lthough blind, Cathy Kelleher could vividly describe the attack by her estranged husband.
John Kelleher, above, may regain his Braintree badge. (Globe Staff Photo / John Tlumacki)
John and Cathy Kelleher on their wedding day in 1984. (Photo courtesy of Linda O'Donnell)
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She remembered how John Kelleher charged through the door of the home they once shared in Braintree, picked her up and tossed her violently against a porch beam. When she struggled to stand up, Cathy heard the taunts of her husband's girlfriend, who warned ''You're going down the stairs!'' as she lifted the smaller Kelleher off her feet, whipped her around, and threw her.
Kelleher missed the stairs, but crashed into the bannister and collapsed. The impact splintered the bones in her right knee. One fractured bone protruded awkwardly from the skin. She also suffered a fractured vertebrae and separated shoulder.
Kelleher said her husband did nothing to stop the second attack or offer even basic first aid. Asked how she could be sure it was her husband who first assaulted her, Kelleher cited the distinctive sound of leather: the broad, thick belt of a policeman and the gun and handcuffs rubbing against it. Not only was John Kelleher wearing his police uniform the day he assaulted his blind wife; he was on duty.
The attack on the porch in Braintree happened nine years ago, but the case of John Kelleher is far from over. When the town fired him from the Police Department one year after the incident, Kelleher appealed the action to the state Civil Service Commission. Today, he is close to regaining his job, thanks to a system that police chiefs, town managers, and mayors across the state say is inhibiting just and efficient management while working to the benefit of bad cops.
In an era of increasing citizen demands for police accountability, and at a time when the federal government is subjecting police agencies accused of misconduct to intense scrutiny and corrective court action, chiefs in Massachusetts complain that their efforts to take action against derelict officers are being dangerously undercut. The culprit, they say, is the Civil Service Commission, a 116-year-old agency that critics assert is an anachronism in the world of modern policing, obstructing efforts to run police departments more honestly and efficently.
The commission considers appeals of disciplinary actions filed by a range of civil servants, from secretaries to firefighters, but it is the rulings on matters of police discipline that has prompted the most complaints.
''What is unique in Massachusetts is that a police officer has more rights than the average citizen,'' said Edward Flynn, chief of the 500-member Arlington County, Va., Police Department and the chief in Braintree at the time of the Kelleher incident.
A Boston Globe analysis of all the cases handled by the commission over the past three years reveals that police officers are more likely to have a suspension or termination modified than other public employees. Discipline against cops was reduced one-third of the time in the past three years, while other employees were successful only one in four times.
The Globe review also demonstrated how difficult it is to take action against policemen accused of misconduct. Officers who have failed lie detector tests, been sanctioned by the state for unethical behavior, or have a history of alcohol-related disciplinary problems have won their jobs back as a result of rulings by the Civil Service Commission.
''Massachusetts really stands out as a place where imposing discipline is cumbersome, time-consuming, and every bit an obstacle course,'' said Chuck Wexler, a former adviser to Boston Police commissioners Joseph Jordan and Mickey Roache, and now the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington think-tank that studies police management issues.
Removal of police officers proves a daunting task
Actually firing a police officer in Massachusetts can take years. It's also expensive, draining municipal coffers, and those of the police unions, with lawyers often the only financial winners.
The Town of Braintree has spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to fire Kelleher. On the employee side, the Boston Police Patrolman's Association, for instance, spent $750,000 on legal fees last year, much of it to fight disciplinary action against officers.
''The biggest problem is the cops on the street know we are not in charge,'' said Lowell Police Superintendent Edward Davis, who is fighting nine disciplinary cases at the commission.
In New Bedford - where the Police Department has faced several lawsuits alleging misconduct, including the beating death of a prisoner - the city's lawyer said the Civil Service Commission is hindering efforts to overhaul the department.
''We are serious about reform,'' said City Solicitor George Leontire. ''Part of that reform has to be discipline and we are trying. It's hard. When we take the action, the Civil Service Commission frequently overturns it.''
