Terminated MIT Police Officer Identified
The MIT Police officer fired early last month was Duane R. Keegan. Keegan was terminated in early April after an incident where he and another officer removed copies of The Tech from newsstands and placed them in recycling bins.
Campus Police Chief John DiFava and Captain Albert F. Pierce, Jr. confirmed Keegan’s termination, but declined to comment on the reasons, citing confidentiality concerns and personnel regulations.
Keegan’s termination came after he and an unidentified officer were suspended without pay after the recycling incident, which took place on March 17.
The recycled newspapers prominently featured coverage of the arrest of former MIT Police officer Joseph D’Amelio, who had been arrested the Saturday before for drug trafficking in East Boston. D’Amelio remains under house arrest.
Keegan’s relationship with students has been rocky. He was the arresting officer in two prominent cases involving hacking: the October 2006 arrest of three students who set off an alarm at the E52 Faculty Club and the June 2008 arrest of a student in the basement of NW16.
In both cases, the charges against the students were subsequently dropped.