McGovern: Foxboro police are shrouded in suspicion for handling of incident
Foxborough police may have violated public records law in Patriots player Chandler Jones’ medical emergency
Something smells in Foxboro.
Police Chief Edward T. O’Leary — who doubles as head of security for New England Patriots home games — has led our reporters down a strange path since the Chandler Jones incident broke. He told my colleagues that his officers had no contact with the stud defensive end over the weekend.
But dispatch records show that at least five officers were there when Jones and emergency crews were still in his station’s front parking lot on Sunday.
Another of O’Leary’s officers went to Jones’ home, which sits only a block away from the station, according to a dispatch report.
Despite all of that, the chief said he had no idea that one of the Patriots’ top defensive players had any contact with his crew. He said he had only seen Jones being interviewed on television.
O’Leary knows the Pro Bowler next door just as well as every armchair quarterback in the state.
That seems specious.
And then there’s the mysterious dispatch log. Under Massachusetts law, daily logs must be produced, without redaction, to anyone who requests them “without charge to the public during regular business hours and at all other reasonable times.”
You walk into a police station, you ask for the police log and you jot down the information. This is simple stuff. It’s Journalism 101.
But apparently we made a mistake on Tuesday. We spoke to O’Leary before going to Foxboro to obtain a record we’ve pulled in dozens of police stations across the common.
By the time we got there, it was too late. By mid-afternoon, the record had been modified. O’Leary said it was “protected information on a medical condition.”
I guess we’ll have to take his word for it.
“Modifying police logs after the fact not only defeats the purpose of the state’s Public Records Law, but it invites mistrust between communities and their law enforcement,” said Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition. “The law needs to be followed by all custodians even if the information released is embarrassing or involves a public figure.”
Maybe there was an exemption. Perhaps the record had “intimate details of a highly personal nature,” which can be redacted under the law.
But it wasn’t redacted. The record was modified by one of O’Leary’s men.
I wonder if an everyday Patriots fan would get the same treatment.
Foxborough police may have violated public records law in Patriots player Chandler Jones’ medical emergency
Something smells in Foxboro.
Police Chief Edward T. O’Leary — who doubles as head of security for New England Patriots home games — has led our reporters down a strange path since the Chandler Jones incident broke. He told my colleagues that his officers had no contact with the stud defensive end over the weekend.
But dispatch records show that at least five officers were there when Jones and emergency crews were still in his station’s front parking lot on Sunday.
Another of O’Leary’s officers went to Jones’ home, which sits only a block away from the station, according to a dispatch report.
Despite all of that, the chief said he had no idea that one of the Patriots’ top defensive players had any contact with his crew. He said he had only seen Jones being interviewed on television.
O’Leary knows the Pro Bowler next door just as well as every armchair quarterback in the state.
That seems specious.
And then there’s the mysterious dispatch log. Under Massachusetts law, daily logs must be produced, without redaction, to anyone who requests them “without charge to the public during regular business hours and at all other reasonable times.”
You walk into a police station, you ask for the police log and you jot down the information. This is simple stuff. It’s Journalism 101.
But apparently we made a mistake on Tuesday. We spoke to O’Leary before going to Foxboro to obtain a record we’ve pulled in dozens of police stations across the common.
By the time we got there, it was too late. By mid-afternoon, the record had been modified. O’Leary said it was “protected information on a medical condition.”
I guess we’ll have to take his word for it.
“Modifying police logs after the fact not only defeats the purpose of the state’s Public Records Law, but it invites mistrust between communities and their law enforcement,” said Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition. “The law needs to be followed by all custodians even if the information released is embarrassing or involves a public figure.”
Maybe there was an exemption. Perhaps the record had “intimate details of a highly personal nature,” which can be redacted under the law.
But it wasn’t redacted. The record was modified by one of O’Leary’s men.
I wonder if an everyday Patriots fan would get the same treatment.
's black eye
