Politics

Special prosecutor recommends no criminal charges for Transit Police officers involved in alleged coverup

The special prosecutor investigated the case for four months.

Special Prosecutor Glenn Cunha recommended no criminal charges be filed against two Transit Police officers who were involved in an alleged coverup. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia)

By Susannah Sudborough

January 11, 2023

4 minutes to read

Special prosecutor Glenn Cunha announced Tuesday that he is recommending no criminal charges be filed against two Transit Police officers who were allegedly involved in a coverup, The Boston Globe reported.

The special prosecutor, who was appointed by Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden to investigate the case in August, was investigating an April 2021 incident during which an off-duty Transit Police officer allegedly pointed a gun at a Black Hispanic man while they were having a traffic dispute, and then asked another officer to help him cover up the incident.

Cunha said Tuesday that because the two officers involved deleted their text messages from the day of the incident, there was no way to acquire the evidence necessary to prosecute, the Globe reported.

Cunha stopped the case from being considered before a Grand Jury could vote on whether Green or Davis should be indicted for criminal charges, the Globe reported.

The incident

Jason Leonor, 33, was driving on Blue Hills Parkway in Milton on April 11, 2021 when he passed the car in front of him on the left and then moved back into his original lane. Soon after, Leonor saw the other driver taking pictures of his car in his rearview mirror.

Leonor was worried about what the driver would do with the photo, so he got out of his car and went over to the other driver to ask him why he was taking pictures.

The other driver was Jacob Green, an off-duty Transit Police officer who was not in uniform. Green, who is white, allegedly responded by rolling down his window, pointing a gun at Leonor, and yelling “Get the [expletive] back!”

Leonor ran back to his car, called 911, and told the operator that another driver had pointed a gun at him.

In Green’s account of the incident, Leonor was driving unsafely when he passed him. Green also said that when Leonor confronted him, Leonor opened his car door aggressively before running toward Green’s car while screaming. Afraid of an attack, he said, he took out his gun and held it in his lap, but did not identify himself as a police officer.

After the initial encounter, the two continued driving towards Mattapan, and Green called another officer to pull Leonor over. He then got in uniform, went over to Leonor’s car, and ticketed him for a marked lanes violation.

A few hours later, Green called Kevin Davis, another Transit Police officer, who wrote a police report saying he saw the incident from his car while off-duty. Davis wrote that he thought Leonor was going to attack Green, but stayed in his car so he could serve as a witness to the incident. Green also wrote two police reports on the incident.

Transit Police officials have said that all three reports written by Green and Davis were false and fired Davis over the incident. Green later resigned.

Cunha’s findings

“While I concluded that no state criminal charges are warranted, the actions of Jacob Green and Kevin Davis fall below the expectations we have for law enforcement officers,” Cunha said in a report to Hayden’s office announcing his decision, the Globe reported.

Cunha said his investigation found that during the April 2021 incident, Green pointed his gun at Leonor to scare him, the Globe reported. Even so, Cunha said, Green had a “reasonable concern for his safety” because Leonor had blocked his car in and approached him aggressively.

Leonor denies blocking Green, and has said he did not approach Green in a threatening manner.

Green was accused of calling and texting with Davis to conspire about the false report after the initial incident, but both officers later deleted their text messages from that day.

Cunha said that while their decision to delete their texts was “suspicious,” because the messages couldn’t be recovered, there was no way to know what they were about, the Globe reported. This made it impossible to charge them with misleading an investigation, he said.

Cunha called Green’s decision to ticket Leonor himself “ill-advised,” the Globe reported, but said it did not warrant a charge of filing a false official report.

Cunha’s most damning finding was that Green previously had an unrelated conflict with a Black bus driver, which he said “suggests a pattern of volatile conduct by Green,” the Globe reported.

Reactions to the decision

Leonor told the Globe Tuesday that he found the decision unfair and the report inaccurate. “I don’t think it was looked at from my point of view. It was just crooked cops, crooked lawyers. They all work together,” he said.

Green’s actions of pulling his gun without identifying himself as a police officer and deleting his text messages later are telling, Leonor told the Globe.

“Under this district attorney, it’s obvious that white police officers will always get the benefit of the doubt and victims of color of such police misconduct will always be discounted,” he said.

Local News

Transit Police leadership has been displeased with Hayden and his office’s handling of the case since reports circulated last summer that the district attorney wasn’t going to press charges against Green and Davis despite the department heads’ calls to do so. Hayden’s office denied the reports, but has given inconsistent explanations as to why there was a misunderstanding.

Hayden also didn’t announce a grand jury investigation until after the Globe published a revealing article on the incident in August. The next month, Transit Police Superintendent Richard Sullivan criticized Hayden’s office in a tweet, leading Hayden to hand the investigation over to Cunha.

On Tuesday, Sullivan did not give a comment to the Globe about Cunha’s decision not to press charges, explaining that he and Chief Kenneth Green hadn’t had “a meaningful opportunity to review and digest the special prosecutor’s report.”

Hayden’s office declined to answer the Globe’s questions about Cunha’s report, but did defend the DA’s Office’s handling of the case in a statement.

“The Suffolk County District Attorney’s office was always committed to pursuing this case to its conclusion, and any assertion otherwise is demonstrably false,” the spokesperson said, adding that media pressure did not influence Hayden’s Office’s decisions regarding the case.

Special prosecutor recommends no criminal charges for Transit Police officers involved in alleged coverup