State police colonel says reforms going ‘smoothly’
State police Col. Kerry A. Gilpin said reforms at the embattled public safety agency are moving forward “smoothly” as the force works to implement a body camera pilot program and expands the use of in-vehicle location tracking to its whole fleet.
Gilpin, who was promoted to state police superintendent in the wake of a police report editing scandal that ensnared her predecessor, also defended the agency in the face of fraud and overtime abuses by saying the bad apples were only a “small percentage” of the police force.
“People continue to focus on that less than 1 percent,” Gilpin said, speaking after a state police awards ceremony at the State House. “They forget to focus on the good deeds that our members do every day. That’s the overwhelming majority of our membership. This is just a fraction of what my troopers do every day, and I’m very, very proud of them.”
In April, Gilpin rolled out a slate of reforms after the discovery that troopers at the Mass Pike Troop E had put in for overtime shifts they never worked. Attorney General Maura Healey is probing the allegations of fraud and potential criminal penalties — an investigation Gilpin declined to comment on.
The fixes Gilpin rolled out included disbanding the Mass Pike’s Troop E, adding GPS tracking of all vehicles and instituting body cameras.
Gilpin said tracking for all marked cruisers is online and the disbanding of Troop E has been “a smooth process.”
“We are still working on AVL — the automatic vehicle locators,” she said. “We’ve installed them on all marked cruisers, and we are working towards installing them on all our other vehicles. We are also still working on a pilot program for a body camera system.”
State police have audited payroll records connected to questionable overtime shifts back to 2016 and about 40 troopers have been tagged in the scandal. Many have chosen to retire ahead of duty status hearings that could have marred their service record.
The overtime shifts were known as Accident Injury Reduction Effort patrols meant to boost police presence on the highways and catch additional traffic violations.
Gilpin said the police have recently moved on to reviewing 2015 for evidence of overtime abuses.
“The audit is going to show what the audit shows,” she said. “It’s a small percentage, and we need to continue to focus on the men and women who do a great job every day.”