Officers investigated for misconduct collect thousands in pension benefits

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One longtime police officer was accused of depositing department funds into his wife’s personal bank account. Another veteran officer withheld an inhaler from an asthmatic man in custody and lied about it. 

Then there’s the infamous narcotics detective Jared Lucas, who made headlines for secretly sleeping with his informant.

All three served the New Bedford Police Department, and all three together have earned more than $400,000 from the New Bedford pension system in just the last few years. Two of them retired while their supervisors considered firing them for misconduct. 

Massachusetts law only allows officers’ pensions to be taken away in limited, rare circumstances — generally, if they misappropriate public money or are convicted of a crime related to their job. That means police officers are still entitled to retire with their full pensions after committing serious misconduct, as long as it doesn’t involve a criminal conviction.

The New Bedford Retirement Board is reviewing the pension of Sgt. Samuel Ortega, who retired in November after the department found he repeatedly violated its sexual harassment policy. He was also accused of depositing a $200 department donation into his wife’s bank account, but it seems that no one investigated that allegation until the retirement board opened its review this summer.

Ortega had earned $42,000 in retirement benefits as of May, according to the New Bedford Retirement Board. If the review leads to his pension being forfeited, he would have to repay the benefits he has already received. He did not respond to two voicemails seeking comment.

Sgt. Graciano Pereira retired in January 2023, after top city officials took steps to fire him. An internal investigation found that Pereira pushed a handcuffed woman into a prisoner transport van, causing her to suffer a head injury. In a separate incident, another prisoner had to be rushed to the hospital for an asthma attack after Pereira refused to let the prisoner use a rescue inhaler, another internal investigation found. The sergeant lied to investigators about both incidents, investigators found.

Pereira has received more than $150,000 in retirement benefits, according to the retirement board. He declined to comment for this story.

Detective Jared Lucas was in a “tawdry love triangle”: sleeping with a confidential informant, Carly Medeiros, who was also romantically involved with Steven Ortiz, an alleged drug trafficker, the Boston Globe Magazine reported in 2023. A major drug trafficking case against Ortiz was dismissed earlier this year because Lucas’ sexual relationship with his informant tainted the evidence in the case.

Lucas has received more than $219,000 in benefits (which includes some retroactive pay from 2021) since he retired in 2021. The Light did not receive a response to two voicemails left with a number listed for Lucas.

In a written statement, recently appointed New Bedford Police Chief Jason Thody declined to comment on whether the officers’ pensions should be forfeited, because he wasn’t familiar with all the facts in these cases.

“What I can say is that I expect all members of this department to uphold the highest standards of integrity, and we will take any allegation of misconduct seriously and investigate it thoroughly,” Thody’s statement said.

The chief noted that the New Bedford Retirement Board is responsible for decisions on pensions, following standards set by state law.

“Those laws are in place to weigh how serious the misconduct was, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to second-guess that legal process,” Thody continued.

New Bedford’s pension system extends beyond the Police Department, and so does the list of public safety employees collecting pensions after alleged wrongdoing. Firefighter Manuel Mota Jr. retired in May after The Light reported on his history of arrests. Mota has been arrested at least eight times since 2000 for alleged drunken and violent behavior. He was never found guilty, though he received a $200 fine on an assault and battery charge and a 45-day loss of license on a drunk-driving charge. He is currently facing charges of disorderly conduct in New Bedford District Court and assault and battery on a police officer in Quincy District Court.

It’s not yet clear how much Mota is set to receive in retirement benefits. His lawyer said Mota did not want to comment for this story.

In an email, New Bedford Public Information Officer Jonathan Darling said the city “will follow the requirements of the law and take action in any instance in which evidence is produced” that shows the state forfeiture laws are applicable to one of its employees. In that scenario, the city would provide the evidence to the New Bedford Retirement Board, he said.

Darling said the city’s top lawyer had determined that none of the scenarios that can trigger pension forfeiture were applicable for Ortega, Pereira, Lucas, and Mota — “nor is there evidence of their applicability at present,” Darling wrote.

Misconduct investigations, then retirement

Sgt. Pereira allegedly committed misconduct so serious that county prosecutors determined it undermined his credibility as a witness in criminal trials.

In October 2021, surveillance footage captured Pereira pushing a woman in handcuffs into a prisoner transport van. She fell on her face and he immediately closed the door, according to city and District Attorney documents obtained by The Light.

