Police chief speaks out against corruption allegations

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New Bedford Police Chief Paul Oliveira sat down with me this week to talk about the stunning accusations made about him and the city in The Boston Globe’s “Snitch City” series. The recent Spotlight Team effort, presented in a relentlessly breathless film noir style, claims that Oliveira was the worst of the worst abusers of a troubled statewide confidential informant system long used to investigate drug trafficking crimes.

The Globe has done yeoman’s work documenting how CIs are used across the state to prosecute drug transactions in what seems to be our never-ending, never-winning war on drugs. But while the series is strong on statistics about how little court and state oversight exists in the Massachusetts system, it is astonishingly weak on the reliability of its sources, on-the-record and off, who described the narcotics department in the city of New Bedford over three decades. 

I believe The Globe has depended on sources that it evidently did not know well, or worse, did not care to know well, to paint a one-dimensional portrait of the department. As a result, it has given some of their principal sources in the sections of the story about New Bedford (and that’s most of the series) a mantle of credibility that they may well not deserve.

The story is ostensibly about the misuse of confidential sources in drug trafficking prosecutions, but its own allegations are based on its own confidential sources, either from the New Bedford drug underworld or unnamed and unverifiable FBI sources. You only have to have a basic knowledge of the FBI’s history in the Whitey Bulger case in Boston to know how unreliable that agency can be.

Another one of its sources about Oliveira is attorney Barry Wilson, whom The Globe itself, in a 2013 article about misconduct charges against him, reported had been accused of “repeatedly disrupting proceedings in Suffolk and Plymouth counties in drug and murder cases and questioning judges’ integrity ‘with reckless disregard’ to the ‘truth or falsity’ of his statements.” That complaint was brought by the Office of the Bar Counsel, which investigates misconduct among lawyers.

I also believe that The Spotlight crew let the City of New Bedford’s misadvised practice of circling the wagons against what they perceive as unfriendly media influence their conclusions. Frustration with the city’s “no comment” stonewalling, I believe, has led the state’s paper of record to make assumptions when they only had one side of a story, and a side that was reliant on characters with serious credibility problems.

“Snitch City” is the series’ catchy title, and it certainly has lived up to its marketing. It regaled the reader or viewer with stark black and bright red graphics, all black-and-white photography of New Bedford shot to emphasize shadows, comic-book style drawings of good guys and bad guys, melodramatic music and actors reading the parts of one-dimensional characters. It appeared in print, podcast and video, so I think it’s fair to describe “Snitch City” as an extensive effort on behalf of the state’s largest paper, as well as an accomplishment of crime drama of some sort.

Perhaps most astonishingly about the series, The Globe homed in on Chief Oliveira as a man so cynical, so corrupt as to be almost a caricature. Though I did not know Oliveira well, that just did not comport with anything I had experienced. 

Let me state up front that I’ve only written one or two columns that involved Paul Oliveira, and he was a guest on my podcast The Chat once. In neither case did he provide me much information. I remember being frustrated that he was just another company man, which so many New Bedford police chiefs have seemed to be in my nearly three decades reporting in the city.

But I made my request to interview the chief based on what I hope is my local reputation as a fair-minded and not easily intimidated reporter. I am perhaps the best known journalist in the city, but I certainly have never been the best liked. I was surprised when the chief agreed to talk to me, and not only talk to me, but to talk to me as long as I wanted.

I don’t know what’s what about Paul Oliveira and his history in the narcotics unit, but I thought if I could talk to him, I could learn a little bit more about him and the way the confidential informant system works in New Bedford. 

I made my pitch based on what I felt his silence was doing to both his own reputation and more to the point, the city’s reputation. 

I know. I know. You’re saying what reputation? New Bedford is known as “pit city,” the armpit of Massachusetts down there on Buzzards Bay. Poverty, drugs, and an insular political machine in which everyone is either related to everyone else or dependent on someone or something for a favor. 

Maybe so. Or maybe more so at one time. 

But like any place else in the world, New Bedford is a complex place, a place of nuance and shades, many of which, especially in recent years, have been fairly positive and progressive, including in the police department.

Today, I want to tell you a little about that complexity, and what I know about the city and what I’ve learned this past week about Chief Oliveira. In the future, I hope I can explore even more as the chief’s interview reverberates throughout the community and we learn more about the city police and how the confidential informant system operates for good or for bad.

