Ashland Police Officer, Former Milford Officer, Indicted in Middlesex County

An Ashland Police sergeant has been indicted by a Middlesex County grand jury on charges relating to evidence destruction and obstruction of justice, the District Attorney's office announced Friday.

Edward Pomponio, 50, of Milford, was indicted on a charge of wanton destruction of evidence and two counts of obstruction of justice, according to Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan. He is a former Milford police officer.

“With these charges, we allege that this defendant, a police officer, discarded key drug evidence in a pending criminal case and then tried to intimidate another officer from reporting it,” Ryan said, according to a press release. “These are troubling allegations that reflect a violation of the public trust placed in all law enforcement officials.”

Pomponio, who served as the police department’s evidence officer in July 2011, is alleged to have thrown out critical evidence in an open and active criminal case involving drug charges, according to the statement.

Without the evidence, the case could not proceed and had to be dismissed. Following that, he is alleged to have tried to intimidate the officer who had the case from reporting the evidence tampering to officials who would investigate, the District Attorney's office stated.

No arraignment date has been scheduled.

Pomponio's attorney, Douglas Louison, said Friday he had not reviewed the indictment, but said it likely is a result of allegations made in a civil case against his client. "It's the tail wagging the dog," he said.

He had not yet spoken to Pomponio about the criminal charges, he said, but said his client had not intentionally discarded any evidence.

Pomponio, he said, was clearing items from an evidence room that was in disarray, and threw out pills that are alleged to have been part of an active investigation. But it was not an intentional act, Louison said.

"If anything was destroyed, it was only by accident," he said. And as for intimidating other officers, his client did not do that, he said.

"He strongly protests his innocence," Louison said. "He is going to plan on aggressively defending it."

The civil case was filed in May by John Driscoll, a police officer in Ashland who said that Pomponio had tried to threaten and intimidate him after he had filed complaints, including one to the state Attorney General's Office that protested the destruction of drug evidence by Pomponio. That case later was referred to the Middlesex District Attorney's Office.

An indictment is not an indication of guilt. It means a grand jury has found enough evidence exists to move a case toward trial.

According to his attorney, Pomponio has been on medical leave from the Ashland department for several weeks. A spokesman for the town could not be reached Friday.

Pomponio was an officer for the Milford Police Department for 18 years prior to joining the Ashland Police Department, in 2007. 

He resigned from the Milford department in June 2005, rather than face a termination proceeding over a complaint that began when he was accused of engaging in a sexual act with a woman while on the job and in uniform, according to a report by WCVB TV. The complaint was amended to include a threatening statement that Pomponio made to another Milford officer, concerning the citizen who filed the complaint, according to a statement filed in Milford District Court by Milford Police Chief Thomas O'Loughlin.

Over the next three years, Pomponio repeatedly harassed or threatened the officer who reported that threatening statement, according to court documents.

O'Loughlin in January 2009 revoked Pomponio's license to carry a gun in Milford, after documenting 16 instances in which the former officer — who by then had been hired in Ashland — had engaged in "persistent and protracted harassment, intimidation and threatening conduct" toward members of the Milford police.

Pomponio challenged the decision in court, but a District Court judge in June 2009 upheld the revocation.