Col. Richard McKeon, who Gov. Charlie Baker appointed to head the State Police in the summer of 2015, will retire this month amid allegations that he improperly ordered a trooper to delete embarrassing details from an arrest report for the daughter of a state Trial Court judge.
Gov. Baker also said that he has ordered the State Police to examine its protocols for reviewing arrest reports.
McKeon announced his plans to retire Friday afternoon in letters to his fellow police officers and Public Safety Secretary Daniel Bennett a day after Baker indicated that he planned to wrap up an internal investigation into the incident quickly.
Named superintendent in July 2015, McKeon spent 35 years in the Massachusetts State Police. He will retire on Nov. 17, and an announcement regarding his successor is expected to be made in the coming days, a State Police spokesman said.
“Part of our code of honor is understanding when your own personal ambition detracts from the greater good of our mission. I have today decided that putting the greater good of the Massachusetts State Police first, necessitates my decision to retire after 35 years of proud service,” McKeon wrote in a letter to his State Police colleagues.
The Baker administration launched an investigation into McKeon’s handling of the arrest report of Alli Bibaud after the arresting trooper, Ryan Sceviour, filed a lawsuit against several of his superior officers, including McKeon, claiming he was reprimanded and forced to alter his report to shield Bibaud’s father, a judge, from the public release of embarrassing details.
Judge Timothy Bibaud is a Trial Court judge in Dudley District Court, and oversees the drug court in that jurisdiction.
Alli Bibaud was arrested after Sceviour responded to an accident on Interstate 190 in Worcester and found her in possession of a heroin kit. She failed several field sobriety tests and was charged with operating under the influence.
The details later scrubbed from the arrest report at the direction of Sceviour’s superiors included statements made by the defendant that her father was a judge and would be furious with her, and that she would perform sexual acts for leniency, and had done so to obtain drugs in the past.
The State Police never denied that the report was altered, but argued that such changes were routine and done to remove sensational aspects of the narrative that superior officers did not consider vital to the case against Bibaud.