Let’s keep in mind that the sheriff’s job is a critical cog in the criminal justice system, and Tompkins’s job includes running the Suffolk County House of Correction and the Nashua Street Jail. Those facilities employ hundreds of corrections officers. Ethical lapses in such positions are no trivial matters.
“What I was accused of, I did not do,” Tompkins said as he emerged from the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse on Wednesday.
But there is also no question about what Tompkins did do. In 2020 the sheriff was allowed to buy some $50,000 worth of shares in Ascend Wellness Holdings at a pre-IPO (Initial Public Offering) price through the firm’s cofounder, Frank Perullo. Perullo testified to that under oath at the trial.
At the time of that purchase, the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department had an ongoing partnership with the firm to help screen and refer graduates of its reentry program for inmates to the firm’s retail cannabis outlets. That agreement was signed by Tompkins.
When the stock tanked in 2022, Tompkins got back his initial investment in five separate checks signed by Perullo.
Regular folks would have trouble getting a deal like that from their stockbrokers.
Now Tompkins, a longtime mover and shaker in Democratic politics, and Perullo, a former lobbyist and political consultant, have known each other for years. Perullo even served as a campaign consultant to the sheriff. So it’s hardly surprising that a jury might have trouble believing Perullo, who was given immunity to testify by federal officials, was a naïf who was put in fear of losing his company’s contract with the sheriff’s office, should he not come through on the stock deal for Tompkins.
But the ethical question remains: Should a public official be allowed to accept an exceedingly special stock deal from a guy his office does business with?
State ethics laws are entirely clear on that.
“No current officer or employee of a state, county or municipal agency shall knowingly … solicit or receive anything of substantial value … because of the officer or employee’s official position … or use or attempt to use such official position to secure … unwarranted privileges or exemptions which are of substantial value and which are not properly available to similarly situated individuals.”
The State Ethics Commission will not comment on any pending investigations.
However, this certainly wouldn’t be the first time the sheriff has attracted its attention with his wild west attitude toward running his office.
Tompkins was first appointed to the post in 2013 by Governor Deval Patrick to fill the vacancy created when Andrea Cabral, who just testified as a witness for the defense in Tompkins’s trial, was named as public safety secretary.
Patrick said at the time, “By the way, it’s a political job, so the folks that are criticizing it as a political hire, tell them: they’re right.”
He was spot on.
Tompkins ran for the job in 2014 and in 2015 paid his first Ethics Commission fine of $2,500 for using his position as sheriff to request that store owners remove an opponent’s campaign signs during that first election.
By 2020 the Ethics Commission began investigating Tompkins’s employment of his niece to a $45,000 a year public information officer position he created, a position she held for almost two years. Her duties, the commission found, included caring for Tompkins’s children. The commission also found that between 2014 and 2022 other sheriff’s office employees were asked “to assist him personally by caring for or transporting his children” during their usual office hours.
Tompkins agreed to a $12,300 civil fine in 2023 for violating the state’s conflict of interest law in the case.
And that is part of the problem with the state’s ethics laws — enforcing them is often a long, complicated process. And it will be two long years before the voters can have their say on his future.
Meanwhile, the sheriff’s department showed numerous signs of fraying at the seams even before Tompkins’s arrest. A corrections officer was arrested for trafficking methamphetamine in July of 2025, and another officer was charged with raping an inmate, also that July. The death of an inmate last December after a fight with staff at the House of Correction was recently ruled a homicide by the medical examiner’s office.
The sheriff’s department needs strong and professional leadership, and it needs it now. It’s time the governor had a heart-to-heart chat with Tompkins before he becomes more of an embarrassment than he already is — and arrange for his exit.
Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.