RJA Attorney Andrew Gambaccini recently secured an arbitrator’s reversal of a three day suspension that was imposed upon a New Bedford police officer based upon an allegation that the officer improperly failed to document the disposal of an arrestee’s property. By way of background, the officer had arrested an individual for various offenses, including the possession of a knife of illegal length. After the arrest,
The Massachusetts State Police secured a search warrant for an apartment in Worcester; that warrant was based upon information received from a confidential informant that dangerous individuals had been observed in the residence and that firearms also were present in the apartment. The combination of dangerous individuals with access to firearms made the warrant a high risk endeavor, so the State Police contacted the Worcester
RJA recently obtained a major victory for one of its clients, a sergeant with the Danvers Police Department. In 2017, the Danvers Police Department received a call that a firearm had been discharged into a residence while no one was home, with the bullet striking the exterior of the building and penetrating into the home. The Town later accused a sergeant involved in the police
In 2018, the plaintiff amended his complaint in an existing civil rights lawsuit to name two Waltham police officers as defendants. In the amended complaint, the plaintiff alleged that he was defamed by the police officers’ filing of false police reports about him, that one of the officers sought a criminal complaint against the plaintiff without prior notice or respecting his right to a show
In a case handled by RJA Attorney Andrew Gambaccini, a federal judge last week dismissed federal civil rights claims against a police officer from the Fall River Police Department. The primary plaintiff’s allegations generally were that he was present in an apartment when members of the Fall River Vice Unit executed a search warrant and, during the warrant execution, he was kicked in the head
By Amaris Castillo | Lowell Sun DRACUT — There will be no disciplinary action for Deputy Police Chief David Chartrand and Sgt. Gregg Byam will be suspended for one day without pay over their administration of the Police Department’s evidence locker. The decisions end more than a year of controversy over the management of the evidence locker, which was the subject of a scathing September
The below article published in The Valley Patriot describes a recent RJA success in a MCAD lawsuit. A Lawrence police officer brought a discrimination complaint against the City of Lawrence and eight police supervisors, alleging that he was the victim of years of mistreatment based upon his ethnicity. Andrew Gambaccini of RJA represented the eight police supervisors and, in an eighty-five page response to the
In a recent arbitration award, Reardon, Joyce & Akerson, P.C. (“RJA”) successfully represented a Springfield police officer in connection with a five day suspension. Prior to the five day suspension, the officer, who was not at that point a member of the Massachusetts Police Association Legal Defense Fund, had been suspended from his duties based upon various allegations, including that the officer had not been
In the case of Commonweatlh v. Maguire, 476 Mass. 156 (2017), the Supreme Judicial Court addressed the elements of the felony crime of Open and Gross Lewdness and Lascivious Behavior under G.L. c. 272, §16. Based upon a failure to prove that the defendant’s conduct of exposing his penis to several females sitting on a bench at the Hynes Convention Center subway platform produced either
In Commonwealth v. White, 475 Mass. 583, 59 N.E.3d 369 (2016), a Boston police detective investigated an armed robbery and shooting at a convenience store. His investigation led him to the defendant as one of the suspects. Visiting the defendant’s high school, the detective learned from one of the administrators that, under the school’s policy, she was holding the defendant’s cell phone. At the time,