The civil service system was created in 1884 to eliminate the massive patronage of the day in which nearly every government job was tied to political loyalty. But one of the major complaints about the commission today is that it has become a victim of the very kind of political horse-trading it was designed to stop.
Three of the five Civil Service commissioners were appointed to their positions by Governor Paul Cellucci at the urging of government employee unions who backed Cellucci's campaign in 1998.
For instance, the former longtime head of the union representing prison guards in the state is now a commissioner ruling on the appeals of his one-time members against his former employer. A former official of the union representing superior officers in the Boston Police Department is another commissioner. A third was appointed at the behest of the statewide firefighters' union.
The unions and their lawyers, however, deny the commission is stacked in their favor. Allegations of bias are nothing more than the unfounded complaints of chiefs who resent a check on their actions, particularly when they are based on personality conflicts or political motivations, the unions say.
Cases that are overturned are usually the result of management failing to follow the rules, said Robert McCarthy, president of the 12,000-member Professional Firefighters of Massachusetts union. ''They cry. They mock and beat up civil service, but they are not doing their job right,'' he said.
Leominster Police Chief Peter Roddy acknowledges there are some cases when officers have legitimate complaints about discipline taken against them, but he said there has to be a fairer system.
''We have to maintain the public trust and this makes it harder to do,'' he said. ''It is totally frustrating. We are in a business where officers can get in trouble and we ask them to do things where people will complain about them. We understand there needs to be protection from that.
''But if you have somebody who is corrupt, you have to be able to take immediate discipline against them and not jump through hoops to do that.''
Town officials outraged by decision to reinstate
In 1997, after years of hearings and delays, the Civil Service Commission opened the door for Kelleher to return to the Braintree police force. The commission voted to reinstate Kelleher to the department despite the findings of its hearing officers, who concluded that Kelleher's testimony was not credible.
Outraged town officials are fighting the decision, hoping to convince a judge to overturn it. To be successful, however, a judge needs to find the commission acted arbitrarily, exceeded its authority, or grossly misinterpreted the facts.
Kelleher was fired after an investigation by a Braintree detective and a sergeant concluded that he assaulted Cathy Kelleher; that he failed to prevent the attack by his girlfriend on his wife, or provide first aid to Cathy, and that he lied when he claimed he didn't see his girlfriend's attack.
A key witness to the Oct. 19, 1991, attack was Barbara Forest, who described the events of that night in an interview with the Globe.
The women, who were lifelong friends, had picked up the Kellehers's son, Brian, for a scheduled visit. Cathy was going into the house to retrieve some clothes for Brian when John suddenly appeared and grabbed the boy out of Forest's car.
With the boy in his arms, John squeezed in the front door of the house, which was held slightly ajar by his girlfriend standing inside. Cathy attempted to follow, but the door was suddenly slammed closed and held tight, pinning her right arm and leg.
Forest yelled for the couple inside to stop pushing against the door. Cathy was delicate, her bones brittle from years of serious health problems. Forest worried that a fistula - a tube inserted into Cathy's forearm to facilitate dialysis treatment - might break.
After several seconds, the door was released and Cathy stumbled backwards onto the small porch between the door and the steps leading up to the house.
John charged from the house, knocking Forest backwards into a gas grill. Forest said she watched as John then grabbed Cathy, lifted her off the ground and threw her in the direction of the stairs. She hit a support beam on the porch, banging her head on impact and sending her sprawling to the floor.
''How could you do this?'' Forest screamed. ''Do what?,'' she said John responded with a smirk. ''I was in the car.''
Terrified, Forest ran to a neighbor's house to get help.
With her friend gone, Cathy would later testify she was taunted by Bobbie Jo Dorosz, her husband's girlfriend, who was now standing in the doorway. Cathy picked herself up and slapped at the voice with her right hand. She missed Dorosz but hit the screen door. Dorosz, who according to a police report is 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighed 180 pounds, then set upon Cathy.