Questions about Lt. Robert Richard as a source

First, let’s talk about some important background about the principal source around which I believe the “Snitch City” series was built: Bobby Richard. I’ve known a little about Bob Richard for a long time.

In 2010, then Standard-Times Editor Bob Unger wrote a column about how difficult it was for the paper to publish a story about a New Bedford police officer who had been charged with a domestic assault on another man.

That officer was former Lt. Robert Richard. Yes, the same guy whose version of Paul Oliveira is the nexus of The Globe series about corruption and dysfunction in the New Bedford narcotics department. 

All those years ago, Unger recounted how several influential people had asked The Standard-Times not to report the story on Bob Richard’s domestic assault charges. The request to The Standard-Times to bury the story was made because Richard had not told his family what had happened with the alleged assault, and perhaps more to the point, he had not told his family, including his elderly mother, that he was in a relationship with another man.

Unger then explained to readers that though the paper took no joy in running the story, if we had not published it, we would have rightly been accused of a cover-up.

In the “Snitch City” stories, Bob Richard tells the tale of how his relationship with the police chief (who was then Lt. Oliveira and who had worked with Richard off and on over the years in the narcotics unit) had gone sour after his assault charges.

The charges against Richard, like so many domestic abuse cases, were eventually dropped because the victim changed his mind about cooperating. But the New Bedford Police internal affairs unit, even with the charges dropped, proceeded with an investigation of Richard, which eventually resulted in his being transferred out of the narcotics unit as well as other discipline. That seems pretty understandable — you can’t have a person working as a narcotics detective if his police superiors think there is good reason to believe he engaged in an assault, even if he was not prosecuted.

The internal affairs unit at the time was headed by now Chief Paul Oliveira, and Richard told The Globe that his connection to Oliveira went downhill after the department’s domestic assault inquiry.

“Our relationship pivoted at that point. I felt that he went out of his way to investigate me from an internal affairs level,” Richard said.

The Globe reported that Richard’s relationship with Oliveira went even further south when three (The Globe said five) years later, Oliveira, still as head of internal affairs, was part of the team that investigated further wrongdoing by Richard that led to his firing.

The Globe initially reported that Richard was fired for violating a state law prohibiting police officers from smoking. Technically that is true, but actually it was quite a bit more than that.

Lt. Richard, while in uniform on police details, had two separate automobile crashes within one week. (On one of those days, he was found to be smoking.) The Globe described the crashes as “fender-benders.” More seriously, a neutral arbiter found that Richard failed to inform the department of the accidents involving police vehicles in both cases, and in both cases he did not file an accident report. (The Globe amended the story after publication, after the city provided it with the arbitrator’s report upholding the firing.)

In the case which occurred at a Sept. 20, 2013, Greater New Bedford Regional Voc-Tech football game, school officials informed the department that they could not find the three officers (including Richard) assigned to the police details and that the officers did not respond to radio calls.

Two of the officers (not Richard, although the department thought he was included) were disciplined for drinking while on detail after they were caught on camera with a case of beer leaving a liquor store. 

After the New Bedford police union grieved the case, a neutral arbiter found that Richard had provided false information to the department, neglected his duty and engaged in conduct unbecoming an officer.

Oliveira acknowledged that Richard had a troubled history in the department when I asked him whether there was bad blood between them.

“I can’t really speak to Bobby Richard’s mindset,” Oliveira said. “All I can tell you is that Bobby and I, we got on the job together and we were good friends for many years.”

Oliveira acknowledged he was involved in Richard’s IA investigation as a lieutenant. “It was difficult, for somebody who’d been a friend of mine my whole career,” he said.

As a result of the investigation, the mayor and chief terminated Richard. “And obviously, things changed,” Oliveira said.

Oliveira said he has worked in internal affairs for many years (six years running it and nine years overseeing it as deputy chief and chief). “And I’ve had to discipline, terminate more officers than I’ve ever wanted to. But unfortunately, it’s part of the job.”

“I believe I was asked to go there [internal affairs] because of my integrity,” he said. “You can’t play favorites in that unit.”

Now, my own purpose here is not to beat up on Bobby Richard, who I do not know well, and who by all accounts served the New Bedford Police Department professionally for many years before he encountered his problems. 

