The hits just keep coming for the Canton Police Department.
After their officers were grilled on the stand for their questionable tactics during the Karen Read investigation, one of the department’s cops has been suspended amid “misconduct” allegations.
The town on Oct. 24 was reportedly alerted to the misconduct allegations involving the officer.
“Immediately after becoming aware of the allegations, the Town engaged an independent investigator to conduct a thorough administrative investigation into the allegations of misconduct,” the town said in a statement.
The cop has been suspended with pay, pending the outcome of the investigation.
“The Town and the Town’s Police Department take all allegations of misconduct seriously,” the town added. “Members of the Town’s Police Department are expected to perform their duties in a professional manner.
“The Town is committed to providing the quality and level of service that the citizens of Canton deserve from their Police Department,” the town said. “To that end, we will take the necessary steps to ensure that actions by individual officers do not jeopardize that quality and level of service.”
The town said it cannot share confidential personnel information because of laws governing employee privacy.
Earlier this year, the Canton Police Department audit dropped on the same day the Read retrial started — and included recommendations on how the crime scene surrounding the body of victim John O’Keefe could have been worked better.
The front yard of 34 Fairview Road in Canton was a hotbed of police and EMS activity in the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 2022, as Boston Police Officer O’Keefe lay dead or dying there.
The handling of the crime scene by the local police in those crucial early hours has been widely criticized, with Read defense seizing on investigative and protocol failures.
The death of O’Keefe, a Canton resident, and the controversy surrounding how local police handled the scene spurred a local movement to have the department audited.
The report wasted no time highlighting its findings of how the Canton Police Department handled the O’Keefe crime scene.
The executive summary of their findings included several recommendations:
- -The police failed to photograph O’Keefe’s body where it lay before Canton Fire EMS members moved him to the ambulance.
- Interviews with critical witnesses at the scene should have been conducted at the police department building and “Consensual Recorded Witness Interviews” should have been made. The report mentions Jennifer McCabe and Kerry Roberts, the two women who discovered O’Keefe’s body with Read, by name as examples.
- Both Canton and State Police should have maintained a presence at the crime scene pending secondary crime scene searches.
- Canton Police should have preserved all their surveillance camera video recordings while Read’s Lexus SUV, the alleged murder weapon, “was housed at Canton PD from January 29 through February 2, 2022.” That way, the footage would have been available for the prosecution and defense.
Norfolk DA prosecutors accused Read of backing up into O’Keefe, her boyfriend of two years, with her SUV, leaving him to freeze and die on the front yard of a Canton home where the pair was supposed to continue a night out after the bars closed that cold, snowy early January morning.
The jury cleared Read of killing O’Keefe, convicting her of just drunken driving.
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