Boston cop faked a police report to help his best friend’s brother avoid getting fired

A Boston police officer created a fake arrest report for his best friend’s brother in a bizarre bid to help him avoid getting fired for missing work.  

Boston Police Officer James Clark violated the state’s conflict of interest law by filling out a false criminal complaint application for his friend’s brother who was a bus driver for the the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, the state’s Ethics Commission said in a statement. 

The unnamed bus driver was under a ‘Last Chance Agreement’ and subject to immediate discharge for violating the MBTA’s attendance policy when he overslept and missed his work shift in July 2016, the commission said.  

The bus driver, desperate to come up with an excuse to avoid termination turned to Clark, a 25-year BPD veteran who happened to be his brother’s best friend.

Officer Clark initially denied the bus driver’s request to provide him with documentation that showed he was arrested, according to a Public Education Letter from the Ethics Commission.   

But he later agreed to fill out an obsolete form, saying the driver had been arrested in Brighton for assault and battery and identifying his ex-girlfriend as the victim. 

Officer Clark provided a random address as the location of the incident, gave a fake officer’s name and police report number, and signed the document with an illegible scrawl, the commission said. 

Clark admitted to the Ethics Commission the did complete a false Application for Criminal Complaint.

But he claims he did not know the bus driver was going to use the complaint to get out of work, and believed it was to explain his whereabouts to his girlfriend. 

After MBTA officials learned that no criminal charges had actually been filed, the bus driver confessed and admitted that he missed work because he overslept, and that he obtained the false criminal complaint application from officer Clark.

The bus driver resigned from his job on July 19, 2016.

After the commission found reasonable cause to believe Clark violated the conflict of interest law, Clark waived his right to a hearing and agreed to the issuance of the Public Education Letter, which the commission concluded would serve the public interest better than a hearing because it would help inform others, including public employees, of the law, the Boston Globe reported.  

‘By providing Smith with the false application you knowingly used your position as a Boston police officer to secure Smith an unwarranted privilege of substantial value that was not properly available to similarly situated individuals,’ the letter to Clark states.

‘The conflict of interest law prohibits municipal employees from using or attempting to use their official positions to secure for themselves or others valuable unwarranted privileges or benefits that are not properly available to other persons under similar circumstances,’ the State Ethics Commission said in a statement.   

Following a BPD internal affairs investigation, the allegation against Clark of ‘conduct unbecoming’ was sustained, a BPD spokesman told the Herald, while  charges of ‘untruthfulness’ and ‘conformance to laws’ were not sustained. 

The BPD spokesman said the discipline process remains ongoing.

‘Officer Clark is an outstanding police officer who is happy to put this matter behind him,’ a lawyer for Clark told the Boston Herald.