A History of Failing his Fellow Officers
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Back on March 16, 1995, Vecchi was an MBTA Police Officer (badge # 166) who
responded with several other officers to a disturbance call at the New England Medical Center T-Station in
Boston. A group of teenagers were involved in a melee and a, 15 year old girl was allegedly
injured while being placed under arrest.
For some inexplicable reason Vecchi's report omitted many pertinent facts that were included in those of
his fellow officers, primarily about the combative nature of several of the arrestees. Vecchi's incident
report was only nine (9) lines (a mere 92 words) in length and lacked many important details, particularly
in light of the severity of the incident and the number of police and civilians involved. In police training,
report writing is one of the most important classes, and it is drilled into the recruits that "if a fact
is omitted from a report, it did not happen." A civil lawsuit followed and the plaintiff's attorney used
Vecchi's report to impeach his fellow officers, bringing their truthfulness into question and resulting in a
significant jury award in favor of the plaintiff against the MBTA and Vecchi's fellow officers. It is
believed that Vecchi was subsequently ostracized by his fellow officers and forced to leave the MBTA in
disgrace.
Vecchi subsequently applied for and was hired by the Plymouth Police
Department (see Suffolk County Superior Court case of Daniella Gutierrez, et al, vs.
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, Franklin Wolverton, Giancarlo Cantella,
Omar Ricketts, Royline Lamb, Fraser Hori, and John Martino, civil action docket #: 95-
6216C).*
Vecchi's brief career as an MBTA police officer also raises serious questions
regarding the circumstances under which he left the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department
as a Correction Officer after just two years preceding his hiring by the MBTA. Because
those personnel records have not been forthcoming to date, the press should look into the
circumstances behind his brief employment history there, as well.
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The Gutierrez case ended up before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
(SJC) cited as 437 Mass. 396 April 2, 2002 - August 2, 2002. The narrow issues on appeal shed virtually no
light on Vecchi's actual involvement in the initial Superior Court jury trial. For a true understanding of
how his inadequate incident report was used by the plaintiff's Attorney to impeach his fellow officers, one
must actually go through the voluminous (1,500+ page) case file which is available at the Suffolk County
Superior court Civil Clerk's Office in Boston. The legal file of the MBTA's General Counsel has just recently
been requested through FOIA and a Massachusetts Public Records request, and this narrative will be amended with
more detailed facts upon receipt of same.
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Ethical Misconduct, Conflict of Interest & Abuse of Authority »
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