Latest scandal adds to foul stench in AIRE
After so many scandals in such a short time, the Massachusetts State Police are finally figuring out how to get ahead of the bad-news curve. So yesterday they held a press conference, which they Facebooked in addition to the live TV coverage, announcing that 20 members of Troop E, the Turnpike crew, and one retired trooper are going to have “duty status hearings” in a widening overtime scandal.
So far, so good. But what’s up with this “duty status hearing” BS? Whatever happened to “fired?” Or at least “suspended without pay.” Even better, “stripped of fat sixfigure pensions coming to them at age 50 or 55.”
Still better: “Trooper, you have the right to remain silent ….” The exact phrase used by MSP Col. Kerry Gilpin was “potential changes in their duty status,” which sounds like a slap on the wrist to me, even if it is a prelude to ousting their snouts from the public trough. Col. Gilpin also told the press that, “Integrity, honesty and accountability are core values of the Massachusetts State Police.”
Surely she meant to say, “were.” This latest MSP scandal, which the Herald told you was coming a couple of weeks ago, is all about bogus OT. Apparently, for every X number of troopers who are out on overtime, a “superior officer” is required ... wink-wink, nudgenudge. According to sources, the rank-and-file were on the job, but in many cases, their bosses just put in for the OT but never did anything.
They called this racket, I mean effort, the Accident and Injury Reduction Effort (AIRE) patrols. The primary goal for some of the higher-ranking staties was apparently to concoct OT shifts out of thin AIRE.
Gilpin said the probe will be extended to every other troop in the state — I see many job openings ahead in the MSP, or there would be, anyway, if the commonwealth hadn’t long since degenerated into a Third-World banana republic.
Every bogus MSP shift should be good for one count of mail or wire fraud, five years per. Or are these bums in jodhpurs going to get to ride off into the sunset with those obscene pensions?
These staties should be treated no differently than the corrupt Quincy cop Thomas Corliss. He was found guilty last year of stealing $8,211 from the city of Quincy. At his trial, the feds described him as “nothing more than a thief in uniform.” Corliss is now locked up at the Club Fed in Lewisburg, Pa., until Sept. 1. His BOP No. is 99753-038.
If the laws can send a bent Quincy cop to prison, why not all these crooked staties?
More and more, the MSP is looking like the FBI, and that is not a good thing, given the endemic corruption among the G-men during the sordid Mueller-Comey-McCabe-Obama era.
Gilpin kept saying that all the evidence will go to the state attorney general, Maura “Hold It” Healey, a Democrat, and that her office “will review and take whatever action they determine to be warranted.”
As Gilpin well knows, unless President Donald J. Trump personally signed the overtime sheets, Hold It Healey has absolutely zero interest in prosecuting any of her fellow Democrat hacks.
Remember the corrupt drug addict in the Amherst state lab, Sonja Farak? What did Hold It do to the two female assistant AGs who were accused by Judge Richard Carey of committing “a fraud upon the court” by covering up evidence of Farak’s misdeeds and railroading innocent men into prison?
Healey did nothing. Both her payroll patriots now have new sixfigure hack jobs, one at the state treasurer’s office, the other at the Suffolk County courthouse.
Bottom line: If you want to hide something real good, just stick it in one of Hold It Healey’s law books. If Healey is in charge of this probe, those 20 staties might as well be booking their JetBlue flights to Florida to start pricing their new retirement homes in gated golf-course communities.
Every day the state police are looking more and more like “The Departed.” And now even more will be departing. Good riddance.