When Forest returned from calling the police, she saw Cathy laying in a different position on the porch floor. A bone protruded from the skin by her kneecap. ''It's crushed! It's crushed!,'' Cathy cried out. As she shouted for assistance, Cathy said she heard Dorosz mock her with sarcastic chants of ''Help me! Help me!''
Cathy was taken to South Shore Hospital in Weymouth for treatment. Despite the work of doctors at several hospitals over the following months, the attack on the porch marked the start of a steep decline in her health.
The subsequent police investigation led to a charge of assault and battery against John Kelleher and Dorosz.
Although she remained irate about the attack on the porch, Cathy testified reluctantly at the trial in Quincy District Court. She told friends she was worried about John losing his health benefits and the effect it would have on Brian, who was born prematurely and had serious medical needs.
Cathy and John had known each other since early childhood, growing up five houses apart in the Granite Park section of Braintree, a neighborhood of middle-class homes perched on a hill overlooking the South Shore Plaza.
When John announced his intention to marry Cathy, her father was concerned. Al Pike sat John down and talked about Cathy's various medical problems - she had lost her sight at 19 as a result of juvenile diabetes, and also suffered from heart disease and osteoporosis - and the likely strain they would place on a marriage. But John was undeterred and the couple married in 1984.
The birth of Brian a year later was difficult for Cathy. The physical stress of labor overwhelmed her small body. Her kidneys failed during delivery. Now, in addition to her other illnesses, she had to undergo the implant of a fistula and dialysis treatment three times a week.
The marriage reached the breaking point about five years later, when Cathy discovered John was having an affair with Dorosz, then a teenager who worked at the local McDonald's. Finally, in May of 1991, the couple separated. Cathy moved to an apartment in Quincy. The same day, Dorosz moved in with John.
Police support for Kelleher a blow to Cathy's family
As John Kelleher's trial began in September of 1992, a group of police officers sat in the back of the courtroom in a show of support for their colleague. The officers, sometimes as many as two dozen, also rallied behind John when Braintree selectmen held a hearing on the case that resulted in his termination.
For Cathy's family, the support of other police officers was impossible to comprehend.
''It was wrong,'' said Pike. ''To this day, I can't understand it. [The support] was for a cop who beat up his wife. It's wrong.''
Despite being hesitant to testify, Cathy's account of the incident on the porch proved both dramatic and effective.
As she prepared to resume her testimony following a break, lawyers for John and Dorosz told the judge their clients wanted to change their plea of not guilty. Instead, they admitted to sufficient facts, an explicit acknowledgement that the prosecutor had enough evidence to prove Cathy was assaulted by the pair. The judge ordered a finding of guilty for both and sentenced them to 100 hours of community service and two years of probation.
Dorosz accepted her punishment, but John decided to appeal, wanting to strike the guilty finding from his record.
In 1993, without hearing any evidence in the case, a second judge, Paul Menton, gave John what he was looking for: a continued without a finding disposition, which means his record would be wiped clean if he stayed out of trouble for one year.
With the court proceedings behind him, Kelleher turned his attention to getting his job back.
Over a three-year period, beginning in 1994, the Civil Service Commission held five days of hearings on the case.
John and his lawyer argued that the fired officer's criminal charge was now irrelevant since it would be wiped from his record. They also tried to shift the blame to Dorosz, insisting she caused all of the injuries to Cathy.
John said he didn't assault Cathy, but slipped on a rug in the house when he opened the door to free Cathy's trapped arm. John described what happened next as him ''falling into Cathy, who, in turn, stumbled and fell.'' He denied being on the porch when Dorosz assaulted Cathy, saying he went back to his cruiser to check on the status of a gun investigation he was conducting.
But Betty Waxman, the commissioner who acted as the hearing officer, found Kelleher's explanations implausible. He was not a ''credible witness,'' she said.
''The appellant was a uniformed, on-duty police officer who assaulted and battered his disabled wife and did not prevent or mitigate a second attack by Bobbie Jo Dorosz,'' wrote Waxman, who has since left the commission.
