A little blue lie
Massachusetts State Police Colonel Richard D. McKeon told a little lie this week, saying an announcement of a DUI roadblock would “reduce fear and anxiety” for the general public. The announcement is not meant to ease anybody’s mind, or even be noticed. It aims to comply with a court decision saying an announcement you didn’t […]
What are you in for?
A recent decision of the Massachusetts Appeals Court gave us the first murder conviction for a death caused by an accidental car crash in Massachusetts. The defendant, who had a suspended license, took off when stopped by Brockton police. During the chase he drove at 50 to 60 miles per hour on city streets, ran […]
Storage Cubby Criminals
You may be aware that cops can simply steal — yes, that’s exactly the correct word — cash found on your person or in your vehicle, in the course of a traffic stop, say — solely on account of it being an “excessive” amount. “Excessive” being entirely up to them to define. It could be […]
An expensive moment
She’d had her new car less than two weeks when she had the accident. She drove off with a ticket for failure to yield right of way when the law said she had right of way. I didn’t see the collision, but I got there in time to hear drivers tell their stories and they […]
Two search and seizure cases from Massachusetts
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided two cases recently about how far police can go when drivers of a car are probably up to no good but there’s no real evidence. Park near home In Commonwealth v. Martin the court ruled against police who chased a kid into his house. Three people were sitting in […]
Convert this
In 2013 Chelmsford, Massachusetts police officer Todd Ahern stole a car to pressure a woman into testifying against her ex. This according to a jury verdict upheld by the First Circuit Court of Appeals in May. A suspect’s ex-girlfriend had his car. Police towed the car with her belongings inside, got a warrant, searched the […]
Who really did it?
What would you do if you woke up in the hospital, the last thing you remembered was being at home with your wife, and they told you had killed a man by driving drunk and you were going to prison? That happened to a Massachusetts man a few years ago. They said he suddenly swerved […]
Acting tough
Like Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney spent decades running for president and lost. Part of his plan was to appear tough on crime with a capital punishment bill so narrowly drafted that it would never be used (and so could never be used against him). Lawmakers rejected his bill and positioned themselves as tough on drunk […]
Remembering a toll opponent
One of the few people who treated the Big Dig as anything other than a blank check died recently. To quote the Cape Cod Times, Christy Mihos, “a grandson of Greek immigrants who was born in Brockton, became famous in the early 2000s as vice chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority when he predicted the […]
It’s like “Operation” with cars
The First Circuit Court of Appeals recently ducked an opportunity to clarify a common pretext for traffic stops. A police officer got a tip that a man might have some drugs. But we can’t just go around searching cars because there might be drugs inside. Not in America. We wait for the car wheels to […]