While Braintree’s former police chief says it is “not
unusual” for police to ask fellow officers to use their discretion when issuing
traffic tickets to friends or family, the state Civil Service Commission ruled
this week that one Braintree officer took the practice too far.
In a decision issued Thursday, the commission upheld the
termination last year of officer Paul Venuto over two incidents in which he was
accused of trying to intervene on behalf of friends facing arrest for drug
offenses. Commissioners wrote that Venuto “twice demonstrated a willingness to
place the well-being of a friend before the law, his fellow officers, and the
public.”
Venuto’s termination was based on two incidents in 2008 and
2009 in which officials say Venuto called other officers who had made an
arrest, or were about to make an arrest, in order to intervene on behalf of a
friend. The incidents were brought to the attention of former Chief Paul
Frazier in 2011 after officials began an internal investigation into unrelated
allegations about domestic violence between Venuto and his girlfriend.
According to the Civil Service decision, released Thursday,
a Braintree detective testified that in April 2008 he and another officer were
conducting undercover surveillance in Weymouth Landing when they asked
dispatchers to run the license plate of a red Pontiac and determine whether the
owner had a criminal record. Venuto, who started with the department around
2006, testified that he had been listening to the dispatchers and called the
detective on his cellphone after recognizing the vehicle’s owner as a friend.
After talking the call, the detective said he told Venuto
that he was “watching a five-pound largemouth,” a term used in the department
to indicate drug surveillance. Venuto told the detective that he knew the owner
of the car and that it appeared his friend “was about to do something dumb,”
according to the decision.
Later, after the officers watched what they thought was a
drug deal between the driver of the Pontiac and someone in another car, the
detective approached the Pontiac and found that the driver was speaking with
someone on his phone. Asked who he was talking to, the driver said he had been
talking to his friend Paul Venuto.
