Karen Read filed a civil lawsuit Thursday against the Massachusetts State Police and the town of Canton, accusing both of letting officers with racist and sexist text messages help steer the investigation into the death of Boston police Officer John O'Keefe. The complaint, filed in Bristol Superior Court, seeks unspecified financial damages.
The filing names former State Police trooper Michael Proctor, who served as lead investigator in Read’s criminal case, and former Canton police Sgt. Sean Goode. It describes both men as inveterate bigots and says the agencies knew, or should have known, about their biases before putting them on the case.
Read’s lawyers say the texts show more than bad judgment. In the complaint, they point to a crude message Proctor sent more than a decade ago while seeking work with the Boston Police Department, when he used a vulgar term for female anatomy and an anti-Black slur in reference to a Boston police employee. The Boston department did not hire him, but State Police later brought him on in 2013.
The suit also cites messages from Goode, who responded to the scene and later testified at Read’s first trial. In one text, he derided Boston Mayor Michelle Wu as a little expletive. In another, he said a young woman allegedly killed by a former Stoughton detective was borderline retarded. In a third, from 2015, he wrote that he could not wait to look up one female suspect at work that night.
The allegations land in a case already shaped by the fallout from the officers’ private correspondence. Proctor was fired in March 2025 after being forced on the witness stand during Read’s first criminal trial to read crude and misogynistic messages about her. Read’s lawyers also say he discussed planting coke on people and assaulting someone with a nightstick over the years on more than one occasion. State Police Colonel Geoffrey D. Noble said the comments were racist, sexist and abhorrent, did not reflect the values of the agency and fully supported his decision to terminate Proctor.
The move also collides with a sharp response from Proctor’s side. His lawyer, Jason W. Crotty, said Read is trying to hide her own culpability in O'Keefe’s death by filing the suit. He said the focus belongs on what happened to O'Keefe, not on the civil complaint. That clash now puts the town of Canton and State Police in the position of defending not just the investigation, but their decision to entrust it to two men whose private texts are now part of the public record.
Goode’s status only adds to the pressure. He was placed on leave in October and resigned from the Canton department this week, just as the lawsuit made his texts newly relevant in a civil case that may force a court to decide whether the agencies knew enough about the men’s conduct to keep them off the investigation. For now, that is the central question the filing leaves open.
