Top cop takes the fall

State Police Col. Richard McKeon, dogged by questions about the scrubbing of an arrest report involving a judge’s daughter, announced Friday he plans to retire. Despite a distinguished 35year career his relationship with the troopers he commands has been damaged (one of them is suing over the orders to alter his report) and public confidence in State Police leadership is shaken. McKeon is making the right call.

He has acknowledged seeking changes to the report describing the arrest of Alli Bibaud but in his letter he said he instructs troopers to focus arrest reports on information relevant to the charges without compromising the strength of the case. He said he has given those instructions “more times than I can remember.”

“This is not unlike the thousands of cases we are involved in every year involving drug addiction,” he wrote.

The problem — and it’s a big problem — is that the public really has no way to know whether the intervention in this case, the removal of embarrassing details from Bibaud’s arrest report, was indeed part of an effort to treat all those with opioid addiction with “respect and decency” — or whether it was done only because Bibaud is the daughter of a judge, and word got around in Worcester county circles that she was in trouble.

We certainly know how it

looks, and McKeon should have known that, too.