And so farewell, disgraced ex-State Police Sgt. Gary Cederquist.
As he heads off to federal jail subsequent month, Cederquist’s epitaph might be summed up in six phrases.
As soon as a Met, all the time a Met.
I refer, in fact, to the now-defunct Metropolitan Police Division. Of their spare moments, they patrolled parks and highways round Boston.
However what the Mets actually specialised in was stealing, robbing banks, promoting medicine, planting proof, doing Mob hits and promoting civil-service exams, amongst different rackets.
The Mets have been so hopelessly corrupt that they have been abolished method again in 1992 – merged into the State Police. The Mets have been out of enterprise for 33 years – a 3rd of a century!
However folding them into the as soon as comparatively sincere State Police proved once more the reality of the outdated saying. A couple of rotten apples can spoil the entire barrel. The MSP is now dirtier than even the outdated Mets.
Within the Eighties, there have been three main outfits in Massachusetts organized crime – the Mafia, the Winter Hill Gang and the Metropolitan Police Division. Most years, I consider, the Mets’ ill-gotten beneficial properties far surpassed these of each the Hill and In City, mixed.
But a technology later, these ageing bent cops hold getting caught with, not simply their palms however all their bodily appendages, within the cookie jar.
Or, within the case of Met Corridor of Famer Cederquist, within the jar with the Twizzlers and the Swedish Fish, as a result of that was a few of the graft he was stealing.
He ran the State Police’s CDL operation out of Stoughton, which is, in fact, subsequent door to Canton, the place one other MSP crew was operating amok below a pal of theirs named Meatball Morrissey.
Cederquist turned a Met in 1987, a Statie in 1992. That’s plenty of good “incomes” years, as his fellow sensible guys used to say again within the day. At sentencing, Sgt. Cederquist apologized to all his fellow troopers – to all people besides the individuals he was stealing from, the taxpayers.
Cederquist’s CDL department of the Mets mainly offered industrial drivers’ licenses to individuals who had no enterprise driving e-bikes, not to mention huge scary vans. The troopers thought it was all an enormous joke – a really profitable joke.
Amongst Cederquist’s chump-change payoffs, along with the sweet, have been bottled water, a snow blower and a granite mailbox. He’d promote an orchard for an apple. That’s the Met Approach.
I assume he wanted the cash. In 2023, the final 12 months earlier than Cederquist received lugged, he “solely” made $331,620 on the extent, or a minimum of as on the extent as something within the State Police.
He comes from a household of MSP troopers. His brother William, who shouldn’t be implicated in any of this, is a detective lieutenant who made $439,600 in 2023 after which fell off to a mere $407,100 final 12 months.
This 12 months, as of Oct. 4, Det. Lt. Cederquist had already pocketed $294,529.
Gary Cederquist, headed to jail two days earlier than Thanksgiving, continues to seize his $8,850 a month kiss within the mail. After all he does!
By the best way, there’s a second Cederquist accumulating a pension from the State Police. Deborah Cederquist’s golden kiss within the mail began in June 2001, and is now as much as $4,221 a month. She’s within the state pension system’s Million Greenback Membership, after which some. However aren’t all of them?
I simply completed writing a guide known as “Mass Corruption: Vol. 1, The Cops.” Cederquist is considered one of scores of dangerous cops included within the guide, as is considered one of his minions within the Stoughton crew, a man named Calvin Butner.
Butner is presently doing a short bid in Whitey Bulger’s remaining jail dwelling, in Hazelton, WV. He was lugged off a cruise boat about to depart Miami a few years again. The feds requested his spouse if she wished to get off along with her handcuffed husband, and she or he mentioned, nah, we’ve already paid for the tickets.
Butner received a wrist slap sentence of three months, and can in all probability be out any day now. His Bureau of Prisons quantity is 12387-056. His pension continues as he does his time — $6,020 a month. After all it does!
As I used to be researching the guide final summer time, I learn Butner’s pre-sentencing report. I had by no means identified that he too was a former Met.
I had assumed they have been all lengthy since retired to Florida, far previous the statute of limitations, laughing all the best way to the financial institution, the place they’ve all of the gold bars, jewellery and negotiable securities they stole stashed in protected deposit bins.
At age 65 Butner needed to be The Final Met, or so I figured, the ultimate freewheeling felon from that notorious crew of cutthroats.
However I used to be improper. It seems Butner was a mere road soldier in one of many Mets’ later pump-and-dumps, the CDL flim-flam in Stoughton. And the capo was Sgt. Cederquist, a Met’s Met.
So my new guide comes out in a few weeks, and I’ve already noticed one error in it. I known as Butner “the final Met.” Incorrect!
But when “Mass Corruption” goes to a second printing, I’m not going handy over that coveted title to Cederquist.
Who is aware of who the “final Met” goes to be? Even when only a few stay on the job, absolutely some Mets emerti are nonetheless wandering round someplace on the market, doing what they do finest, shoplifting or robbing poor bins or some such factor.
When you begin stealing, it’s laborious to cease. Particularly in case you’re a cop.
A couple of weeks in the past, a politician who has studied the State Police very fastidiously prompt to me that the one resolution to this infinite corruption is to place the entire division into receivership below some Dudley Do-Proper kind character.
That sounds cheap, till you concentrate on it. You place the troopers into receivership, and the subsequent factor you already know, that above-reproach receiver will probably be down on Northern Avenue, doing the perp stroll like Cederquist and Butner and so many different crooked cops earlier than them.
As soon as a Met, all the time a Met.
(Order Howie’s new guide, “Mass Corruption: Vol. 1, The Cops,” at howiecarrshow.com/retailer.)
