New State Police Chief Makes Promises

Sam Drysdale | State House News Service

NEW MASSACHUSETTS STATE Police Superintendent Col. Geoffrey Noble said he will do a complete review of the agency’s academy training model following the recent death of recruit Enrique Delgado-Garcia, but he stopped short of promising to completely overhaul the troubled agency’s leadership.

Gov. Maura Healey administered Noble’s oath at the State House on Friday morning, concluding 18 months of interim leadership at the State Police after Col. Christopher Mason retired in February 2023.

“The Massachusetts State Police will deliver excellent police services, build and maintain public trust, and enforce the law with fairness, compassion, equity, transparency and accountability,” Noble said. “Trust between our department and the community must be strong and unwavering. That accountability and that trust starts with me. I must first earn your trust, and I’m committed to have the resolve to do whatever it takes to earn and maintain that trust.”

The department that Noble is now in charge of has been thrust into a glaring spotlight a number of times in recent years. Over the past few months, the State Police was in both local and national headlines when a trooper’s crude text messages were read aloud on the stand during the widely-watched Karen Read murder trial. A Karen Read supporter was outside the State House on Friday with a “Free Karen Read” sign as Noble and other State Police walked in for the ceremony.

Most recently, the agency has been in the news because of the death of Delgado-Garcia, and subsequent allegations of hazing and intense conditions at the training academy.

Noble said Friday he had not been officially briefed on the investigation into the recruit’s death yet, but that he is aware of the situation and a deeper briefing is shortly forthcoming.

“We absolutely are going to do a complete review,” he said, when asked about his first action in respect to the academy, “and work together with the staff of the Massachusetts State Police, with [the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security], with the governor’s office. And what that review looks like, we will be transparent.”

A reporter asked Noble if he planned to replace any of the existing command staff. Noble is the first superintendent chosen to lead the State Police without having been an existing member of the force. Healey was the first governor able to take advantage of that allowance from a 2020 policing reform law.

“I do want to be clear, I come into this from an extraordinarily high level of respect to the women and men of the Massachusetts State Police,” Noble said. He added, “That said, I do look forward to working with the command staff and all the staff over the next several weeks and months.”

In his first few months, Noble said he feels his most important job will be to “talk to stakeholders,” including those who don’t have positive opinions of the State Police.

A reporter asked Healey about the 18-month search for a new superintendent, and why she landed on Noble — who spent 27 years with the New Jersey State Police, most recently as its lieutenant colonel — in light of a recent probe into the New Jersey agency that found decades-long patterns of discrimination.

Probes from New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin found women and minority troopers were passed up for promotions to top positions, as well as reports of racist comments and ignored requests for equitable treatment, the New Jersey Monitor reported.

Platkin said the findings “revealed deeply troubling conduct and systemic problems,” the Monitor said.

“Well, this was the subject of an extensive search process that included a renowned panel on our search committee. Everything was reviewed, and we have the opportunity to review, personally, everything, and the lieutenant governor and I are quite confident in Colonel Nobel and the job that he will do. He has a terrific record of proven leadership, including at the New Jersey State Police, and I know that that will carry through here in Massachusetts,” Healey said.

Noble, also responding to a question about the recent reports out of New Jersey, said he will “work tirelessly” to build a culture at the Massachusetts State Police “that is built on equity, inclusion, and respect for all, and an opportunity for all.”

“A healthy organization is one whose men and women who serve in that department feel that they belong, feel that they are supported, feel that they can come work at an agency, regardless of their background or their experience, but once they become, in this case, a Massachusetts state trooper, they’ve earned that right,” he said.