And in full disclosure, just before he was fired, Richard approached me out of the blue when I worked at The Standard-Times wanting to talk to me about wrongdoing in the police department. I was not a police reporter, but I did a lot of investigative and political stories.

I remember being uncomfortable at the time because Richard was anxious to talk and was pushing for an interview. That can be a red flag in my experience as a reporter. But I also thought he might have good information and I agreed to talk to him because I know that sources, good and bad, know important things that can be accurate. 

When Richard was fired, however, I did not go forward because I was uncomfortable with what his motives might be. Looking back, perhaps I made the wrong decision.

Whether I was right or wrong, however, I was astonished to see Richard set up as the principal narrator of Oliveira’s corruption in “Snitch City.” Yes, The Globe said it had multiple sources and documents that backed him up, but they didn’t quote many of them. One of the backups was an unnamed narcotics officer who said he was afraid New Bedord police might set up his children by planting drugs in their cars. I’ll say this. That’s an accusation that’s worthy of the “Snitch City” series, in my opinion.

“What has this been like for you?”

Anyway, in an hour-long interview (which accompanies this column in its entirety so people can make up their own minds about what Chief Oliveira said), I hope I have asked him about all the principal accusations.

Early on in the interview, I asked an all-purpose question that I have found over the years is a good way to make interviewees feel comfortable and want to talk to me. I want my sources to feel that I am open to hearing what they have to say and potentially to having some empathy for them.

So I asked him “What has this been like for you? It must have been really difficult.”

What happened next was something that more than surprised me, even after a four-decade career doing interviews. This big, fifty-something guy, still strapping police chief, broke down and cried, choking up for a full two or three minutes, his face as red with emotion as any I’ve ever seen during an interview. When he finally composed himself, he said, “So, the answer is yes. It’s been difficult.”

Oliveira then talked about his tenure as chief in light of the accusations against him. “My time as chief, I take great pride in trying to professionalize the department, make it more transparent, and accountability (sic). And make the city safer,” he said. 

Oliveira talked about all the different roles he has played in the department and the authorities who observed him over that time.

“I’ve worked for six chiefs and four mayors. And during the course of that career, I progressed through the department. I’ve been very fortunate. And that wouldn’t happen, if all this was true. I wouldn’t be where I am today, not through six chiefs and four mayors.”

Allegations against the department

The Globe series presented information alleging internal affairs cases were being glossed over. Among them was the case of a corrupt officer named Jorge Santos. 

Oliveira read from documents and provided a time line indicating the department referred Santos to the district attorney and moved to fire Santos as soon as they had documented evidence. 

“Snitch City” also reexamined a scandal involving former New Bedford detective Jared Lucas, whose egregious misbehavior The Globe documented in an important story two years ago. Lucas compromised himself by sleeping with an informant. I had initially forgotten to ask about Lucas, so I went back to Oliveira a few days later to talk about the infamous detective. He described him as just a bad cop who had given the department a black eye over his “gross misconduct.” 

Oliveira said that Lucas was not investigating the case for the New Bedford Police Department, but had gone to state police with information about the informant, Carly Medeiros, who had also been the girlfriend of the drug kingpin that the state police were trying to wiretap.

It was state police, he said, who were working with the DA on a wiretap on the case, but when the alleged drug dealer, Steven Ortiz, was headed for trial, Medeiros wrote a letter to The Globe saying the case should be dismissed.

The case eventually was dismissed, but Oliveira said the New Bedford P.D. could not move against Lucas because he had by then retired after an injury.

“That’s why so many of our officers are upset,” Oliveira said. “So much of this story results because of him.”

The Globe described the Lucas case differently than the New Bedford chief. According to its March 1, 2023 story, the case was a combination local, state and federal drug trafficking investigation known as “Operation High Stakes.”

Oliveira’s overall view of the New Bedford department is starkly different from the one depicted in “Snitch City.”

The New Bedford chief, whose scheduled retirement date is May 3, said he’s not saying verbal abuse never happens in New Bedford, but that it is not a normal occurrence. “That was definitely not the practice, or the standard operating practice of that unit” he said.

Oliveira said he was not directly involved with some of the confidential informants quoted in The Globe series.

The paper devoted an episode of its series to a confidential informant who it named “Daniel” to protect his identity. It told the story of how a young man, who initially worked with police to get out of a single drug charge, ended up being used by the officers over and over again. “Daniel” eventually ended up in jail, where his life was in danger as a confidential informant.

