Blue Mass Group

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Globe Follows up BMG on Jeff Perry

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From today’s Boston Globe:

Republican congressional candidate Jeffrey D. Perry was involved, as a Wareham police sergeant in the early-1990s, in two instances in which an officer under his command conducted illegal strip searches of teenage girls, cases that are under new scrutiny as Perry’s political career advances.

In one case, Perry was the supervisor at the scene when the officer stuck his hand in a 14-year-old girl’s underwear, ostensibly searching for drugs. In the other, Perry accompanied the same officer to the house of a 16-year-old girl to tell her parents that she had voluntarily pulled down her pants to show she did not have any drugs.

http://www.boston.com/news/loc…

And this was Cape Cod Democrat’s post prior to the Globe story:

http://bluemassgroup.com/s…

This generated some heated debate about how proper it was and if it should be removed.

Seems the print media reads BMG.

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  1. There is a story in today’s Cape Cod Times as well – LINK.  There is an important difference in the two stories.

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    p>The Globe, with no direct quotes, says that the girl’s father ‘said’ that Perry should be run out of town.

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    p>The Times, with an apparent ‘fresh’ and direct quote said this:

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    p>

    Gary Adams, Heather’s father, who still lives in Wareham, said he now believes Perry was just doing his job that New Year’s Eve. He doesn’t think the incident should have any impact on Perry’s political career.

    “Jeff Perry was young and handled it the best way he could,” Adams said. “He was worrying about his men. You have to look at everything, not just heat of the moment. Time heals all wounds. I don’t have anything bad to say about him.”

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    p>It would appear the Times did more than dress up the BMG post with some archival quotes, and actually contacted the people involved.

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    p>What a concept.

    • Don’t try to justify that it was alright for Perry to cover-up the sexual molestations of these two children.

  2. that they wanted more facts on the case, at one point I thought it was best to just delete it.  But more information came to light.  Still no link to Perry leaving the force as claimed.  But there is some information that was factual.  One thing that was question was if Perry had been named in the civil cases.  He was:

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    p>

    Perry was named as a defendant in civil cases brought by the girls’ parents, which were settled out of court.

      • Cape Cod Democrat is directing us to a blog post by Walter Brooks published at the Plymouth Daily News site.

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        p>One of the things that is interesting about this case is that Flannagan’s acts were pretty clearly covered up by Sgt. Jeff Perry. However, they were also covered up by Perry’s superior, Captain Paul Cardalino. Around the same time Perry quit, Police Chief Joyce reassigned Cardalino from supervision to a “desk” job. Cardalino did not like this reassignment one bit and, even though it was lateral change with no change in rank or salary, he protested it and tried to get a hearing on it.

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        p>So it seems that Joyce was unhappy with Cardalino’s role in the Flannagan matter. It is no stretch at all to conclude that he was even less happy with Perry’s. It is quite reasonable to conclude that Perry was asked to resign. The blog writer gives further evidence that would tend to reinforce that conclusion.

        Jeff Perry can certainly claim from this that he was not indicted, not fired, and not disciplined.

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        p>What he cannot claim is that he has good judgment. In fact his whole role in this is despicable.

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        p>What we see is a loyalty to Officer Flannagan that clearly overrode his responsibility to the young women Officer Flannagan violated. It is this kind of stupid loyalty that I’m sure he wants to take to the Congress and stupidly vote for whatever he’s told to vote for because he has no independent moral compass.

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        p>I think a strong connection can be made from his tribal Reagan cultishness to his despicable behavior in this case.

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        p>And it should be made.

        • More from the blog posting:

          Perry’s visit to the girl’s parents, in an obvious attempt to cover up for Flanagan’s misconduct, was not reported to any superior officer and was not authorized by his superiors.

          Let’s put aside the editorializing “in an obvious attempt to cover up for Flanagan’s misconduct”. Let’s just think a little bit about this visit to the family. There’s a knock on the door. Police officers appear. They’re not responding to a complaint. They’re not investigating a crime. Why are they there? What is the purpose?

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          p>And why was it not reported?  

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          p>Ponder that.

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          p>Why was it not reported? What does that tell you about Rep. Perry? There’s a huge failure in judgment here.

