BOSTON (WHDH) - Karen Read spoke out about her lawsuit against the Massachusetts State Police and the Canton Police, outlining what she hopes to get out of it.
Read was acquitted of the most serious charges in the 2022 death of her Boston police officer boyfriend, John O’Keefe.
She told the Today show on Friday that the lawuit is not about money: she said she’s doing it to honor O’Keefe’s memory.
“He’s the reason we’re doing this,” Read said. “John was the victim of this institutional corruption, and we’re the voice for John.”
The lawsuit said officers who were unfit for positions of public trust were given promotions and control of homicide investigations.
Read said she’s also fighting to restore her reputation.
“I knew as it unfolded that I was never going to just forget that this happened to me, that I was wronged in this way,” she said. “I couldn’t just go back to life as it was. I have to continue fighting for justice. The acquital is deserved, but the wrongs have not been completely righted.”
In her new lawsuit, text messages from the former lead investigator in the case, Michael Proctor, show him using vile, racist, homophobic, and anti-semitic language when talking about Read and other police cases.
Proctor was fired and dishonorably discharged from his job as a state trooper last year.
He sent those messages to former Canton police sergeant Sean Goode, who was at the scene where O’Keefe died and testified during Read’s first trial; he resigned from his job on Wednesday.
Alan Jackson, Read’s attorney, claimed that corruption in law enforcement runs deeper than just Proctor and Goode, telling the Today show:
“What Karen wants you cannot write on a check, which is exposure. Exposure of the corruption that is the DNA of the Massachusetts State Police, of the Canton Police Department, which is evidenced by these two indiviuals in their text messages.”
Massachusetts State Police responded to the lawsuit, saying:
“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 said she does not have a job and her time has been entirely devoted to working on the case.
She said she has gotten overwhelming support wherever she goes.
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