From Boston to Westfield, Easthampton’s police cruisers keep finding their way to the repair shop. Whether parked on the street, exiting their own garage bay, or chasing down drivers, the Easthampton Police Department’s cars are taking the hit.
Records obtained by The Shoestring detail some of the damage the cars have seen over this past year, as well as some of the costs of that damage. According to EPD records obtained via public records requests, at least four of their cars were involved in collisions within the past year and a half. One of those cars was involved in two collisions.
Both of the department’s 2023 Model Y Teslas have had an expensive “uplift,” totaling $22,182, according to estimates the EPD provided. That doesn’t include $1,817 the city spent on a laptop for one of those Teslas. When the cars were originally requested in May 2022, former police chief Robert Alberti – who resigned early in July for what Mayor Nicole LaChapelle described as “health reasons” – told the City Council that the administrative vehicle would not be used for traffic control.
This expensive adaptation appears to have come before the EPD’s white Tesla was involved in a collision on Nov. 30 of last year. A Boston Police Department report says the collision occurred on Jersey Street, right outside of Fenway Park and MGM Music Hall at Fenway. A diagram of the incident shows a Boston police cruiser hitting the drivers side of the EPD’s white Tesla head-on. The section of Jersey Street mentioned in the report is a one-way street.
The Boston police narrative describes the collision as “a minor motor vehicle crash” near the intersection, and reports damage to the entire front end of the Boston police cruiser. The report offers differing descriptions of damage to the Tesla.
The Boston PD narrative says the collision happened when Boston police were traveling down Van Ness Street, attempting to go around a turning car. They say the car then made a U-turn. To avoid the turning car, the BPD took a left, which would be going the wrong way down Jersey Street, hitting a curb, a parking meter, and the EPD Tesla. The U-turning vehicle and driver are not mentioned or described in any specifics in the report, despite being the catalyst of a multi-police car collision. The narrative also says there were two BPD officers in their car, but the crash report says there was only one.
The damage descriptions, traffic pattern, and street layout do not seem entirely cohesive. In both the diagram and the first page of the narrative, the Tesla is shown and described as having front left damage. The damage report code and the narrative addendum, however, describes front right damage to the Tesla. The addendum also does not describe or specifically mention the Tesla being parked.
Dennis Scribner, the interim chief of the EPD, told The Shoestring the Tesla was parked and unoccupied at the time. When asked for further details about why the EPD’s car was parked outside of Fenway Park in the middle of the day and who drove the vehicle there, Scribner provided no response.
Service records and purchase orders for the repairs for this collision also appear to differ from all other vehicle collisions that occur during the same year. The purchase order from the city to Nicky D’s – a used car dealer and auto body repair center in Easthampton – simply says “repairs” and “11/30/23 accident” and does not give any further details about what repairs or type and location of the damage. All other purchase orders from the city to Nicky D’s for other collisions involving EPD cars during the same year explicitly outline the damage being repaired and paid for.
Also not provided for the Boston Tesla collision is an itemized estimate of services and repairs, something that is provided for other collision records during the same year period.
Easthampton police cruisers also encountered problems in Westfield. On May 10, two EPD cruisers were damaged in a “multiple vehicle crash” at Cumberland Farms on Southfield Road near the Route 10 and Route 202 intersection. A Westfield Police Department crash report, written by Sgt. Janita Mehias, gives a limited perspective of the crash.
The May 15 report says a car “refusing to stop” was pursued by “multiple law enforcement agencies” as it traveled into Westfield from Easthampton. The report says the car was “spiked” and “on three rims entering Westfield.” Mejias says a Westfield cruiser was sideswiped and scraped, resulting in a flat tire.
According to Mejias, the offending vehicle “entered the Cumberland Farms parking lot at which time two marked Easthampton cruisers, #7&9 made contact with [the car], pinning it.” The report concludes with damage descriptions to EPD cruisers and says the pursued driver was transported by emergency medical service.
The only “law enforcement agencies” named in the report are Westfield police and the EPD. Easthampton does not share a boundary with Westfield, and EPD would have had to travel a significant distance through Southampton or Holyoke. The crash diagram of the collision shows one EPD cruiser heading south on South Street prior to the collision, and a second EPD cruiser is shown facing perpendicular to South Street near the Cumberland Farms gas pumps.
The crash occurred at 10:36 a.m., according to the report, but it was 15 minutes later that Alberti reported damage to EPD dispatch.
Purchase orders from the city to Nicky D’s show total repair costs of $2,500 to damage on car 9 — a 2017 Ford Explorer. Damage to car 7 — a 2018 Ford Explorer — cost the city $4,160. While the Massachusetts Interlocal Insurance Association payment for the May 10 damage to the 2017 Explorer was $402, after the $1,000 deductible, it is unclear from the records why the repairs paid for totaled $2,500. From records provided, it does appear that the city was required to pay for damages and the deductible.
The 2018 Explorer, however, had documented pre-existing damage from a run-in with the EPD’s own garage door. Sgt. Ilona Dorosh wrote in a crash report that the cruiser’s rear passenger door was “left open” and “collided with the side of the garage” when officer Matthew Halket was backing out in April of this year. A June 1 estimate from MIIA puts that prior damage at $2,497.
This was not the first time the EPD has encountered obstacles in their parking lot. Past records show that on Feb. 14, 2019, EPD officer Steven Mielke backed into the personal car of another officer, Jeffery Fish. Scribner, who was a sergeant at the time, and detective Mark Popielarczyk wrote in a report that Mielke was backing out of a parking space when he hit Fish’s parked car. The report estimated damage to Fish’s car to be around $1,000. The report was written the day following and was revised two hours after its original writing.
And in July 2023, a freight liner backed into a 2020 EPD Ford Escape while doing construction traffic detail on Holyoke Street.
Despite having some rough days, the cars are regularly washed at Golden Nozzle. The EPD purchased 450 express car wash tickets for $1,837.50 between December 2022 and January 2024.
There seem to be inconsistencies however, in record keeping and silence from the department when asked for details about the collisions and related records. When asked for clarifying information, Scribner told The Shoestring via email that all related records the EPD possessed were provided, and did not respond to requests for further details on the crashes.
The EPD also failed to meet requirements outlined by the Massachusetts public records law when The Shoestring attempted to get these records, and employed some tactics that could be considered intimidating.
After requesting the copies of the digital records, the EPD told The Shoestring that a reporter had to come to the department in person to pick up the more than 330 printed pages of records. The desk officer required The Shoestring to show a personal, state-issued ID in order to get the public records — something that is not a requirement under the law to obtain public records. From behind bullet proof glass, the officer wrote down the ID number on a piece of torn note paper, kept the paper, and then retrieved the documents and handed them over.
The records collected, in person, from the department came in a manila envelope the size of a textbook. Of the printed pages, only a third of them appeared to be relevant to the requested records, some pages of consecutively numbered documents were missing, and of the relevant documents roughly 20 pages are duplicates.
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