          • …Perry stopped by to apologize for the behavior of his subordinate officer and check to see if there were anything he could do?  I definitely get the sense that there are a couple sides to this story all around.

            • The evidence we have available consists of sworn testimony by the victim’s parents and the police reports filed the next day by Flanagan and Perry.

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              p>From what I’ve read, there was no apologizing — nor, do I think, does Mr. Perry claim to have done any apologizing.

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              p>Notable, I think, is that Perry did all the talking and that he talked as if he had been near Officer Flanagan and the girl even though he was not.

            • Seriously, there is not suggestion anywhere, even by Perry, that there was any apology.

            • Perry wasn’t there to apologize for his subordinate’s behavior — he believed the guy (otherwise he would not have repeated Flanagan’s lies to the parents), and actually went to bat for him later when he signed the petition.

        • Richard Latimer’s post on Cape Code Today gives the following:

          There is competent evidence that Sgt. Perry was in close proximity to Flanagan’s strip search of the young girl, in a position to hear Flanagan’s demands and the girl’s protests as well as see what Flanagan was doing.  Report of Sgt. Robert T. Kelliher, Mass. State Police, CPAC, March 15, 2003.[typo?]  Flanagan was not disciplined or even reported by Sgt. Perry for this conduct which occurred while Perry was in close proximity as the superior officer on the scene. And there is competent evidence that a complaint about Flanagan was made by one of the girl’s companions to the Chief and Captain Cardalino, but was never followed up on.  Id.

          Over the next 18 months or so, before New Year’s Eve 1992, there is competent evidence that Officer Flanagan was involved in several other inappropriate encounters with young women while on duty .  Report of Sgt. Robert T. Kelliher, M.S.P., CPAC,  March 15, 1993, April 6, 1993, and  May 7, 1993.   It appears that only one of these incidents was reported to the Department, an  incident in the spring of 1992, where Flanagan made inappropriate advances on a young woman motorist in a remote area of Wareham. Flanagan denied it, Kelliher Report of April 6, 1993, but it appears that Captain Cardalino reprimanded him for the incident.

          In other words, there were already indications that Officer Flanagan was not to be trusted alone with young women. And yet:

          Competent evidence also indicates that Perry had taken it upon himself to go with Flanagan to the girl’s house in the obvious but failed attempt to cover up Flanagan’s lewd and inappropriate conduct on the night of the incident, without authorization or even reporting it to Captain Cardalino who was then the Wareham Police Department’s superior officer in charge of patrolmen.  Town of Wareham’s Statement Of Facts For Submission To Jury,  Nov. 8,  1995, No. 8 and 9.

          Not only did he visit the home of the young woman, but he also spoke as if he were there with Officer Flanagan in the scene behind the Tedeschi mini-mart, when he wasn’t — as both parents claimed under oath.

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          p>In other words, he wants us to believe that he wasn’t present at that incident but he very much wanted the girl’s parents to believe that he was.

          • From the supposedly exculpatory article in Cape Code Online:

            Perry and his colleagues were stunned that [Officer Flanagan] was let go because they believed his story. The department’s administration didn’t tell them what led to Flanagan’s termination. A petition was circulated in support of the young officer, who, like Perry, entered the force right out of the military. All but one officer, including Perry, signed it.

            Seeing him summarily dismissed quickly, that’s why the letter came out,” Perry said. “We were like, ‘Hey this is a good guy. Tell us something. What’s going on? Why are you firing this guy who has an allegation, just a mere allegation? He has no record. He has no nothing. He’s an Air Force guy. How about some due process? How about suspending him? I felt like he was getting railroaded off of an allegation.”

            Why indeed were they firing that guy?

  3. You mean to say that some cops took advantage of their authority to sexually assault two underage girls, and then attempted to use that same authority to intimidate the parents of one of their victims?

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    p>Shocking.

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    p>You mean that some money changed hands to minimize the exposure, and now one of the perpetrators is running for public office?

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    p>Shocking.

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    p>You mean to say that this perpetrator has turned out to be a REPUBLICAN state legislator and a REPUBLICAN candidate for Congress?

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    p>Shocking.

