Owen Boss
Boston Herald
A state trooper says he was forced to scrub out of a police report the embarrassing remarks that a judge’s daughter made while she was being arrested on drug and drunken driving charges — and now he has filed a federal suit against top state police officials.
Alli Bibaud, 30, was arrested Oct. 16 after cops said they found a “heroin kit” inside the Toyota Corolla that she crashed on Interstate 190 in Worcester while drunk behind the wheel.
Bibaud, the daughter of Dudley District Court Judge Timothy Bibaud, told cops she performed sex acts in exchange for the drugs and even offered to perform sex acts in exchange for leniency, the lawsuit by state Trooper Ryan N. Sceviour claims.
Three days later, Sceviour says he was “awoken abruptly” on his day off by a fellow trooper banging on his door, telling him to go straight to the Holden barracks.
Lt. James Fogarty told him that was on the direct order of state police Col. Richard D. McKeon and stemmed from the arrest of “a judge’s daughter,” the complaint alleges.
In Holden, Sceviour said Lt. Fogarty told him he had been ordered by state police Maj. Susan Anderson to reprimand Sceviour and Sgt. Jason Conant — who approved Sceviour’s original arrest report — with negative “Supervisory Observation Reports” for including Alli Bibaud’s remarks, according to the complaint.
The complaint also alleges that Fogarty told Sceviour “he had done nothing wrong” and admitted “he would have included the statements” too.
During a second meeting, according to the complaint, Anderson agreed with Fogarty and said the reprimand “was ordered by the Colonel” and she didn’t know why “they were doing this” to him. Sceviour said he was “trained to include all extraordinary statements made by criminal defendants when writing a report of an arrest.” But Sceviour said he was forced to edit Bibaud’s comments out of the police report or face discharge.
State police spokesman David Procopio said it is not uncommon for state police supervisors, including McKeon, to review and revise reports, and stressed that “the revision consisted only of removal of a sensationalistic, directly-quoted statement by the defendant, which made no contribution to proving the elements of the crimes with which she was charged.”
But state police union chief Dana Pullman said, “I am deeply troubled by the serious breach of ethics recently perpetrated by Colonel Richard McKeon and his command staff … it is unconscionable.”
In addition to attorneys’ fees and compensatory and punitive damages, Sceviour is asking that the department and top state police officials issue an apology and that his discipline be expunged.
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As a past LE and chief of police, I understand the removal of statements that have no effect on the report…however, in this situation, to protect the officers from accusations of inappropriate behavior by the suspect after the fact, I would have insisted these remarks be included in the report. This col. Was out of line.