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Somerville has been trying to fire a police detective since 2018. He’s still getting paid.

After prosecutors said the detective will never be called to testify in court because of alleged misconduct, Dante DiFronzo was placed on paid leave in 2021 due to an incident years earlier.

The Somerville City Hall in Somerville. Kayla Bartkowski For The Boston Globe

April 28, 2026 | 5:59 PM

7 minutes to read

A Somerville police detective at the center of a nearly decade-long battle between the police union, prosecutors, and the city has earned more than a half million dollars in leave pay as the city fights to keep him off the force.

Dante DiFronzo has earned $535,238.40 in administrative leave pay since 2017, payroll records obtained from the City of Somerville show. He was accused of withholding evidence and lying on reports after he “deputized” a street source, who then stabbed someone with a machete in 2015, the city’s lawyer says.

Det. Dante DiFronzo poses during a 2013 commendation ceremony. *(Tim Burke)*

DiFronzo was fired from the Somerville Police Department in 2018. An arbitration ruling three years later ordered him back on the force, but with no back pay. He then won a lawsuit in federal court in 2024 in which he claimed his termination was retaliation after he reported corruption in the department. But, the detective has yet to return to work.

“He was not terminated for anything having to do with his reporting corruption. The evidence is overwhelming,” said Leonard Kesten, who’s representing the City of Somerville as it appeals the federal lawsuit. “But I get it. He’s a nice guy with a family. He lost three years’ pay already. I could see why the jury did it, but the arbitration decision boggles my mind.”

Prosecutors don’t seem to want DiFronzo back serving with the department either. The Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office initially filed so-called Brady letter, which discloses to a defense team any potentially exculpatory evidence that could affect a police officer’s credibility.

The 2017 Brady letter included the allegations at the center of DiFronzo’s employment battle, including that DiFronzo “knowingly made material omissions in police reports.

In 2021, after DiFronzo was ordered back on the force, the DA filed a stricter Brady letter that barred DiFronzo from the stand. The then-Somerville police chief cited it as the reason the detective was relieved of his duties and placed on leave.

“Barring extraordinary circumstances, the Commonwealth does not intend to call Detective DiFronzo as a witness in any future case,” the letter issued by the DA said.

What was the detective accused of doing in 2015?

DiFronzo was first placed on leave nearly a decade ago, when prosecutors found texts between him and one of his street sources, a man named Jonathan Machado who “had a violent criminal history,” according to a civil service hearing report from Peter Berry, an attorney hired by the city, filed in federal court.

DiFronzo was investigating a home invasion and breaking and entering case, and a person called “Henry” was a possible suspect, according to the facts of the civil service hearing filed in federal court. He reached out to Machado, then 20 years old, who said he and DiFronzo were searching for the same man. Henry Alvarez had allegedly stolen a quarter-pound of marijuana from Machado.

DiFronzo and Machado texted over the course of a few days looking for Alvarez. DiFronzo even picked up Machado, and together, they searched for him at multiple addresses, according to court documents.

At one point, Machado said a man named Raul might be hiding Alvarez, but he didn’t know where he lived.

“(Alston Street address in Somerville), Raul’s house. Let me no, I want his photo!” DiFronzo told him via text, per the civil service hearing. Boston.com redacted the address for privacy reasons.

“They won’t tell u where he is but they’ll tell me trust me. U can’t touch em but I can,” Machado wrote to DiFronzo.

“Do what you got to do…,” DiFronzo replied on March 1, 2015, according to court records.

The next day, on March 2, Machado allegedly told DiFronzo to grab Alvarez and “bring him to me.”

“For a small finders fee of course!” DiFronzo replied. When Machado wrote, “?” DiFronzo testified that he was being facetious when he requested the finder’s fee, according to the arbitration decision.

That afternoon, DiFronzo responded with other officers to the scene of a home invasion at the same Alston Street address, where Alvarez was “relentlessly” stabbed with a machete, a witness said, according to court documents. Alvarez was transported to a hospital with several stab wounds in his shoulder, arm, and rib cage, according to court documents.

Court documents identify the crime scene location as the address shared over text, although DiFronzo claims the incident took place at the next door address in the same home, according to his federal testimony.

An officer said over the radio, “I believe Delta 15 (Det. DiFronzo) might have an idea who is behind this but I haven’t talked to him yet,” according to records.

