One of the Stoughton police officers named in a scathing 2022 internal affairs report about the alleged sexual grooming and manipulation of Sandra Birchmore in the years before her murder appeared before a Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission hearing officer Thursday in a closed-door hearing.
Robert Devine’s previous POST pre-hearing conferences in March, June, August, and September were streamed live and recorded for the public. A POST spokesperson said state regulations require hearings to be public “except where the presiding officer determines that closure is necessary to protect privacy interests and will not be contrary to the public interest.”
The spokesperson didn’t specify why Devine’s hearing was closed but said, “The subject or their lawyer and/or the Division of Standards can request that a hearing or pre-hearing be closed.”
Susanne Cleveland has extensively researched what happened to Birchmore and is a moderator of the Justice for Sandra Birchmore Facebook page. Cleveland said, “you just start to learn how the process works and start to pay attention to the hearings. And then suddenly, one that you’re paying very close attention to is moved and changed completely and has become non-public.”
POST is reviewing Robert Devine’s certification as a Massachusetts police officer. Devine’s POST status is “not certified” but he hasn’t been decertified, which would bar him from returning to police work and place him on the National Decertification Index.
Devine ran Stoughton’s Police Explorer’s program when Birchmore was a teen participant. In 2021, Stoughton Police Chief Donna M. McNamara announced that Devine and two other Stoughton Officers, brothers Matthew and William Farwell, “violated the policies and the core values of the Stoughton Police Department. Not to mention human decency” for their alleged treatment of Birchmore.
In August, Federal authorities charged Matthew Farwell with murdering Birchmore and staging her death to look like a suicide. They say Matthew Farwell strangled Birchmore after she told him she was pregnant with her child.
The Farwell brothers each agreed to voluntarily decertify from POST. Devine has been fighting attempts to decertify him. It’s unclear what happened in Devine’s hearing Thursday because it was held in secret.
“I am part of the public and it’s in the public interest to know what’s going on in that world,” Cleveland said, “these are the folks who protect and serve.”
Devine’s attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.
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