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    p>You mean to say that the state GOP is standing by their man?

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    p>Shocking.

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    p>This exemplifies the reason why my generation called them “pigs” four decades ago. It doesn’t matter whether its cops busting heads for the perverted pleasure of it in Chicago of 1968, or Pittsburgh in 1972; it doesn’t matter if its white cops harassing a black man in his Cambridge home thirty five years later; it doesn’t matter if its Boston cops killing party-goers in Kenmore Square and being protected for it — when they act like pigs and they deserve to be called pigs. This exemplifies the way Spiro Agnew and the love-it-or-leave it GOP has been doing business ever since. This is why Scott Brown’s press-conference comments about his daughters were and are so offensive.

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    p>As far as I can tell, this is the GOP.

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    p>I have three daughters. I don’t care how he spins it, if this slimeball stood in my home, confirmed that NO illegal substances had been found, and said to my face “Oh, yeah, by the way, [she] pulled her pants down for us”  — I would do everything in my power to take him down.

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    p>Since when is the sexual violation of a teenage boy or girl so casual that it merits an offhand “Oh yeah, by the way” comment to the parent?

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    p>So long as the GOP continues to put forward candidates like this guy, they and their supporters will get nothing but contempt from me.

    • The “oh and by the way” comment is pretty disgusting though I’d like to see better sourcing for that before running with it.

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      p>We really, really want police officers who treat their jobs professionally. To achieve that end, it does not good to refer to them as “pigs”.

      • I agree that we really, really want police officers who treat their jobs professionally.

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        p>I, therefore, want a police force that has no cultural tolerance for cops who act like pigs. I want more than the official, legal, press-release kind of professionalism.

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        p>I want a police force where a cop who acts the way Jeff Perry acted is treated by his peers as a pariah. His fellow cops knew what went down. Independently from whatever legal settlements are “negotiated”, I want a police force where the cops setting at the lunch table get up and find another table when he sits down. I want every phone call of his that isn’t strictly official to go unanswered. I want him to be excluded — obviously and embarrassingly — from the social activities that bind organizations like this.

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        p>When officers Scott Seto, Daniel Avila and Brendan Kelliher of the Brookline Police, find themselves in the midst of a situation, I want their peers to shun them — whether or not they find a way to escape the charges filed against them. It shouldn’t take a department investigation to determine that a bachelor party with hired strippers is probably not appropriate for active police officers.

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        p>The above-mentioned Scott Seto was subsequently charged in a different “incident“:

        According to a police report on file with the clerk’s office at Brookline District Court, the victim told police she left the Washington Street Tavern at 12:30 a.m., on May 2, and spotted a group of about five people, including a uniformed police officer, talking outside the nearby 7-Eleven store. As she got into her car, parked on Beacon Street in front of the store, the officer started asking about her car, according to the police report obtained at Brookline District Court.

        The police officer, later identified by police as Seto, stood between the car and its open door, the two talked about the victim’s car, and Seto gave her advice to share with her mechanic. The officer asked the woman’s name, and she gave it, according to the report.

        “The officer then said that his name was Scott and they shook hands, and he said ‘you had me at hello,’ ” according to the report.

        When asked for it, the woman gave her address to the officer, and the following afternoon, when she was driving home, Seto stopped her on her street and followed her home in his police cruiser, according to the report.

        As she tried to get into her home, she said the officer pressed himself against her shoulder blades, “making contact with her from there to her lower thighs,” according to the report.

        He allegedly followed her inside, hugged her, groped her and tried to kiss her multiple times. According to the report, he made several sexually suggestive comments, including a request to “shower together” with the victim.

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        p>Officer Scott Seto is a 24-year Brookline police officer. I think he’s been doing, and getting away with, things like this for a very long time. I think his peers (and perhaps his superiors) have known about it for a very long time.

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        p>When police act professionally, neither I nor anyone else will call them “pigs.” When, instead, they shield and protect men like Jeff Perry and Scott Seto, I think it’s long past time we stop pretending that they are anything different from what their behavior indicates.

    • As far as I can tell, this is the GOP.

