Michael Proctor stored on ‘full responsibility’ months after state police realized of profane texts
In a bid to regain his job, former Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor is interesting his termination, and his submitting with the Massachusetts Civil Service Fee claims he was handled unfairly and that the State Police acted inconsistently in his case.
25 Investigates obtained Proctor’s file with the Fee by means of a public data request.
In accordance with a pre-hearing memorandum from his lawyer, Daniel J. Moynihan, Proctor said that the Massachusetts State Police continued to assign him new instances and stored him on “full responsibility” for almost 5 months after he first revealed his profane textual content messages to his superiors.
Moynihan wrote, “after he disclosed the content material of the textual content messages in early February 2024, he was allowed to proceed on full responsibility for an prolonged interval, suggesting his conduct was not initially deemed a trigger for rapid suspension.”
Proctor states he was first confronted with the messages at a federal grand jury on February 1, 2024, and instantly disclosed their existence and content material to his bosses.
Proctor met with 2 State Police legal professionals and a Main the next week the place he, “disclosed the existence and content material of the textual content messages that had been within the possession of the U.S. Lawyer,” in keeping with Moynihan.
It was not till the textual content messages grew to become public in June 2024, throughout the Karen Learn homicide trial that Proctor was suspended and ultimately fired.
The attraction additional states that an preliminary investigation carried out by two State Police captains with the Workplace of Skilled Integrity and Accountability decided “there was no proof of bias on his half” within the Learn case. This stands in distinction to the rationale for his eventual firing, which was partially for making a “notion of bias” together with his messages.
Proctor’s authorized workforce additionally contends that the trooper had a constitutional proper to privateness on his private mobile phone, as there isn’t any State Police coverage governing using private gadgets by troopers.
“Any and all non-public textual content messages attributed to the Appellant had been despatched on a private mobile phone, on which he had an expectation of a constitutional proper of privateness,” Lawyer Moynihan wrote.
The disciplinary motion taken in opposition to Proctor is described within the attraction as “disparate” and vastly exceeding the punishment given to different members of the division for comparable first-time offenses.
Proctor is scheduled to have a sequence of hearings earlier than the Civil Service Fee starting subsequent week.
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