Police Hero: Ryan Sceviour

From Washington Post:

Ryan Sceviour, a Massachusetts State Police trooper, was halfway through an evening shift on Oct. 16 when a seemingly routine call came in about a car crash. On a highway in Worcester, Mass., Alli Bibaud had slammed her Toyota Corolla into the guardrail. She and her passenger had survived, but Sceviour said the 30-year-old woman reeked of alcohol when he arrived on the scene.

A search of the car turned up a “heroin kit” containing needles and a metal spoon, Sceviour wrote in his police report, which was published by the Boston Globe. Bibaud said she had performed sexual acts to pay for the drugs and had offered to perform sexual favors for Sceviour in exchange for leniency, the report stated. During the ride to jail, she claimed her father was a judge, but the trooper was skeptical.

Two days later, on his day off, Sceviour awoke to a loud knock on his door. A fellow state trooper told him to go immediately to the barracks in Holden. When he got there, his supervisors ordered him to delete “negative and derogatory” statements in his report on Bibaud’s arrest, saying he could be fired if he refused. Bibaud, it turned out, was the daughter of Judge Timothy Bibaud, a state district judge who presided over a drug court.

Sceviour, 29, is now suing the Massachusetts State Police and his commanders, alleging they forced him to unlawfully edit his report and tamper with court documents. Their actions have caused him “damage to his reputation, have negatively impacted his employment, and have caused him severe emotional distress,. read the complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court. …

The State Police have said from the beginning that Col. Richard D. McKeon was within his rights to order the offending statements removed after finding that they weren’t relevant to the case. A spokesman for the agency told the Globe on Tuesday: .The revision consisted of removal of what the Colonel and senior commanders felt was a sensationalistic and inflammatory directly-quoted statement that made no contribution to proving the elements of the crimes with which she was charged..

Give ’em hell, Ryan. We need more cops like you, who report the truth regardless of who it might upset. If Judge Bibaud truly didn’t order this cover-up then he’ll weigh in on your side.