By Dan Glaun | dglaun@masslive.com

A retired Massachusetts State Police Trooper says he was targeted with a campaign of retaliation for reporting a sergeant's on-shift absence from his barracks in 2014, including a frivolous disciplinary report, a fabricated workplace violence allegation and the denial of a hardship transfer to be closer to his dying father.

When State Trooper Lawrence Smith showed up for his shift at the Newbury barracks on June 4, 2014, something wasn't right, he later wrote in a memo to internal affairs. The trooper on desk did not know where his patrols were, and the sergeant in charge was not at the barracks.

Smith noted the absence in the barracks' log -- and just over a month later, that same sergeant wrote a disciplinary report accusing Smith of falsifying records and warning him against insubordination.

MassLive has obtained records of the discipline against Smith and his allegations of retaliation against him, and is publishing the first public account of the dispute.

His account comes as the agency is under intense scrutiny for multiple scandals, including one related to allegations of retaliatory discipline. Troopers Ryan Sceviour and Ali Rei are suing the agency, saying they were pressured to alter an arrest report to protect the reputation of a judge's daughter. And Troop E of the state police department was disbanded this month after 30 troopers were implicated in a no-show shift scheme.

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The Newbury state police barracks

Claims of retaliation

The day of the incident, Nunzio Orlando, the trooper assigned to man the desk, track patrols and field phone calls, was covering for a trooper who had taken vacation time.

Sgt. Bruce O'Rourke, who was next in line for desk duty, was nowhere to be found. And Orlando's replacement on the desk, Trooper Roland Cormier, could not answer basic questions about the locations of patrols, Smith wrote.

Smith, a veteran trooper who medically retired as a sergeant this year, refused to let the matter slide. He logged O'Rourke's absence in the barracks' daily administrative journal, sparking a years-long dispute that cast a pall over Smith's last years with the department.

"I regret that it has come to this but I will not stop until I have cleared my name," Smith wrote in a July 2015 request for an internal investigation into the alleged retaliation.

To Smith's knowledge, that investigation never took place. And nearly two years later, two troopers involved in the 2014 dispute filed a workplace violence complaint against Smith, accusing him of threatening to ruin their careers. That complaint was later dismissed, but state police have refused to release the investigation file, Smith's attorney Joseph Kittredge said in a phone interview.

"Larry wants those records to close the loop. He believes that he was wronged, and he wants to be able to produce documentation to establish he was wronged," Kittredge said. "Ultimately the result was he wasn't departmentally punished, and he would like to see the results and the conclusions, to which I believe he was entitled under the law."

In a statement, State Police spokesman David Procopio disputed Smith's account, saying the department had investigated the workplace violence complaint and found no evidence of retaliation.

"The Department conducted a thorough investigation two years ago and determined that the allegation of retaliation was baseless. While ultimately concluding that verbal statements made by Sgt. Smith to two troopers did not rise to the level of workplace violence, we also concluded that the statements made by Sgt. Smith were inappropriate," Procopio said. "The troopers filed the complaints solely because of concern caused by Sgt. Smith's inflammatory statements, and clearly not as retaliation for some prior dispute involving the sergeant and another person."

Procopio's statement did not address questions about Smith's earlier request for an investigation into the dispute over the log entry, or why Smith's attorney has been unable to obtain records of the investigation.

And Smith maintains that he was targeted for speaking up -- and that he acted solely to hold accountable a superior officer who "lacked the integrity and honesty" to be an effective police officer.

"Before you ask why I am coming forward now. I officially requested an Internal Affairs investigation when [the log incident] occurred. If the job had investigated this when originally requested, I wouldn't have been subject to the retaliation that I was subjected to," Smith said in a statement. "This reporter would have had no reason to track me down to find out about this story, because it would have been old news."

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A disputed record

Smith's encounter with the department's sharp-elbowed internal politics began on June 4, 2014. He arrived at the Newbury barracks for his 3 p.m. shift about a half hour early, to find Trooper Roland Cormier working on the desk.

That piqued Smith's interest, according to the letter he sent to internal affairs.

Orlando had been scheduled to work that day's desk shift, with O'Rourke handling administrative duties, according to internal logs obtained by MassLive. But just two troopers were scheduled to handle the barracks' patrols, and when one took a half day Orlando had to cover his sector.

Ordinarily, that would have made the desk the sergeant's responsibility, according to Smith. But O'Rourke was nowhere to be found -- and the barracks' patrols were unaccounted for, Smith wrote.

"I asked who [Cormier's] patrols were and asked why Sgt. O'Rourke wasn't on the desk, Tpr. Cormier had no answer for me and did not know who the Newbury patrols were," Smith wrote to internal affairs.

Smith called a Code 6 -- a location check -- and asked Cormier about the location of Trooper David Martinelle, who was also on the day shift schedule.

Cormier allegedly told Smith that Martinelle was delivering O'Rourke's portable radio to O'Rourke's home -- a detail that, if reported, could prove embarrassing if the sergeant was supposed to be at the barracks.

Smith, after conferring with his night shift sergeant, did just that.

"14:30: Tpr Smith joins Tpr Cormier on the desk, all info exchanged. Tpr Orlando is the North patrol and Trp Martinelle is relaying equipment to Sgt. O'Rourke's residence in Wakefield," Smith wrote into the barracks' official log.

Those two sentences would launch the Newbury barracks into a morass of accusations and counter-accusations. O'Rourke wrote Smith up for insubordination and making a false report, Cormier later alleged that Smith had threatened him and Smith said that both attempted to bury him for telling an inconvenient truth.