“The video is clear and compelling,” then-Chief Paul Oliveira wrote in a letter to Mayor Jon Mitchell recommending Pereira’s termination in 2023.

It was only later, when court staff said the woman was bleeding and needed medical attention, that Pereira filled out an injury report. He wrote that the handcuffed woman had “lost her balance and sat on the floor,” and that he didn’t know how she got blood on her face.

“According to the video, this is obviously not the case,” Oliveira wrote in his letter. He forwarded the case to the Bristol County District Attorney. No charges resulted.

In May 2022, an anonymous letter penned by someone who said they “fear retaliation from fellow officers” described a second incident. According to the letter, Pereira was booking a man on drunk-driving charges when the man started struggling to breathe. The man asked to use his rescue inhaler, which was stored with the rest of his confiscated belongings. Pereira allegedly refused.

Another officer arrived later, saw the man “in distress,” and retrieved the inhaler before the man was transported to the Ash Street Jail.

“From the video of the back of the prisoner van, it is apparent that the use of the inhaler came too late,” Oliveira wrote to the mayor. The man had to be taken to St. Luke’s Hospital in an ambulance.

Pereira told investigators that the man never asked for his inhaler, but the man and another officer said Pereira was asked and said no.

Internal police investigations found that Pereira violated several police regulations in both cases.

The district attorney sent Oliveira a letter in December 2022, saying prosecutors would be required to disclose Pereira’s misconduct to criminal defendants. That’s because they are required by law to share any information that undermines the credibility of a witness.

One week later, Oliveira put Pereira on indefinite administrative leave. He recommended Pereira’s termination to Mayor Mitchell, who then informed Pereira that he was “contemplating” his termination because of the two incidents of misconduct.

“The information and evidence obtained as a result of the investigative process revealed that you engaged in conduct that makes you unsuitable for a position in public safety,” Mitchell wrote.

After earning more than $8,500 while out on administrative leave, Pereira retired with his pension in February 2023.

Why retirees who commit misconduct keep their benefits

There are only a few types of situations where Massachusetts law allows retirement boards to take away a public employee’s pension. One is when a public employee is convicted of a crime related to their position. Another is when a public employee is charged with misappropriation of public funds. Concealing or underreporting your salary can also result in pension forfeiture — the size of a pension is based on how much a public employee earned when they were working.

A separate section of the state law says public retirees can only receive retirement benefits if they were not fired for “moral turpitude,” though the law doesn’t have any specific definition of what that would mean.

Experts representing public employees and pension systems said there are compelling reasons to restrict pension forfeiture to very limited circumstances.

“I think there are situations where the crime is so egregious that it seems fair to remove their pension, but I don’t know it necessarily is fair,” said Laura Gilson, general counsel for the Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System. Gilson is president of the National Association of Public Pension Attorneys, but spoke in her own capacity as a public pension lawyer.

Some experts compared public pensions to Social Security benefits, which retirees can still receive after a criminal conviction.

Massachusetts is one of a few states where no public employees pay into Social Security, which means the public employees generally aren’t eligible to receive Social Security benefits in retirement. Forfeiting their pension may deprive them of their only guaranteed source of retirement income. 

“That leaves them and their surviving spouse in the dark without any kind of retirement security,” said Frank Valeri, president of Mass Retirees, an advocacy group for public retirees in Massachusetts.

Valeri and other experts noted that public retirees often have dependents, like spouses, who had nothing to do with the employee’s misconduct but still depend on their pension and health insurance.

Public pensions act like a safety net program, Gilson said, because it guarantees at least a basic income for retirees after their earning years are over.

“On the one hand, it angers folks when someone gets a pension when they’ve committed a crime,” she said. “On the other hand, it takes a little bit deeper thought process to go through what that pension represents.”

Taking an employee’s pension could violate their rights in some cases, Gilson pointed out. When a public employee is convicted of a crime, they have already gone through a court process to be found guilty and sentenced with a punishment for that crime, she said.

“If you turn around and take that retirement benefit,” she said, “how is that not double jeopardy?”

Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court determined in 2016 that a forfeited pension can also violate the Eighth Amendment, which protects against “cruel and unusual punishment” and “excessive fines.”

