Carved into the lintel over the entrance to the U.S. Supreme Court is the phrase “Equal Justice Under Law.” The motto supposedly ensures that all who pass beneath it are ensured a fair hearing in the court’s soaring chambers. The reality is that the nation’s highest court has a fraught history with cases touching on racial justice and equality, from the Dred Scott case before the Civil War up to its recent rulings striking down voting rights protections and nullifying college admissions policies meant to ensure diversity on campus.
There is little comfort in the judicial system at least paying lip service to the notion of fairness. But there is virtually no comfort at all when it comes to the attitudes and actions of personnel on the front lines of law enforcement. Justice rendered through the barrel of a service weapon is the most murderous expression of police power. But racism also expresses itself through the language that police use when talking about people of color, often in dehumanizing terms that provide psychological justification for more blatant abuses.
The latest reminder was the release of a trove of racist texts from the phone of former Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor to a former Canton police sergeant. The ex-trooper was fired last year after the revelation of vulgar texts he sent about defendant Karen Read during her high-profile murder trial in Norfolk County. Read, accused of killing her boyfriend during an alcohol-fueled night of partying, was acquitted by a jury after her defense used the texts to paint a picture of investigators, led by Proctor, conspiring to frame her for the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. A new set of Proctor texts, uncovered in the course of Read’s civil lawsuit against the Massachusetts State Police and the Town of Canton, further reveal the racial toxicity behind the facade of Office Friendly.
Those texts, going back a decade, are now at the heart of a motion to dismiss charges against Myles King, a Black man who was convicted in a 2021 murder case investigated by Proctor. The messages “reveal a deep-seated and atrocious racial animosity that infected the entire investigation,” says King’s legal team, adding that Proctor “held views so fundamentally racist and opposed to him as a Black man that the entire investigation was tainted.”
“I was planning on tying up a n****r and dragging him from my bumper through the streets of Randolph,” Proctor wrote in one message. In another, he wrote, “Lets get some horses and white sheets and burn a cross in the arboretum.” An audio message allegedly from Proctor to a fellow trooper after a car crash was played during a WCVB interview with State Police Colonel Geoffrey Noble. In the message, the trooper identified as Proctor is heard saying, “Actually take your time, I saw a n****r was involved, so I wouldn’t rush if you’re working. Let them die.”
The newly released texts prompted calls for a complete review of all cases involving Proctor and the recipient of his messages, former Canton Police Sergeant Sean Goode, who resigned last year. They also led to the right questions being asked of State Police leadership and the culture within State Police barracks that might have fostered such attitudes, which are hardly unknown or without precedent.
Several findings of racial bias in State Police hiring, promotion and retention policies have been made over the years. Last November, a Suffolk Superior Court jury ordered the agency to pay $6.8 million in damages after finding that the Massachusetts State Police discriminated against female and minority troopers. According to the lawsuit, leadership reached to handpicked candidates to let them know about openings before they were posted and regularly passed over qualified women and minorities for jobs in favor of inferior candidates who were white and male.
In another case, Massachusetts State Police Trooper Matthew Sheehan used a police-themed website to post racist comments. Those messages, posted under the name “Big Irish,” were uncovered during a 2018 investigation of Sheehan for pulling a rifle out of a cruiser and shooting an all-terrain vehicle rider who was part of a group of unarmed young men of color driving their vehicles on Route 93. Sheehan, who was eventually indicted for the shooting, posted in 2015 about an African American history festival, “Just another peaceful ‘Black Lives Matter’ festival!! Nothing to see here so please move along!! Can’t wait for the next one it’ll sure be a bang.”
The issues with State Police culture led Gov. Maura Healy to hire Geoffrey Noble as superintendent in 2024, bringing him from New Jersey as the first commanding colonel to come from outside the Massachusetts ranks. While Noble fired Proctor, skeptics are wondering whether the State Police are doing a thorough sweep of messages and running down connections between Proctor and like-minded fellow travelers within law enforcement circles, including the Norfolk County District Attorney’s office, headed by Michael Morrissey, who decided not to run for reelection after he came under withering attacks for his handling of the Read and other cases.
Larry Ellison, former president of the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers, is a longtime critic of white police leadership coddling racists in their ranks and turning a blind eye to bias. His take on the turbulence unleashed by Read’s civil lawsuit may be cynical but is entirely understandable given the history of police bigotry.
“What the Karen Read case uncovered is not uncommon,” he says. “What is uncommon is the fact that what she said about the police is being taken seriously. If it had been a Black person who had made those allegations, it would not have been investigated.”
Ronald Mitchell
Editor and Publisher, Bay State Banner