O'Rourke, Cormier and Martinelle did not respond to emails seeking comment.

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An altered log

First, Smith said, someone altered the official log. A copy of the June 4 log, printed in the early morning hours of June 5, showed no calls reported in the 40 minutes before Smith noted O'Rourke's absence.

But a printout of the same log from the next afternoon showed Martinelle conducting a speeding stop at 2:25 p.m. -- establishing that he was on patrol shortly before Smith reported he was working as O'Rourke's errand runner.

It was an attempt to retrofit the log to fit a narrative, according to Smith. But it was also sloppily done. Each log entry has its own sequential code; on morning and early afternoon of June 4, those codes ended with numbers ranging from 5073 to 5078.

But the entry describing Martinelle's stop ended in 5102 -- a number that would have been entered on June 5, according to that day's log.

"It is not MSP policy nor common practice to enter civil motor vehicle violations into the [daily administrative journal,]" Smith wrote to internal affairs. "The only calls that are routinely entered are motor vehicle violations that result in a vehicle being towed, criminal violations, arrest or unusual calls for service. [Martinelle's call] does not meet any of those standards."

Over a month later, on July 8, O'Rourke wrote Smith a negative observation report -- a written reprimand used to inform troopers' regular performance evaluations.

"After relieving Trooper Cormier, Trooper Smith made a log entry that was intentionally inaccurate and inappropriate," O'Rourke wrote. "In summary the log note places an SP Newbury patrol in a false location."

Smith's log entry "marred a true public record" and violated departmental regulations, O'Rourke alleged.

"Acts of insubordination and failures to obey written directives and policies can result in department disciplinary action," he wrote.

Smith viewed the write-up as an act of retaliation, designed to punish him for revealing that O'Rourke was at home rather than at the barracks. He appealed to Major Arthur Sugrue and Newbury Station Commander Lt. Paul Zipper, writing that his night shift sergeant Frank Puopolo had witnessed the exchange with Cormier and that the log entry was accurate.

Puopolo did not return an email seeking comment.

Sugrue rejected the appeal, writing that there was no provision in the State Police employee evaluation manual for appealing a negative observation report. But Smith would not let it go.

In July of 2015, after failing to have his complaints resolved through the state police union, Smith wrote to Internal Affairs requesting an investigation into O'Rourke's actions and alleged retaliation.

"I feel this is the last avenue to clear my name," Smith wrote.

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Documentation of the workplace violence complaint against Sgt. Larry Smith.

A denied transfer and a dying father

Smith was met with further resistance from State Police brass as he attempted to clear his record. In September of 2015, he and his attorney Joseph Kittredge met with Sugrue, the major handling the dispute, to check on the status of Smith's complaint.

Sugrue allegedly told them he had not been told by his superiors how to handle the situation, and Smith and Kittredge left without firm answers. But they later learned that Col. Edward Amadeo had written to Sugrue in August, ordering him to remove the negative observation from Smith's file -- a detail Sugrue did not mention at the meeting, according to Kittredge.

"Truly unbelievable that [Sugrue] lied to our face. Not that he would do it but that he did not think that there would be a paper trail," Kittredge wrote to Smith in an email on September 24, 2015.

Efforts to reach Sugrue for comment were unsuccessful.

Smith's record was cleared, but he was not satisfied. In November, he and his lawyer met with Amodeo to press him for a full exoneration.

On Nov. 24, he got his wish. Amadeo issued a memo disavowing the negative observation, writing that the allegations of insubordination and making intentionally inaccurate log entries were unsupported.

"It is apparent that these facts do not support the conclusions reached by the issuing supervisor referenced in the observation report," Amadeo wrote to Smith in a memo. "In closing, the EES observation report should not have been issued which was why I gave instruction that it be removed from your fact file."

But Smith's tangles with Cormier and Martinelle were just beginning. In 2016, Smith was working desk duty in Danvers as he recovered from a knee injury. But his father was in Salisbury battling cancer, and Smith requested a hardship transfer back to Newbury to better care for him.

That transfer was denied after Cormier, who was also working in Danvers, filed a workplace violent complaint against Smith. Cormier alleged that on October of 2014, Smith had cornered him outside Newburyport District Court and made threats, saying that his motivation for applying for a promotion was to "grind [Cormier] and those guys gears for the rest of your career."

"I feel that I am being unjustly denied my hardship transfer because of a baseless allegation that is 18 months old," Smith wrote in a request for the agency to reconsider its decision.

Martinelle also filed a report that went further, accusing Smith of assault and using "assaultive verbiage." Cormier's report did not make any mention assualt or threats of physical violence.

Martinelle and Cormer said after Smith was transferred to Danvers in March, they were afraid of working with him.

"Trooper Cormier relayed to me numerous times his fear of being in the same building as the person (Smith) that promised to use his position fo authority to destroy his career," Martinelle wrote.

Smith disputed the claims, arguing they were further retaliation and riddled with inaccuracies. He denied making any threats and questioned Martinelle's claims that "numerous MSP members" had told him of the conversation with Cormier -- noting that Cormier himself had written that Smith spoke to him alone.

The complaint was dismissed on Sept. 14, when Amadeo wrote a memo concluding that Cormier's allegations did not consititute workplace violence.

But for Smith, it was too little, too late. He left the job on injury leave, but less than a month after the complaint's dismissal, his father was dead from lung cancer.

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