In that case, Edward Bettencourt, a Peabody police officer, had lost his pension after he was convicted of illegally accessing civil service records for other officers in his department. The benefits he lost were worth at least $659,000.

The Supreme Judicial Court decided that this forfeiture was a disproportionate punishment for the crime, which made it an excessive fine.

Pension forfeiture is all-or-nothing in Massachusetts, so the retirement board in the Bettencourt case didn’t have the option to forfeit a portion of the officer’s pension that may have been proportionate to his crime. And while some other states limit forfeiture to felonies or a specific list of crimes, Massachusetts allows forfeiture for all felonies and misdemeanors.

That means state law doesn’t give retirement boards much leeway in deciding a forfeiture that fits the facts of each case.

“It is probably one of the strictest forfeiture laws in the country,” Valeri said.

Two cases from the state police overtime fraud scandal illustrate how the current legal framework can lead to vastly different outcomes. 

Former trooper John Giulino lost his pension benefits worth $1.06 million after he was convicted of receiving over $29,000 in fraudulent overtime pay, according to news reports. But in 2023, a judge reinstated his benefits because the forfeiture would have been a “grossly disproportionate” punishment for the crime.

Former trooper Gregory Raftery lost a similar amount of pension benefits — $1.03 million — because he stole over $50,000 in overtime pay. This month, the Supreme Judicial Court upheld the forfeiture, ruling that it was not a “grossly disproportionate” punishment for the crime.

Reforms languish

Shortly after the 2016 court decision, the state Legislature created the Special Commission on Pension Forfeiture to study reforms. The commission published its research and a set of recommendations in 2017, but the Legislature hasn’t acted on them.

The proposed reforms were designed to address the constitutional issues from the Bettencourt case and bring Massachusetts in line with other states.

The commission recommended creating a tiered system that would allow retirement boards to choose how much of a pension to forfeit — either a third, two-thirds, or nearly all of it. It proposed a list of criteria that retirement boards would have to consider when making forfeiture decisions, including the severity of the crime, the amount of any financial loss, and the impact on public trust.

The tiered system would help retirement boards avoid situations like the one in Bettencourt, said Bill Keefe. He’s executive director of the Public Employee Retirement Administration Commission, which oversees public pension systems in Massachusetts.

“If there’s the option of a lesser penalty, there’s a better chance it wouldn’t be ruled unconstitutional,” he said.

A “minimum allowance” would still be guaranteed for all retirees under the reforms. This allowance would equal the amount in benefits that a general government employee would receive if they retired with 10 years of service, the lowest level of benefits available.

Leaving that bottom tier ensures that retirees receive some income, as if they were receiving Social Security, Valeri said. The reforms would also ensure that an innocent spouse of the retiree can count on the benefits.

The commission recommended that misdemeanors be removed from the list of crimes that qualify for pension forfeiture, noting that the crimes at issue in the Bettencourt case were misdemeanors. And it recommended removing the archaic “moral turpitude” language from the statute out of concern that it could also face Eighth Amendment challenges in court.

Eric Cohen, executive director of the New Bedford Retirement Board, whose members are employees of the city, the vocational school system, SRTA and the region’s waste management system, declined to comment for this story. In an email, he said the board will continue to apply existing standards while monitoring potential legislative changes.

The reforms have failed to pass in every session since they were first filed in 2017. The legislators in the best position to advocate for the reforms have since died.

Six seats on the committee were set aside for legislators, but only four of those seats were filled. State Sen. Kenneth Donnelly, the Senate designee, died just before the commission released its report. State Rep. Christopher Walsh, the House designee, died one year after the report was filed.

The only two surviving legislators who sat on the commission, Rep. Todd Smola and Sen. Patrick O’Connor, are members of the Legislature’s Republican minority. Smola’s office did not respond to The Light’s requests for an interview. A staffer in O’Connor’s office acknowledged The Light’s inquiry but did not respond to follow-up inquiries.

In each of the past four sessions, the Joint Committee on Public Service has referred the proposed reforms to the House Committee on Ways and Means — usually, with a favorable recommendation. But the bill has never made it out of that committee. The version of the legislation filed this session is still in the public service committee.

Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means, did not respond to requests for comment.

Keefe, the state official overseeing public pension systems, said he had “nothing specific to report” on the bill’s status this session.

Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org and Anastasia E. Lennon at alennon@newbedfordlight.org.