[B’ Spokes: I’m going to skip over the details of the fatality and share the ending of this article. And yes I am thinking of some of the bicycling fatalities here in Baltimore, we are urged to be patient till the investigation is completed and then there is no discussion, the conclusions are final. ]
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BY: KEVIN SCHWARTZ AND SHWETA KRISHNAN
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Peter Cadden, unable to convince law enforcement officials that their conclusions were incorrect, says he thinks there should be some sort of independent board citizens like him can appeal to if they have a disagreement with the police. Such boards do exist in municipalities across the United States, often in bigger cities like Boston. Their focus is typically cases of police misconduct. Experts said they were not aware of any boards that would handle a case like Cadden’s. Because of the technical expertise necessary to assess reconstruction reports, as well as the relatively small impact such cases would have, the experts said it would be very difficult to create such a board.
“It’s hard enough to get a civilian review board that has any teeth when it comes to police misconduct,” said Barbara Dougan, a lawyer speaking on behalf of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Lawyer’s Guild. “I can’t imagine that you’d have any success at all to have a body that would reassess more technical reports.”
There is no civilian review board in Mattapoisett and nothing like it in Plymouth County. Bradley said district attorney policy when a citizen has a complaint about a report is to check back with the supervisor of the agency that authored it, which his office did in the Cadden case. “There’s not a whole lot they can do if [the reconstructionist] refuses to admit it’s wrong,” Bradley said. “I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s difficult to prove [a report] is botched if you have an experienced trooper giving an opinion that was approved by his experienced supervisor.”
According to Dobson, the accident reconstructionist hired by Cadden, the State Police are usually reluctant to revisit a case once a report is filed unless litigation is involved. “[Reports are corrected] almost never,” he said. “It goes into the hands of the attorney, who brings it to life only in the trial.”
Kevin Reddington, a Brockton attorney who handles accident reconstruction cases, said the motive for not changing reports is probably fear of punishment, rather than malicious intent. “Unless there’s some sort of relationship—it’s probably just an overwhelmed guy who mixed up his numbers,” he said. “What happens is they take an adversarial approach. They don’t want to end up in front of a jury, where he’s going to have his head handed to him.”
Over the past year, Cadden has appealed again to the district attorney’s office and the attorney general’s office and met with Police Chief Lyons. The officials have listened and even re-interviewed a witness, but they did not reopen the case. Cadden is frustrated and still insists the State Police report reached the wrong conclusion, but he is out of options.
“I almost feel like this is an irreversible process from their perspective,” he said of law enforcement officials. “You can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”
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https://www.commonwealthmagazine.org/News-and-Features/Features/2011/Winter/A-son-seeks-answers.aspxoldId.20110331085417119
Biking in Baltimore