Oliveira said he could not speak to that case 100% in confidence. But he said it was an internal affairs case and “the story [Daniel] reported to the Globe is much, much different than what he reported to us.”

The chief said the man was a voluntary informant who chose to be an informant. “He had his opportunity to walk out any time. … It was never this case where you gotta do more, more, more, more. Why do more, more, more?”

I pushed back and said, it would have been dangerous for him to continue being an informant, but the police could prosecute him if he declined to continue.

“That’s why it’s up to them whether they want to do that,” Oliveira said. “And some people say ‘Yes, I’ll do it,’ and then they change their mind. Or some people maybe do one case and then they do no more.”

Oliveira said most of the cases cited by The Globe took place when he was not in command of internal affairs but that he has since reviewed them. I asked him about a case in which a judge reprimanded an officer for lying about a controlled buy and dismissed the case.

“That officer ended up transferring (to Westport) shortly afterwards,” he acknowledged, and New Bedford later rehired him. 

Oliveira denied that deals are made to protect the wrongdoing of CIs, although, when pressed, he acknowledged the DA’s office would sometimes give informants consideration on their own cases for their charges. 

“Confidential informants are used in that line of work; they’re used in journalism,” he said.

Allegations against the chief

There were very serious charges about Oliveira made by Bob Richard, and by a confidential informant named Frank “Rizzo” Simmons, alleging that the now chief took actions that clearly would be illegal, not to mention unethical.

In one case, Richard said that Oliveira was told where a large cache of five kilos of cocaine were located after a raid found a much smaller amount. He said when he asked Oliveira about it, the now chief told him the CI had later informed him where five additional kilos were located and he allowed the drug dealer to keep one kilo worth $40,000 for himself.

In the other case, Rizzo said that Oliveira was giving out wads of $1,000 bills to officers and telling them it was for the “green fund” to bribe informants. Some $33,000 was seized in that Coffin Avenue raid but only about $2,200 ever made it back to the station, the informant told The Globe.

Oliveira called the kilo story “outrageous” and said he can’t even imagine how it would happen. “To risk your job and everything you have, I just don’t get it.”

Similarly, he also called the claim that he handed out wads of cash to officers “outrageous.”

“Outrageous. It makes zero sense to me,” he said. “It didn’t happen, never happened, never heard of the green fund until I started reading this story.”

The Globe, however, reported that the term “green fund” appears repeatedly in court records and interviews, referenced by multiple drug dealers, as well as federal investigators.

Oliveira, however, asked if it makes sense with 13 officers on hand that he was handing out money. 

“You’re telling me if this was the normal practice of the drug unit, this has only come to light now 30 years later?” he asked.

Oliveira said that Rizzo’s timeline was off, that he was charged in 1998, met with Richard 18 months later, and pleaded out 18 months after that. According to Rizzo’s comments in The Globe, he was offered a reduced sentence five days after he told Richard that the FBI was investigating Oliveira. For the record, Bob Richard said he had no memory of such a conversation with Rizzo.

Oliveira also stressed that for the time period in which he was said to be engaged in abuse of the confidential informant system — the late 1990s — he was one of the most junior officers, and only worked there for a period of three years. “During those three years, there were 13 detectives in the unit and three supervisors,” he said.

He continued. “The way it’s portrayed is that this rookie cop Oliveira goes into the unit and apparently, I become, I don’t know, this rogue cop who takes over the unit as the most junior detective?”

I wanted to press Oliveira about dubious police behavior that the public might be willing to accept. My recollection of the war on drugs in the 1980s and 1990s was that it was a time when the nation, and particularly largely low-income cities like New Bedford, were desperate to clean up the violence and crime associated with drugs.

The “three strikes and you’re out” law had been put on the books and onerous penalties were being meted out even for low-level drug dealers, particularly ones of color. I asked the chief if it was true that much of the country wanted police to clean up the drug economy and they didn’t care how they did it.

He gave a little but not much. “Yeah, it’s fair to say,” he said, “But 30 years ago, all the rules weren’t thrown out the window either. Right? Some of the rules have changed, and some of the policies have gotten tighter since the ’90s, but the drug trade was different, too.”

He emphasized the importance of the honesty of narcotics officers, something at odds with The Globe’s portrayal.

