An audit of the Canton Police Department is set to drop the same day the Karen Read murder retrial begins — nearly a month before its contracted due date.

The contract the Town of Canton inked Oct. 25 with 5 Stones Intelligence, Inc., was for a “comprehensive and exhaustive Independent Police Audit” to be completed by April 30 and budgeted for $198,000. It was a contentious process getting to the finish line, according to previous Herald reporting.

The report will be turned over to the Canton Police Audit committee on Tuesday and it will also be immediately available to the public online, according to 5 Stones director Matthew Germanowski.

The timing of the report’s completion has some meaning, as the Karen Read case is one of the two cases that triggered the town’s desire for an audit.

“Recent events involving the unfortunate and untimely death of a Town resident have sparked concerns regarding how the department operates every day in police matters,” the audit prospectus states. “This concern resulted in a vote at the November 2023 Special Town Meeting to engage an independent consulting firm to ‘audit’ most aspects of the Police department’s operations.”

The audit request came about due to intense scrutiny as the setting of two high-profile cases.

The first was the Feb. 1, 2021, death of Sandra Birchmore in her Canton apartment, which local authorities first chalked up to suicide but the feds thought otherwise and brought charges against Stoughton cop Matthew Farwell, who they accuse of grooming Birchmore since she was a girl and then killing to cover up their relationship and her pregnancy.

The next is the death of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, a resident of Canton, whose body was found Jan. 29, 2022, frozen on the Canton front yard of a BPD colleague. Read, his girlfriend at the time, is charged with his murder.

Read faced a trial last year but that ended in mistrial. Jury empanelment is set to begin on Tuesday for what promises to be a white-hot retrial.

The case against Farwell appears to be in a holding pattern as hearings have been rescheduled repeatedly, largely due to the “voluminous evidence” prosecutors say attorneys must process.

Tennessee-based 5 Stones was in the middle of an audit of the U.S. Capitol Police as well as the U.S. National Guard deployment during the riot in Washington D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, according to agreement documents, when it signed the deal. Despite that heavy workload, the team said they believed they would deliver the audit ahead of schedule.

This is a developing story.