That May 3, 1995, ruling was just the first phase of the Civil Service Commission's review of the case, establishing that the town had a legal basis for disciplining Kelleher.
The second phase called for deciding whether or not the punishment fit the crime. This review, conducted by Administrative Magistrate Christopher Connolly, supported the firing. Connolly found that Kelleher ''engaged in outrageous conduct inimical to the fundamental obligations and responsibilities of a police officer.''
Despite Connolly's conclusion, and the earlier decision from Waxman, the full commission saw it differently.
On Sept. 15, 1997, the commissioners voted unanimously to return Kelleher to police work, saying the five years he had been off the job was punishment enough. It is one of several instances in which the full commission voted against the recommendation of the hearing officer or magistrate who listened to the testimony of witnesses and reviewed all of the evidence.
''Although the actions of [Kelleher] are offensive, they do not justify his termination,'' the commission wrote. Furthermore, other Braintree police officers accused of serious wrongdoing had received lighter punishments, it added.
The decision bewildered town officials, including Police Chief Paul Frazier, who became more concerned after receiving anonymous telephone calls at his office. ''We were getting calls telling us to appeal the decision, that there were games going on,'' he said. ''It's kind of crazy.''
Health decline follows attack
Cathy Kelleher never got a chance to testify at the civil service hearing.
The attack on the porch marked the beginning of a string of hospital stays and treatment at rehabilitation centers.
Her poor health prevented doctors from doing extensive work on the shattered knee. Cathy later underwent a heart bypass operation with the hope it would make her strong enough to undergo the knee operation. It didn't.
The injury left her mostly bedridden, unable to walk without assistance or regularly visit her son, who remained in the custody of John. The lack of movement, her family says, decreased the circulation in her body, and added to the already high risk of infection and circulatory problems associated with Cathy's diabetes.
More than a year after the attack on the porch, Cathy's toes on her right leg turned a shade of purple and eventually black. The leg had to be amputated.
Then her left leg also began to decay. The last months of Cathy Kelleher's life were ''hell,'' her father said. As her left leg continued to deteriorate, the morphine drip failed to deaden the constant pain. Reluctantly, she agreed to a second amputation.
Following the operation, Cathy rested in a recovery room at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. By chance, a family friend was the nurse assigned to care for her. During the recovery, the nurse told the family Cathy quietly sighed and whispered to her: ''I can't do it anymore.''
In a nearby room, Cathy's sister, Linda O'Donnell, heard urgent calls of ''Code Blue'' over the hospital intercom. Despite the efforts of doctors, Cathy's heart stopped beating. At 9 p.m. on July 1, 1993, she was declared dead. She was 34.
Court weighs Kelleher's effort to win back his job
Cathy's family follows John's battle to get his job back, but no longer attends any of the myriad hearings or court sessions.
A new round of hearings began this spring in Norfolk Superior Court. The case was delayed for many months because the Civil Service Commission couldn't locate tapes of its hearings.
Kelleher, on the advice of his laywer, Frank McGee, is not talking about the case. In a brief interview on the porch where Cathy was attacked, Dorosz said the couple's side of the story has not been fairly told.
''He is the nicest guy,'' she said of John. ''He would give you the shirt off his back.''
The town, meanwhile, has filed new evidence it says supports its contention that John shouldn't be a police officer, including a 1996 police call of a ''domestic disagreement'' between John and Dorosz, who are now married.
Police observed cuts and abrasions on both. Dorosz also told the arriving officers that she had lied in court in order to help John keep his job, according to the police report. She said John struck her in the face that night although he was never charged with abusing her.
Cathy's friends and family wonder how John, if he were to be reinstated, could respond to any of the 400-odd domestic violence calls in Braintree each year.
They want to know how anyone could consider giving him a gun and badge after what happened on that porch nine years ago.
''I don't want him to be a police officer,'' said O'Donnell. ''It isn't right. I don't know anyone in their right mind who thinks he should be a police officer.''
Tomorrow: Misconduct on the Civil Service Commission