However, DiFronzo’s report on the stabbing “did not mention any of the text messages or information he had exchanged with Machado in the days immediately preceding the home invasion” and stabbing, according to the civil status hearing report.

“I had no idea that Machado was going to become violent and specifically warned him that if he did I would arrest him,” DiFronzo wrote to then-Mayor Joseph Curtatone, according to a 2017 letter filed in court.

Machado was arrested about three weeks after the home invasion.

Detective put on leave, beginning yearslong saga

The texts between DiFronzo and Machado didn’t come to light until a year and a half after the stabbing. In September of 2016, a Somerville police captain wrote to then-Police Chief David Fallon that prosecutors found the texts on Machado’s phone. The department placed DiFronzo on administrative leave, court documents show.

“Officer DiFronzo has a fine record, because he’s not a problem officer, but the misconduct is so egregious. He put lives in danger,” Kesten told Boston.com recently. “(Machado) had some violent history, and he had stabbed somebody, tried to try to kill somebody, and he should have been arrested immediately.”

DiFronzo was the one who arrested Machado about three weeks after the Alston Street incident, according to the arbitrator’s decision, months before search warrants revealed the texts in Machado’s phone.

Machado pleaded guilty in 2020, according to the arbitration decision. The DA declined to elaborate on the criminal charges, citing criminal record law.

Berry conducted a civil service hearing in 2018 and determined that the city’s decision to suspend DiFronzo and discipline him further, including up to termination, would be justified.

His findings included that DiFronzo did not include the texts in his report “because [he] was uncertain that they had any evidentiary value.”

“Det. DiFronzo’s assertion that he was ‘uncertain’ about the relevancy of the text messages does not make sense,” Berry wrote. “The text messages were directly relevant to prove Machado’s motive, intent and opportunity to attack Alvarez.”

DiFronzo was officially fired in May of 2018 and remained off the force until 2021, when an arbitrator ruled that the city did not have just cause to terminate him. The arbitrator said the three years without pay was punishment enough and ordered DiFronzo back to work. Since then, he’s been on paid administrative leave.

“They refuse to face the reality of the factual situation, and have continued to delay the inevitable,” Timothy M. Burke, DiFronzo’s lawyer in the federal case, told Boston.com about his client’s elongated leave.

Jury agrees DiFronzo was retaliated against

While DiFronzo’s union lawyer fights to get him back on the force, the detective won his wrongful termination suit in federal court in 2024, and the jury awarded him $800,000 in damages, The Boston Globe reported at the time.

DiFronzo claimed he was fired in retaliation for speaking up about a corrupt police department. In October 2017, about a year after DiFronzo was initially notified of his leave, the detective wrote a letter to Curtatone, claiming the mayor knew about “certain practices” at the department.

He called the investigation into his conduct in 2015 “biased” and a “sham” and cited at least five other officers who operated as police officers even after the DA issues Brady letters about them. One of those officers, DiFronzo wrote, “has been on trips out of the country with you and your family.”

“I was not untruthful. I was wrongfully accused of being untruthful. And I was suspended and threatened with termination without any investigation into the circumstances,” DiFronzo wrote.

Curtatone, who is no longer mayor, spoke to The Boston Globe in 2021 about the case.

“He directly assisted in a violent act that almost resulted in someone’s death,” he said, according to a story filed in court as an exhibit. “We’re lucky that person is still alive.”

What now?

DiFronzo’s union lawyer, Joseph Padolsky, says there’s no reason the former detective should not return to work.

“The lengths to which the city has gone through to try to maintain this false narrative that they’ve been repeatedly told is false and incorrect is astonishing,” Padolsky told Boston.com. “He is extremely proud of his career as a police officer, and very much wants to return to work.”

Allegations including untruthfulness and withholding evidence against DiFronzo were sustained, according to a database updated earlier this month run by the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, the state’s police watchdog. His “conditionally certified” law enforcement certification expired last year, according to the POST’s searchable database.

“Per Mass General Law, a police officer must be certified by the State POST Commission to exercise police powers in the Commonwealth,” a spokesperson for the City of Somerville said in a statement. “To date, the City has not received notification from the POST Commission that Officer DiFronzo has been recertified, which is a precondition to a return to work.”

The city is appealing the jury’s decision in DiFronzo’s federal wrongful termination lawsuit. Attorneys for both sides are responding in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit as of this month, court records show. Oral arguments will begin next week.