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      p>Really! It does appear to me that neither side has cornered the market on virtue. Dare I remind you of the late great Senator Kennedy’s “challenges.” Conveniently, your commentary completely ignores some pretty substantial legal issue that have taken place within your own party within the past year. Remember Sal and Diane? How about Speaker Tom? Needless to say both neither side are exactly perfect.  

        • The two wrongs make a right fallacy is a regular strategy of our more conservative friends. It’s a red  herring that works most of the time because it sounds logical, but as CCD points out, there’s no real conclusion to be drawn from it.

        • First of all you can’t read. Second of all it was not OK for “Kennedy to kill a woman” and it would not ever be OK if someone participated in a “cover-up for a child molester.” That being said, Democrats, presumable, including you, comfortably voted for Ted Kennedy for a generation knowing that he “killed a woman.” None of us are perfect and the line of Democrat and Republican pols that have f’ed up is pretty long. FWIW, I wish Jeff Perry were running for congress in my district. I probably would vote for him and like my Democratic State Rep, Lori Ehrlich, I was disappointed when his illegal immigrant amendment failed a few weeks ago.  Lori, in case you are not aware, voted with Jeff on his immigration amendment. Pretty cool!

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          p>How about a bible verse..

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          p>”If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” John 8:7

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          p>Also, pretty cool!

          • I’d missed the part where Jesus told the teachers and Pharisees to elect a child molester to Congress.

            • It’s right after the part where Jesus told the teachers and Pharisees to elect a gentleman to the US Senate that drove off a bridge and left a woman behind to drown. Oh yea, and then there is the part where this same gentleman went on to have a wonderful career. Jesus also preached forgiveness. Not just for Democrats but for members of the other party. Maybe Jesus was an independent!

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              p>Since we cold do this forever, let’s agree that human being are imperfect and politicians are human beings. Are we cool or do you want be to dig up some Deval endorsing Diane W video or even some Sal getting elected almost unanimously by his followers last year.  

              • By condoning someone, acting under, his command, putting his hand down a child’s underpants. By taunting the girl’s father afterward.

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                p>Anyone who does that is not fit to serve the public in any public capacity.

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                p>There is no Ted Kennedy exemption for this. And no Jesus get-out-of-jail-free card.

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                p>You obviously believe you are on to something with your John 8. And maybe you would be if anyone were discussing stoning the man, or punishing him.

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                p>Note that “not voting for this guy ever” is not a punishment: votes must be earned.

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                p>If he wants to go and join some religious order where he would have no power over 14-year-old girls, I think that would be entirely appropriate.

          • …Chappaquiddick was ancient history.  It might have been an issue in 1970 (before I was born), but the voters were fine that year so there’s no reason to ressurect it later.  Let Ted rest in peace!  I don’t know whether this disqualifies Perry, but I’d rather vote on issues anyway.

      • Many of us did NOT defend the politicians of whom you speak.  However, when I speak to a kid I teach about behavior and his excuse is, “but he did…” I quickly respond, “Right now I’m talking about you!”

      • I felt, and I have written so here, that the investigation into Chappaquiddick was too little too late.

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        p>So what.

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        p>I’ve written, at length, of my disgust with Sal DiMasi, Diane Wilkerson, and — for that matter — Tom Menino, Martha Coakley, and the rest of the Beacon Hill and City Hall Democratic Machine. I’d like to see the entire corrupt crowd replaced with public servants who place the public good above their own personal interests.

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        p>So what.

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        p>I don’t care whether this guy runs as a Republican or Democrat, I think he’s unfit for office.

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        p>I think his values (or absence of thereof), morality (or absence thereof) and flagrant abuse of power is more consistent with the current GOP than with the current Democratic party. I think the current Democratic party would have told Jeff Perry to take a hike years ago. I think the GOP welcomes him — and people like him — with open arms.

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        p>It’s true that the Democrats were racist segregationists until the 1968 convention. It’s true that the prominent Southern bigots like George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Lester Maddox, and the rest, were Democrats. It’s also true that the Democrats made it clear in 1968 that their ilk was no longer welcome in the Democratic Party. The GOP was eager and only to happy to accept them, their racist hatred, and the legion of southern racists who support them. The south has been “red” ever since.