“It’s like everything else as a police officer. There’s abuses. And we’ve seen that. Abuses, not just in New Bedford, but we’ve seen that across the country,” he said. “But when you work in the drug unit, I always say your integrity means more than anything. That’s all you have in the drug unit is your integrity.”

Once you’re caught bending the rules, or overusing a CI, that’s your career as a drug cop, Oliveira said. He acknowledged that some officers in New Bedford have, in fact, been disciplined for abusing the confidential informant system.

He was not among those accused, until now 30 years later, he said.

“I’m comfortable with what I did,” he said. “Like I said, I’m comfortable with the credibility. I testified in court. I told you I testified in court many times as an expert witness,” including while working with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The Globe had unnamed FBI sources saying that Oliveira had been investigated three separate times since the 1990s. I was curious about a statement on the Police Department’s “For the Record” Facebook page that Oliveira had no “formal” knowledge of any FBI investigations. I asked him if he had any “informal” knowledge, had he heard any buzz around the department about it?

“No. Nothing,” he said. “I’ve never been informed of an investigation, I’ve never been made aware of an investigation, I’ve never been subpoenaed to testify as part of an investigation.”

“I don’t recall any time, of any type of investigation that I was looking (sic) into, by the FBI.”

The chief’s use of the word “recall” set off my reporter’s antenna. I’ve read witnesses saying they can’t recall something any number of times in court cases and it offers a witness a convenient excuse for not providing information they don’t want to. 

The Globe had six witnesses, three department colleagues, two people who investigated Oliveira and an informant who said Oliveira was a master of “set-up” trafficking cases in which he flipped mid- or high-level dealers for low ones. That’s a lot of people on the same page and it deserves some credence. But again they were all, or five out of six unnamed sources, and plenty of people had reason to want to take down Paul Oliveira.

Still, in the on-the-record arena, former officer Bryan Oliveira who was the department’s liaison to the Drug Enforcement Administration, informed The Globe that his DEA superiors specifically told him to keep information away from the New Bedford department and Paul Oliveira in particular. 

Destruction of records

Our FBI conversation eventually led me to question the chief about his decision to destroy internal affairs investigations older than 10 years for which the allegations had not been proven. Those records included his own IA investigations, but as I’ve said before, none of those claims were sustained.

Oliveira said the year he became chief, 2021, the state formed the POST Commission, short for the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission. It was formed in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. Its purpose, according to its website, was to “improve policing and enhance public confidence in law enforcement by implementing a fair process for mandatory certification, discipline, and training for all peace officers.”

The legislation called for department internal affairs records to be turned over to the commission, but according to the chief, the commission did not want departments to turn over unsustained allegations.

“It’s no different than if someone has been charged with drunk driving and they’ve been found not guilty. Should that be something that is attached to their name for the rest of their life? No.”

According to Oliveira, when he was learning about the regulations, he asked around and found that most Massachusetts departments do not keep records older than seven years. “At the time, we had file cabinets and file cabinets of internal affairs records,” he said.

A lot of those records are in online databases that contain those records, he said. “I know I’ve been accused of trying to get rid of cases. I didn’t have any sustained cases. This was never about Paul Oliveira. I didn’t treat Paul Oliveira any different than any man or woman on my police department.”

Oliveira said he could have destroyed all cases, including ones that had been sustained, according to the law. But he decided to keep the sustained cases. “If you’re an active member of the department still, and you have a sustained case, I’m gonna keep it.”

“I went well over and above what was even allowed. But that was the only reason I did that,” he said. 

“Was there a spin on that to make it look like I was trying to destroy… I have nothing in my IA file that has ever hurt me,” he said, again noting that no allegation against him was ever sustained.

According to Oliveira, if the FBI was looking at coverups involving himself and the department, it must have all those IA cases. “There’s none of those cases, I can assure you, that the FBI was concerned of, or looking at,” he said. “There’s nothing there.”

Oliveira pointed out that the city retains electronic records of all the cases, though not the whole investigation related to them.

Past complaints against Oliveira

Over the years, there have been a number of internal affairs complaints against Oliveira himself. Although he said some of them just included him as part of a team, he denied point blank all of them, including two of the most serious ones. 

None of 10 complaints against Oliveira were sustained.

