Local experts in law and law enforcement told GBH News that text messages revealed this week in a lawsuit Karen Read filed against the Massachusetts State Police and the Town of Canton were “appalling” but not entirely surprising.
In the lawsuit, filed Thursday in Bristol Superior Court, Read alleges that two law enforcement officials who worked on her case led a biased and corrupt investigation.
The lawsuit includes several vulgar text messages between the case’s lead investigator, former State Trooper Michael Proctor, and former Canton Police Sgt. Sean Goode.
Rosanna Cavallaro, professor of law at Suffolk University, called the text messages “appalling,” saying it’s “not just the language, but the kind of continuousness of it.”
“It is not a one-off,” she told GBH News. “It is many, many messages that really reveal a deeply entrenched set of attitudes that just cannot be part of law enforcement.”
Read was acquitted last year in the murder of her boyfriend Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. Prosecutors accused Reed of fatally backing her SUV into O’Keefe and abandoning him in the snow.
The lawsuit accuses both departments of trying to conceal “an embedded culture of bigotry, misogyny, systemic failures, and institutional rot at the very core of both organizations.” The suit also alleges both Goode and Proctor targeted Read for O’Keefe’s death while ignoring or suppressing evidence.
Goode resigned earlier this week as he faces an ongoing internal affairs investigation into allegations of misconduct.
Proctor, who previously admitted to sending crude texts about Read, was fired last year for his handling of the case.
Citing thousands of text messages, Reed’s legal team claims that Proctor and Goode routinely used slurs and derogatory terms, expressed hostility towards women and people of color and made comments about sexually assaulting romantic partners while they were asleep.
“[S]he’s a jew…so def puts out,” Goode wrote in one text, according to the lawsuit. In other texts, he called Boston Mayor Michelle Wu a “little c—t” and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft a “terrible c—ty Jew.”
Retired Boston Police Officer Donna Gavin said she isn’t surprised the text messages exist because she witnessed sexism and racism among her peers during her time on the job.
“Law enforcement is largely a male-dominated career,” she said. “I think there is the mentality that women don’t belong, that we may have taken a job that a man really deserved. I don’t think we’re looked at as equals.”
Gavin said she was also previously involved in litigation after being subjected to gender discrimination, harassment and retaliation by her male peers.
“When they [women] tell you that they’re being treated unfairly or worse, and the Boston Police investigates the cases, but then the retaliation that not only I suffered, but my peers suffered — it’s quite telling,” she said. “If they can do it to us, they can certainly do it to members of the public.”
“They are not officers who occasionally voiced an offensive remark,” the 87-page lawsuit reads. “They are men whose written and recorded communications — sent to one another and to a circle of like-minded friends over the course of a decade — establish entrenched and unrepentant hatred for women, Black Americans, Asian Americans, Jews, Hispanics, Arabs, and gay people.”
Proctor and Goode’s “unfitness for any position of public trust was not subtle,” and their involvement in the investigation into O’Keefe’s death “invariably and irredeemably contaminated it in every respect,” according to the lawsuit.
Cavallaro said it’s also important to consider whether these views affect how investigators approach a case or a crime scene.
“If you see anything that suggests that those attitudes are shaping their decision-making, then that’s really where the deep concern is,” she said.
Cavallaro said these messages also bring to light the “shocking and grotesque” way that law enforcement openly expresses these views.
“I think that it suggests these are not attitudes I need to keep secret that are bizarre or unacceptable. Instead, these are attitudes that I can share freely with my colleagues because they have these attitudes too, and I think that is what the texting really brings up for me,” she said.
“If they had any sense in the 15 or 20 years that they have each served as police officers — that there would have been consequences for this — they would have concealed it,” Cavallaro adds.
“Put simply,” read the complaint, Proctor and Goode “were then and are now completely and unquestionably unfit to hold positions of authority with MSP and CPD, much less to play important roles — or in Ms. Read’s case, the primary role — in homicide investigations.”
State Police Colonel Geoffrey D. Noble said in a statement that “these disturbing messages are entirely inconsistent with any basic standard of decency” and the expectations of a Massachusetts State Trooper.
“These racist, sexist and abhorrent comments absolutely do not reflect the values of the Massachusetts State Police and are not tolerated within our ranks,” he continued. “They underscore and fully support my decision to terminate Michael Proctor.”
A spokesperson for the Town of Canton called the text messages abhorrent, deeply offensive and hateful.
“Claims that the Town knowingly ignored misconduct or failed to take these allegations seriously are inconsistent with the actions taken,” the spokesperson said. “Upon learning of the allegations, the Town promptly removed Sgt. Goode from the workplace, retained an independent investigator, and pursued appropriate personnel action based on the information available throughout the investigative process.”
