Lawmaker doubts review of award to cop accused of profiling

BANGOR, Maine (AP) - A Maine lawmaker rejected findings from the Maine State Police that it had not meant a top award given to a trooper accused of racial profiling in traffic stops as a rebuke to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Maine Rep. Jeffrey Evangelos demanded that the state’s Department of Public Safety conduct a “credible investigation” into how Trooper John Darcy was given the 2019 Trooper of the Year despite allegations that he racially profiled a man in a traffic stop, the Bangor Daily News reported Thursday.

Evangelos, an independent, filed a complaint with the public safety commissioner in February asking why Darcy was given the award. In correspondence with Public Safety Commissioner Michael Sauschuck that followed his complaint, Evangelos had also asked Sauschuck to examine “the motives behind the presentation of this award to Darcy by the high command of the Maine State Police.”

Darcy was recorded talking to another trooper on a cruiser microphone moments before stopping a motorist driving through York in an August 2019 traffic stop. Darcy said the man looked like a thug, citing his dreadlocks and shirt, but also told the other trooper he was not racially profiling the driver, who is Black.

In September, a judge dismissed drug possession charges that were brought against the man in response to Darcy’s recorded comments.

Sauschuck told Evangelos last week that the Office of Employee Relations found that the allegations against Darcy “were not substantiated” in connection with the Trooper of the Year award.

Darcy was given the Trooper of the Year award in November. But he was recommended by the Maine State Police’s Merit and Citation Committee in May, before the allegations of racial profiling surfaced, the commissioner’s office said.

Evangelos serves on the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, which has been collecting information about racial profiling in Maine.

“The culture of cover up of systemic misconduct within the Maine State Police and our county sheriff’s departments continues unabated,” Evangelos said. “Clearly, we are experiencing a police state in Maine, unaccountable to the rule of civilian law.”