A police officer linked to the Sandra Birchmore case has reached an agreement with the Massachusetts police oversight agency to never again seek certification for police work. This effectively brings to an end his law enforcement career in the state.
Joshua Heal, a former Abington police officer, has been described as a confidant of Birchmore. Authorities say she was killed by a former Stoughton police officer who had sexually exploited her after she joined a police youth program as a teenager.
Birchmore was pregnant when she was found dead in her Canton apartment in 2021 at age 23. Though her death was initially ruled a suicide, federal prosecutors later charged Matthew Farwell, the former Stoughton police officer, with killing her to conceal a sexual relationship they began when she was under the age of consent.
Heal was formerly named in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by Birchmore’s estate. A Norfolk Superior Court judge dismissed the claims against Heal last year.
Heal’s attorney, Peter Farrell, wrote in a legal filing for the case that Heal and Birchmore met while he was working at Stoughton’s animal control center in 2019. They had a single consensual sexual encounter at the facility that year, when she was 22, Farrell wrote.
Heal served with the Abington Police for three years before resigning in March 2023. His state certification for police work expired earlier this year.
His agreement with the police oversight board, the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, or POST, prevents him from ever again applying for police certification in Massachusetts or working for a law enforcement agency.
Farrell told MassLive that Heal’s agreement with POST “is not and should not be construed as an admission of fault or liability for any of the allegations asserted by POST or any other entity.”
“Mr. Heal has not now, has never been, and will not be the target of any criminal charges in the future because he has not broken any laws,” Farrell said in a statement.
In dismissing the civil claims against Heal last year, Judge Brian Davis wrote that Heal’s “only alleged misdeed was having consensual sex with Ms. Birchmore on one occasion when she was an adult.”
A copy of Heal’s agreement with the POST Commission offered limited details of the allegations against him. It said only that during interviews for an investigation into a group of officers from another police department, Heal lied to investigators and later lied to his police chief in a meeting about the interviews.
The commission has already decertified Farwell, the officer accused of killing Birchmore, as well as his brother, William Farwell.
Though William Farwell does not face criminal charges, a Stoughton police internal investigation released in 2022 found he also had “multiple inappropriate physical encounters” with Birchmore and sent her explicit messages and photos while he was on duty.
The commission also hopes to decertify former Stoughton Deputy Police Chief Robert Devine, who supervised the Farwell brothers and is accused of having a sexual encounter with Birchmore while on duty.
Hearings on Devine’s certification this summer were closed to the public because of the sensitivity of certain evidence and to protect an unnamed person’s identity, a decision that frustrated transparency advocates who hoped the highly publicized hearings would be held in public view.
Neither Devine nor William Farwell faces criminal charges connected to the case.
Matthew Farwell has pleaded not guilty and is being held in federal custody while he awaits trial.
POST decertifies four other officers
The commission, created in 2020 to bring police departments and officers under closer state supervision, also said it had stripped four other officers of their certifications, barring them for life from carrying a police badge in Massachusetts.
One officer worked for both the Springfield College Police and Hopedale Police, while the others served with the Boston Police, Plymouth Police and Chelsea Police.
Zachary Perro, who spent three months with the Hopedale Police and two-and-a-half years with the Springfield College Police, admitted to providing false or misleading answers on his applications to work at both departments, as well as applications for the Sutton Police Department and Massachusetts State Police.
Perro reached an agreement with the commission earlier this month through which he accepted his decertification.
The commission cited Iser Barnes, the former Boston officer, for a lengthy list of unprofessional conduct in the first few months after he earned a police certification in 2022.
On one occasion, while at the scene of a robbery, he tossed a pair of shoes and a backpack that a suspect had left behind in a dumpster, rather than documenting the items for evidence. On another, he left the scene of a car crash involving a potentially intoxicated driver, only for the same driver to crash again hours later with a “large amount of marijuana” in the vehicle, the commission said.
Josselin Sanchez, the Chelsea police officer, resigned in 2024 after six years with the department. At the time, Sanchez was under internal investigation for a roadway altercation with another driver after leaving a Revere restaurant where she had been drinking.
Details of the incident were, in large part, redacted from the commission’s order decertifying Sanchez. However, the commission went on to describe several other incidents of unprofessional conduct from Sanchez, including some involving heavy alcohol consumption.
The commission largely redacted its reasoning for decertifying Jonathan DeMontigny, the former Plymouth officer.
The board referenced a June 2024 incident for which DeMontigny was cited for conduct unbecoming an officer, untruthfulness and criminal conduct. He was also involved in unclear incidents in 2017 and 2018 that resulted in a 30-day suspension for conduct unbecoming of an officer.
The commission is the product of state-level policing reforms established after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.
Of the 65 police officers it has decertified since 2023, many — though not all — had been convicted of criminal charges. The cases ranged from financial crimes to child exploitation to drunk driving.
The commission can also decertify officers for egregious but noncriminal misconduct. It has used that power to ban officers accused of repeatedly using excessive force, falsifying records and using drugs or alcohol on the job.
The names of all decertified officers are submitted to a national registry of decertified police, a move designed to alert faraway departments to the officers’ histories if they cross state lines in search of police work.
Recent POST Commission stories
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