Springfield police cases not adding up
By 
If you believe the witnesses who have testified in Jose Omar Ortiz’s bid for a new trial, then two decades ago Springfield police bullied their way to a confession for a murder and they got the wrong man.
For starters, another person testified last week that he – not Ortiz – killed Eddy Reynoso in 1999 and Ortiz had nothing to do with it. That other man, Ramon Santana, is already serving two life sentences for a Holyoke murder in 2000, so he doesn’t have that much to lose by confessing to the Reynoso killing. Santana has refused to say who his accomplices were in the killing, prompting the prosecutor to try to throw out his testimony.
Then there is Carlos Rodriguez, who was a friend of Ortiz at the time of the murder. Rodriguez signed a statement for police years ago that said he was there when Ortiz killed Reynoso. But
Rodriguez now says that he didn’t know what he was signing for police at the time because he couldn’t read English. He says police scooped him up and beat him and screamed at him and told him that signing the statement was “your way out.” The police, according to Rodriguez, told him that Ortiz was trying to pin blame for the murder on him.
Ortiz himself signed a confession saying he had killed Reynoso, but his lawyers now claim that was “the product of coercion by police after seven hours of interrogation,” according to the Republican newspaper. The confession was in English, but Ortiz allegedly only spoke Spanish, the paper reported.
These would be serious charges for any police department to withstand: Two people testifying that police coerced false statements from them, and a third man emerging to claim that the confessions were untrue because he was the one who committed the murder.
The Springfield Police Department is already weathering a host of other scandals that could shake faith in law enforcement for the state’s third largest city. As uncovered by the Republican, a detective admitted to lying to internal investigators about the police beating of a suspect in 2016. Surveillance footage has thrown into doubt another officer’s claims that a man who had a complaint about a parking ticket assaulted him in the police headquarters in 2017. A school resource officer now says that his false claim that a student shoved him before he threw the student up against the wall was a mistake, not a deliberate lie.
Acting Police Chief Commissioner Cheryl Clapprood proactively admitted to the Republican that she filed a false police report in 1989, but she said the lie was a relatively minor one relating to her use of a departmental vehicle off-duty. Dan Glaun, a reporter for the paper, dug a little deeper and learned that she had been indicted on charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, filing a false report, and a civil rights violation after allegedly following someone while off-duty in an undercover vehicle three decades ago. She was found guilty of filing a false report but not the more serious charges, and her record was finally cleared when she filed a motion for a new trial in 2013 that was unopposed by Mark Mastroianni, who was then the district attorney and is now a federal judge. The records of that incident are now sealed.
In Ortiz’s case, one of the officers who interrogated Rodriguez is still with the department, according to the Republican, and the other has left. Both are expected to testify in the motion hearing on March 26.
ANDY METZGER
BEACON HILL
A Globe editorial says a proposal to let House caucuses raise and spend outside money without any public disclosures is a “dreadful” idea.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
A report says Lynn could save more than $10 million a year on health insurance costs by switching to the state’s group health insurance plan. The one catch? Out of pocket expenses could go up. (Daily Item)
WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL
US Rep. Richard Neal, now chairman of the powerful House Ways & Means Committee, said he won’t be pressured into moving fast to try to obtain President Trump’s tax returns, something his committee is authorized to do. (Boston Globe)
ELECTIONS
Could the doors be soon fast closing on a would-be Seth Moulton run for president? (Boston Globe)
Here’s what Bill Weld won’t be touting on the presidential campaign trail, says Joe Battenfeld: “His work for sex scandal-tainted casino mogul Steve Wynn.” (Boston Herald)
The retirement of Westfield’s mayor is leading to a game of political musical chairs, as Sen. Don Humason announced he’s running for the position, which triggered interest from Rep. John Velis for Humason’s seat. (Western Mass Politics & Insight)
