Massachusetts' Canton Police audit ready Tuesday, same day Karen Read trial empanelment starts

Flint McColgan, Boston Herald on Mar 27, 2025

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BOSTON — An audit of the Canton Police Department is set to drop the same day the Karen Read murder retrial begins — nearly a month before its contracted due date.

The contract the Town of Canton inked Oct. 25 with 5 Stones Intelligence, Inc., was for a “comprehensive and exhaustive Independent Police Audit” to be completed by April 30 and budgeted for $198,000. It was a contentious process getting to the finish line, according to previous Herald reporting.

The report will be turned over to the Canton Police Audit committee on Tuesday and it will also be immediately available to the public online, according to 5 Stones director Matthew Germanowski.

The timing of the report’s completion has some meaning, as the Karen Read case is one of the two cases that triggered the town’s desire for an audit.

The high-profile investigation into Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe’s death, for which Read is charged with murder, and the alleged murder of Sandra Birchmore in her Canton apartment by a Stoughton police officer both shocked Canton in recent years.

The audit request came about due to intense local and regional scrutiny — and then national attention — following the deaths of both Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, a resident of Canton, whose body was found Jan. 29, 2022, frozen on the Canton front yard of a BPD colleague; and Sandra Birchmore, whose body was found in her Canton apartment in February 2021 in what the feds have since described as a staged suicide scene.

“Recent events involving the unfortunate and untimely death of a Town resident have sparked concerns regarding how the department operates every day in police matters,” the audit prospectus states. “This concern resulted in a vote at the November 2023 Special Town Meeting to engage an independent consulting firm to ‘audit’ most aspects of the Police department’s operations.”

Tennessee-based 5 Stones was in the middle of an audit of the U.S. Capitol Police as well as the U.S. National Guard deployment during the riot in Washington D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, according to agreement documents, when it signed the deal. Despite that heavy workload, the team said they believed they would deliver the audit ahead of schedule.

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