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        p>The GOP has been pandering to racism, xenophobia, sexism, and all the other symptoms of suffering and economic distress that have been part of American culture for generations. The Democrats don’t do that, the GOP does.

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        p>Jeff Perry is a scumbag. You know it and I know it. I don’t demand that either side corner the market on virtue.

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        p>On the other hand, my guys aren’t running around asserting that they have a direct line to God about “family values”, or “protecting marriage”, or all the other horse manure that the GOP has been spouting for decades.

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        p>Senator Kennedy isn’t running for this congressional seat. Your team is putting forward a sleazeball who flagrantly used the power he had as a cop to intimidate, abuse, and violate a fourteen year old girl and a sixteen year old girl.

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        p>If you support Jeff Perry in this race, more power to you — that’s the American way. Don’t simultaneously demand respect from me, though. If you support a sleazeball, then don’t be surprised when folks like me condemn you for supporting a sleazeball.

    • Sickos who do things like this must be stopped.

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      p>This nation is a common law jurisdiction. In common law jurisdictions, precedent is VERY important. Precedent builds upon precedent, and, in effect, becomes the law.

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      p>A parent going after rogue thugs like this could end this before it escalates.

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      p>If the thug goes around doing this, “wild and free”, you know what the next step is?

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      p>CAVITY SEARCH

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      p>This is not a dental exam. It is a procedure where a gloved hand goes up the rectum searching for contraband.

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      p>That’s right, probing body parts looking for weed.

  4. to have airport scanners which do the same thing plus damage your DNA in the process but because Perry offers opposition to the government/indutry consortium of the illegal immigrant importation business to keep wages down it’s fine.

  5. What a hard decision it’s going to be for my neighbors in the tenth to decide between Joe “Missing Millions” Malone and Jeff “I didn’t Look” Perry…

  6. Fourth Amendment – Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

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    p>Above is the fourth amendment to the US Constitution, which has been almost destroyed by the drug war.

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    p>The drug war could end tomorrow if courts would rule that all drug searches are unreasonable. No new laws would have to be passed.

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    p>But, they won’t do it. The problem is not “radical, far-out” judges making “crazy” rulings.

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    p>It is establishment judges standing by the status quo instead of doing what is right.

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    p>Drug searches let law enforcement search whoever they dislike. Often, the ones targeted by drug busts are the blacks.
    In this case, it was the teenage girls. This sick SOB not only got to be a tyrant and a bully, but he got a free strip show too. One stop shopping for the jack booted thug.

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    p>He could have made it worse: he could have done a cavity search, where gloved hands probe the large intestine, looking for contraband. I bet this thug would like that.

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    p>This is what you get with the drug war: tyrannical strip-searches, “busts” and “sweeps” against those who are on the outs.

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    p>And don’t think that you will never be on the outs.

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    p>This whole nonsense was a “sexy” political issue for Nixon to get votes. And yet, it has continued on, even though the “hippies” that it was meant to harass are in their mid 60’s now.

    • …and almost replied to a comment of yours above pointing this out.  Isn’t there such a thing as plain sight?  There is such a thing as search incident to arrest and patdowns are fine to guard against an immediate safety.  However anything more invasive should be subject to a warrant it would seem.

  7. This topic also recently cropped up on RMG — very useful, I think, because skepticism here can only be useful. I’m struck by a quote by Perry from that article:

    In their civil suit, the [victim’s] family alleged that Perry’s visit with Flanagan was an effort to cover up what really happened. They alleged that the sergeant didn’t follow the proper protocol and did all the talking in an effort to sweep the issue under the rug.

    Perry denies that was his intent. Because a child was involved, he said it was good police work to go to them and let them know the circumstances.

    “If it was my goal to cover it up, I would not have documented and let people know what was happening,” Perry said.

    The record indicates something else:

    • Perry did not speak with anyone before visiting the victim’s family.
    • Perry did not write up this visit until after the parents, via a Bourne police officer, had notified Captain Cardalino about what had happened behind Tedeschi’s.

    Not so honest, that Mr. Perry, no?

  8. I’ve read that he is now out of state, but do not know where.  He’s not a level 3, nothing came up in the search.

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