Canton Police officer suspended for ‘misconduct’ allegations, as department faces turmoil after Karen Read trial

The hits just keep coming for the Canton Police Department After their officers were grilled on the stand for their questionable tactics during the Karen Read probe one of the department s cops has been suspended amid misconduct accusations The town on Oct was reportedly alerted to the misconduct accusations involving the officer Directly after becoming aware of the statements the Town engaged an independent investigator to conduct a thorough administrative research into the charges of misconduct the town noted in a message The cop has been suspended with pay pending the outcome of the review The Town and the Town s Police Department take all charges of misconduct seriously the town added Members of the Town s Police Department are expected to perform their duties in a professional manner The Town is committed to providing the quality and level of amenity that the citizens of Canton deserve from their Police Department the town announced To that end we will take the necessary strategies to ensure that actions by individual officers do not jeopardize that quality and level of institution The town commented it cannot share confidential personnel information because of laws governing employee privacy Earlier this year the Canton Police Department audit dropped on the same day the Read retrial started and included recommendations on how the crime scene surrounding the body of victim John O Keefe could have been worked better The front yard of Fairview Road in Canton was a hotbed of police and EMS activity in the early morning hours of Jan as Boston Police Officer O Keefe lay dead or dying there The handling of the crime scene by the local police in those crucial early hours has been widely criticized with Read defense seizing on investigative and protocol failures Related Articles Karen Read attorney Alan Jackson says BPD Commish Michael Cox caught in a lie Karen Read in wrongful death suit points to third parties for John O Keefe s death Howie Carr Proctor cut his own throat with toxic texts Strong second half leads Walpole over Canton Canton gets past King Philip in Hockomock clash The death of O Keefe a Canton resident and the dispute surrounding how local police handled the scene spurred a local movement to have the department audited The assessment wasted no time highlighting its findings of how the Canton Police Department handled the O Keefe crime scene The executive summary of their findings included several recommendations -The police failed to photograph O Keefe s body where it lay before Canton Fire EMS members moved him to the ambulance Interviews with critical spectators at the scene should have been conducted at the police department building and Consensual Recorded Witness Interviews should have been made The analysis mentions Jennifer McCabe and Kerry Roberts the two women who discovered O Keefe s body with Read by name as examples Both Canton and State Police should have maintained a presence at the crime scene pending secondary crime scene searches Canton Police should have preserved all their surveillance camera video recordings while Read s Lexus SUV the alleged murder weapon was housed at Canton PD from January through February That way the footage would have been available for the prosecution and defense Norfolk DA prosecutors accused Read of backing up into O Keefe her boyfriend of two years with her SUV leaving him to freeze and die on the front yard of a Canton home where the pair was supposed to continue a night out after the bars closed that cold snowy early January morning The jury cleared Read of killing O Keefe convicting her of just drunken driving