Authorities are crediting an Asian American driver for helping to expose an overtime scandal involving Massachusetts State Police, reports the Boston Globe.
A woman identified only as Debbie couldn’t believe what she was hearing in 2016. An officer had pulled her over and as she rolled down her window, she said he screamed “don’t you speak English.”
The Harvard graduate with a medical degree actually speaks four languages fluently.
She asked the officer what she needed to do.
Again, she said the officer demanded to know if she spoke English. Eventually a second officer would write her a ticket for going ten miles over the speed limit.
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Stunned, she would file a formal complaint a year later alleging the officer acted in a threatening and racist manner. She said when questioned about her complaint, investigators seemed more interested in inconsistencies on the ticket.
“They weren’t really interested in hearing about my complaint, but they were very interested in things like the time” on the ticket, she said to the Globe.
The time of the ticket was off by 40 minutes and the date off by 24 hours.
State troopers have been charged with writing bogus tickets to meet unconstitutional ticket quotas as well as embezzlement.
The Daily Mail reports the officer who wrote Debbie’s ticket is himself Asian American.
In December, Eric Chin pleaded guilty to an embezzlement charge related to overtime fraud.
The officer who screamed at Debbie, Michael Casamassima, was not charged in the overtime fraud case, but a charge of verbal abuse was upheld against him. He retired in 2017.
In all, eight troopers have pleaded guilty to embezzlement and the entire troop was disbanded.
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