Howie Carr: Now spike corrupt trooper’s $6,020-a-month pension!
And so, farewell, disgraced ex-state trooper Calvin Butner, hit with a slap on the wrist in federal court for his kleptomania yesterday.
Three months in prison, for a shameful career that began back in 1983 with the beyond-corrupt Metropolitan Police – the Mets.
But now comes the much more important $6,020-a-month question for ex-Met Butner.
How long does the corrupt 64-year-old convicted felon continue pocketing his ill-gotten monthly kiss in the mail?
Dozens upon dozens of State Police have been arrested over the last few years – feds are the single greatest hazard facing troopers on a daily basis.
But of all the troopers lugged lately, Butner may have suffered the most humiliating pinch.
It was January 2024, and he had fled to Florida, much like the High Sheriff of Suffolk County, Steve Tompkins, last week. Butner and his wife were going on a nice winter cruise out of the Port of Miami.
Sadly, it was not to be. As the ship prepared to leave port, the G men arrived, handcuffed the thug and dragged him away.
Mrs. Calvin Butner remained on the ship. She wasn’t giving up her winter cruise, nosireebob.
Butner is the last to plead guilty from this MSP RICO conspiracy – selling commercial drivers’ licenses.
This crew was based in, where else, Norfolk County. Stoughton, to be exact, which is next door to Canton. Need I mention that the district attorney and his crack MSP sleuths knew absolutely nothing about what was going on, literally under their noses?
Meatball, Yuriy et al. were too busy trying to frame Karen Read and pretending that Sandra Birchmore had committed suicide next door in Canton.
So what happens next, now that the bloated Butner has been sentenced?
The “rules,” such as they are, say that a crooked cop can’t be stripped of his pension until after his conviction. Wink wink nudge nudge. But most of these crooked staties just keep slurping at the trough, forever.
For instance, consider the other members of Butner’s shakedown crew, all of whom are now convicted felons.
There’s ex-Sgt. Gary Cederquist. He was the capo of this MSP racket. He made $331,620 in 2023, his last year of fulltime stealing. (His non-racketeering brother, Det. Lt. William Cederquist, has been pocketing even more gelt — $439,060 in 2023 and $407,100 last year.)
Gary Cederquist “retired” in January of last year and has been pocketing $8,862 a month since.
Joel Rogers was another one on the crew. He’s a felon grabbing $6,486 a month. Perry Mendes, out since April 2022, another convicted felon statie, remains on the dole for $7,230 a month.
They called themselves the “golden” crew, as in golden handshakes. Anybody who wanted to, you know, do the right thing, could get a CDL to drive a big scary truck, no questions asked. While many of the assorted flim-flams these troopers run are not to be encouraged, in reality they have limited impact on public safety.
But selling CDL’s to illegal aliens and other assorted thugs – that can have “potentially dire public safety consequences,” as the feds noted in their sentencing memo yesterday.
The golden crew indeed. It’s more like they were giving a golden shower to the law-abiding citizens of the Commonwealth.
But maybe things are starting to change, at least a little bit. In the wake of the failed lynching of Karen Read, I’ve been working on a new book, “Mass Corruption, Vol. 1: The Cops.”
I recently checked on the pensions of some of the biggest thieves that I was writing about. And guess what – at least three of the biggest MSP thieves have had their pensions halted.
One was Dan Griffin, once described by the feds as “the poster boy of State Police corruption.” This was before Michael Proctor, of course, but at the time it was an accurate description.
He was one of the architects of the Troop E embezzlement. Busted, he destroyed years worth of records. He also cheated the Belmont Hill School, claiming poverty. He cheated on his taxes.
After doing nothing but stealing for 20-plus years, the State Police exonerated him in 2019 of every single charge. It’s in his federal sentencing report – you could look it up. It’s called professional courtesy.
Of course Griffin is a convicted felon, but starting in December 2020 he began pocketing $10,913 a month. Disability, wouldn’t you know it. Who knew kleptomania was a real disease? At least for state troopers.
Griffin had an equally bent sidekick named William Robertson. He was indicted and yet still collected $7,922 a month.
Imagine my shock when I just looked them up on the Comptroller’s website and both these rotten crooks have had their pensions suspended – since last September!
I was shocked. So I checked out Dana Pullman, the thuggish ex-boss of the union, State Police Association of Mass (SPAM). His $65,000-plus pension has likewise been halted – since 2023, as he awaits resentencing on a bunch of felony convictions.
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Then last week, the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) refused to restore the pension of another sticky-fingered member of Troop E, Gregory Raftery. His basic argument to the courts was, “Nobody told me I couldn’t steal. I was a state trooper. How was I supposed to know that embezzlement was against the law?”
I admit, these appear to basically be the exceptions that prove the rule. The vast majority of convicted-felon state cops continue to laugh all the way to the bank. And the bank is in Florida.
But maybe this is a start.
I asked the State Police if they wanted to issue an official statement about how the State Retirement Board was finally, belatedly doing something about this decades-long MSP crime wave.
Nobody ever got back to me. Maybe they want to keep it under their Smokey Bear hats.
After all, think of how badly it might affect morale if the troopers learn that stealing is now a punishable offense in the Mass State Police.
Surely the brass can’t ban stealing without going into binding arbitration with SPAM. This would be a major claw-back, something for collective bargaining.
Dana Pullman could not be reached for comment.
