CANTON, MASS. (WHDH) - Karen Read, who was tried twice and acquitted for the murder of her ex-boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, filed suit against the Massachusetts State Police and the Canton Police Department Thursday.
The 87-page complaint was filed in Bristol Superior Court in Fall River. According to Read’s attorneys, the case is about “a culture of bias and corruption that they built, tolerated, and hid from the public for years” by both law enforcement agencies.
In a press release, Read’s attorneys identified former Massachusetts State Police trooper Michael Proctor and former Canton Police Sergeant Sean Goode as “emblematic of the failure to responsibly exercise the trust and faith the public puts in these institutions.”
Goode, who resigned Wednesday, was on the scene in January 2022, the night O’Keefe died in a snowstorm outside a home in Canton. He testified during Read’s first trial.
Proctor, who was the lead investigator in the case, was sued by Read last year alongside several others who were at a party at 34 Fairview Road the night O’Keefe died.
“Proctor and Goode were unfit for positions of public trust and yet they were handed badges, promotions, and ultimately control of homicide investigations despite harboring deep-seated and abhorrent anti-woman, racist, antisemitic, and homophobic ideologies for more than a decade,” Read’s attorneys wrote. “The days of hiding behind badges and promotions while peddling vile bigotry are over. The truth is coming, and with it an unflinching reckoning.”
Massachusetts State Police Colonel Geoffrey Noble issued a statement Thursday afternoon on the lawsuit, that reads in part, “These disturbing messages are entirely inconsistent with any basic standard of decency and certainly with 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.”
— Read Full Complaint Below —
WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE
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