One complaint against Oliveira was from a mother who said he was giving her daughter drugs in return for her information as a confidential informant.

The chief emphasized that he had been cleared of that allegation. It was a case in which a confidential informant had told her mother she was no longer using drugs, and when her mother discovered she was still using, and asked where she was getting the drugs, she said from Paul Oliveira. “We’ve never handed out drugs, honestly. Never. Never happens,” Oliveira said. “What we do in exchange for informants doing work for us, we give them cash.”

Oliveira said he was referring to cash that was documented and had been approved by courts for distribution. And he said the mother said she understood what was going on after she heard the story.

In another case, a woman said that Oliveira and other officers, when they raided her apartment, made her walk around in a thong in front of neighbors.

Oliveira contended it was not something that would ever happen now, or even 25 years ago when the complaint was made.

“That one there I have no recollection of,” he said. “That sounds like that was a generalized complaint against the whole drug unit at the time.”

“Thank God for body cameras now because I think some of the frivolous complaints that have come up over the years, I think body cameras will help resolve those.”

Oliveira said there are strict regulations governing what officers can do when people in a raid are discovered undressed. They have to allow the individuals to dress, and arrange for people, including children, not suspected of wrongdoing to leave the scene. 

At this point, I said there were a number of complaints of verbal abuse against himself and other officers. I pointed out that in an age of cell phones we’ve all seen police raids where officers are clearly behaving badly, and I ask whether such verbal abuse never takes place during raids in New Bedford.

“I wouldn’t say verbal abuse. There’s definitely, at times, there may be a raised voice when you go in and take control,” he said. “Especially if you have people trying to jump out windows or run through the back doors.”

Oliveira portrayed a New Bedford narcotics unit in which people took pride.

“So much about working the drug unit is your integrity and your professionalism. These are cases you’re going to have to go to court and testify in front of a lot of the same judges you’re going to see on a regular basis.”

Where does the department go from here?

In the wake of the “Snitch City” series, the city has now hired 21CP, a Chicago-based firm that includes former public safety officials from both Washington, D.C., and Boston, to investigate its internal affairs and narcotics units. Mayor Jon Mitchell has also said he has forwarded the Globe series to the FBI.

Oliveira pointed to the fact that both the Bratton and Jensen Hughes reports found that while the department has been riven by internal strife, it is largely free of corruption.

“I’m retiring, but it is hurtful to me to know that the city has to deal with this,” he said. He said there is much good work done by the department and it gets overlooked. “Are we perfect as a police department? No, and I don’t know of any police — God forbid if they do say they are perfect.”

The Jensen Hughes report from two years ago did find there could be “a real danger” if confidential informants are not closely monitored in New Bedford, and that there was a “problematic situation” connected to the length of internal affairs investigations, which are not public while they are still open. 

The Bratton Report was commissioned by the highly respected former Boston, New York City and Los Angeles police chief Bill Bratton, in the 1990s. Bratton has generally had a reputation as a reformer in criminology circles.

“It is a testament to the high integrity of the officers in the NBPD that corruption, the scourge of some municipal police agencies, has not infected the Department in recent history,” the Bratton report read in 1997, the first year Chief Oliveira began his three-year stint in narcotics.

More recently, the Jensen Hughes report, commissioned by Mayor Mitchell, also gave the department largely positive reviews. Although questions have arisen about the city dragging its feet on implementing some of its suggestions.

One of the authors of that report and also a member of the Bratton team, Robert Wasserman, stressed that Chief Oliveira agreed to have an independent audit of the narcotics department several years before the Globe report.

He also said in his opinion the department has done a good job implementing the changes.

“I have a lot of respect for the chief,” he said. “I think he’s done a pretty good job.”

Though Wasserman has confidence in the chief, I think the verdict is inconclusive on the charges against him. I don’t know whether he did all those things The Globe and its many unnamed sources say he did. And I don’t think The Globe and its screenplay-like investigation does either.

He struck me as a good man, a man trying to do the right thing, but I can’t pretend to know a person on the basis of a few conversations.

In my opinion, the world of unnamed sources is a murky but necessary one, both in law enforcement and journalism. The crucial determiner is in the quality control governing those unknown sources and the ethics of the police officers and the journalists. We can only hope the people involved generally rise to the occasion.

Email columnist Jack Spillane at jspillane@newbedfordlight.org.

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