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Gov. Charlie Baker says $260,000 in tax credits will be granted to Maibec Eastern, a subsidiary of a Canadian-owned siding and shingles company, creating 35 jobs. (Brockton Enterprise)
TD Bank apologizes and pulls down an ad that appears to slam Dorchester as a place where stolen bank cards end up. (MassLive)
EDUCATION
The New Bedford School Committee approves a precedent-setting charter school expansion agreement, but even those who voted for it don’t like it. (CommonWealth)
Amherst College quickly pulls back a “language guide” issued by its Office of Diversity and Inclusion that seemed to take “political correctness” to a new level. (Boston Herald)
HEALTH/HEALTH CARE
Cambridge-based Biogen says its late-stage Alzheimer’s drug is a bust — and its stock promptly tanks by nearly 30 percent, wiping out $18 billion of value. (Boston Globe)
Dr. Clement Bottino shares his cell phone number with all 769 of his patients and hundreds more who use urgent care because texting is a good way to keep up with their health. (WBUR)
MARIJUANA
Is marijuana as benign as its big-money backers and grassroots advocates would have us believe? Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson says we’re ignoring alarming connections between regular pot use and severe mental illness. (CommonWealth)
Are big companies exploiting complex networks of corporate affiliations to make a mockery of the state’s limit of any firm controlling more than three marijuana licenses? (Boston Globe)
On Saturday morning, New England Treatment Access will open the state’s 13th legal retail marijuana store, and the first in the Boston area, steps from the Brookline Village Green Line stop. (WBUR)
Owners of the The Green Lady, the first cannabis dispensary on Nantucket, are setting their sights to open in July. (Cape Cod Times)
Fixing marijuana’s banking problem is picking up some momentum in Congress. (Governing)
ARTS/CULTURE
Project Home Again, an Andover non-profit, collects furniture and other items used on local movie, TV and commercial sets, and donates them to people in need. (WGBH)
TRANSPORTATION
Massport proposes a major response to congestion at Logan International Airport, including higher fees on Uber and Lyft rides, centralized pickups and dropoffs in the central parking garage, and significant investments (along with some free service) in the Logan Express bus service. (CommonWealth) Should the state follow Massport’s lead?
Assuming predicted legislative funding materializes, the Worcester Regional Transit Authority sees no need to raise fares in the coming fiscal year. (Telegram & Gazette) A Berkshire Eagle editorial, with a few caveats, applauds a state task force report on regional transit authorities that included a call for more stable state funding.
Without some improvements in service and maintenance, which will require more tax dollars, the MBTA will “continue to lose the public trust,” said MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board member Monica Tibbits-Nutt. (WGBH)
The February 2017 single-engine plane crash that killed Alan Lavender, the former mayor of Newburyport, was likely caused by an engine fire stemming from a failure to secure oil and fuel line fittings during maintenance, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. (Salem News)
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Members of a local citizen advisory panel in Plymouth say they’re frustrated with the lack of transparency from Holtec International, whose representative would not tell the community how much Holtec planned to pay for Pilgrim or where the money to buy the plant would come from. (Cape Cod Times)
Fishing boats’ haul of Jonah crab, which is an alternative on menus to the more expensive Dungeness, has shot upwards in recent decades from 3 million pounds in 1994 to 17 million pounds in 2017, and now NOAA Fisheries wants to regulate the crab fishery in federal waters. (Gloucester Daily Times)
A year-old program that calls for the killing of foxes and other predators in order to protect a threatened shorebird in Duxbury has split conservation and wildlife advocates this spring as it heads into a second year. (Patriot Ledger)
CASINOS
Federal regulators sign off on a plan by Connecticut’s two tribal casinos to build a new facility in East Windsor to prevent gamblers from defecting to MGM Springfield. (Associated Press) MGM is threatening a lawsuit. (MassLive)
Legal experts discuss ways Robert Kraft might be able to beat his prostitution-solicitation rap, but it’s hard to see how a courtroom victory in suppressing video evidence prosecutors say they have will provide much vindication in the court of public opinion. (Boston Globe)