porter’s profession. In actual fact, it was in all probability a resume enhancer.
He was promoted, first to Trooper First Class, then Sergeant, then Lieutenant. And now he’s a Detective Lieutenant.
You already know what else was unaffected by this federal courtroom verdict towards Porter?
His certification by the Mass Peace Officers Requirements and Coaching (POST) Fee. He’s all set till July 1, 2026. All of them are, everyone besides Michael Proctor.
The POST Fee is designed, it says on its web site, “to enhance policing and improve public confidence in legislation enforcement.”
Is your confidence in legislation enforcement enhanced by realizing that Det. Lt. Brad Porter remains to be an authorized peace officer in Massachusetts? He didn’t present a lot peace to Beth E. Shea, did he?
And now he sits within the basement conducting background checks on DEI-credentialed accused cocaine kingpins… and rubber-stamps them. Or someone does — somebody Maura Healey desperately doesn’t need you to study the id of.
One closing lesson right here, for ladies in Norfolk County. You’re all honest sport for cops to abuse, that’s clear. However if in case you have cash, or social standing, you could possibly prevail in one of many native kangaroo courts, or not less than keep away from being overwhelmed to dying on the road with a flashlight by one of many native boys in blue.
However for those who’re a pregnant lady in Norfolk County with neither cash nor connections, you can find yourself murdered in Canton by a cop. After which have these similar State Police attempt to cowl it up by ruling your homicide a suicide.
Sandra Birchmore couldn’t be reached for remark.
Purchase Howie’s new guide, “Mass Corruption: Vol. 1, The Cops,” at amazon.com or howiecarrshow.com/retailer.
