By Flint McColgan
Boston Herald
BOSTON — The new leader of the Massachusetts State Police comes from New Jersey.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has announced Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Noble of the New Jersey State Police as the next colonel, or leader, of the MSP.
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“Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Noble has dedicated his career to public service, rising to the highest levels of the New Jersey State Police and delivering results on some of the most pressing issues facing law enforcement. He is a principled, respected leader who is widely praised for his integrity, compassion and ability to bring people together,” Healey said in her announcement. “I’m confident that he is the leader that our hardworking State Police team and the people of Massachusetts deserve.”
“I also want to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to (current acting MSP leader) Colonel Jack Mawn for his stellar service and his steady leadership during this interim period,” she continued. “He has earned the respect of his colleagues, and all who work with him, as well as the public, for his professionalism, his work ethic and his integrity. He is a model for all of the men and women of the Massachusetts State Police and for the generations of troopers to follow.”
Noble said in a statement that he has “long admired” the MSP and called his selection a “true honor.”
“The hardworking men and women of the State Police show up every day to keep the people of Massachusetts safe, and they deserve a leader who is accessible, transparent and committed to the highest standards of integrity and excellence. That is the focus I will bring as Colonel,” his statement continued.
Noble is expected to take over the agency boasting more than 3,000 sworn and civilian personnel and a $500 million operating budget in October. Mawn has served as interim colonel since February 2023, following the retirement of Colonel Christopher Mason.
“Today, I welcome Geoff Noble to the Massachusetts State Police and congratulate him on his appointment,” Mawn said in a statement. “It has been the honor of my career to serve in this leadership role, and I would like to express my gratitude to the men and women of the Department for their extraordinary work during my tenure. Despite the challenges facing our profession, they consistently conducted themselves with professionalism and compassion.”
Noble’s resume
Noble has been in law enforcement for 30 years, according to Healey’s office. He started as a summer police officer in Nantucket before joining the New Jersey State Police in 1995. His tenure included 13 years at the command level, most recently as the deputy superintendent of administration from 2018 to 2022.
He began with the NJSP in uniformed patrol and moved on to field training and work as a detective in the fields of narcotics, official corruption, organized crime and homicide, as well as investigating police use of deadly force as commander of the state attorney general’s Shooting Response Team.
As a major, Noble commanded the NJSP’s Forensic and Technical Services Section, where he was tasked with cleaning up the state crime laboratories after a “systemic failure” led to thousands of cases being dismissed, according to a Healey press release.
Hiring
The MSP was searching for a permanent top cop at least as early as September 2023, when the job was posted on the International Association of Chiefs of Police website at a salary of $275,000 to $300,000 a year.
By early March, her office said the six-person search committee was closing in on a hire, with the choices bolstered by a police reform bill signed by her predecessor, Charlie Baker, that allowed her to select a candidate from outside the agency.
It may not have been an enviable job, as the Herald has reported frequently on the scandals engulfing the commonwealth’s premier law enforcement agency.
Certainly not least of its problems were the troopers involved in the investigation of the Karen Read murder case. Prosecutors say the Mansfield woman struck her Boston Police officer boyfriend, John O’Keefe, with her SUV ahead of a major snowstorm in Canton but the defense hit back with accusations of a police coverup, or at least exceptionally shoddy police work. The theory took hold, making the Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham the epicenter of a true crime and rabidly anti-police corruption movement.
When chief investigator Trooper Michael Proctor took the stand in the trial — which ended in mistrial but a try-over is scheduled for January — he was forced to admit to heinously unprofessional practices in the investigation. His co-workers at the MSP detective unit stationed at the county DA’s office didn’t come out of the witness stand without their own bits of controversy.
It all amounted to the Herald declaring “Enough is enough!” at the MSP in an editorial at about the same time Healey was hinting she was considering a hire outside MSP’s rank-and-file.
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