Howie Carr: Canton cone head look en vogue

The Karen Read retrial is starting to fall into that familiar state court pattern of half days punctuated by holidays and three-day weekends This Monday was Patriots Day Then the hacks came in for two full arduous days of work But the previous 24 hours only a half day apparently because the prosecution ran out of spectators even though there are about names on the two witness lists It s the hackerama One thing that s becoming clear here at the start is how much the Town of Canton is changing In the three years since John O Keefe s death multiple Canton stalwarts have either fled died quit or retired from politics due to ill robustness the voters got sick of them The native population is drifting away Big D s Neponset Grill is a fading memory just like the heartburn from those fried-baloney sandwiches that passed for haute cuisine in Canton But one thing hasn t changed the Canton cone head look Increasingly it resembles a dated affectation like bell bottoms or a zoot suit or a wide-brimmed felt hat It tells everyone who you are or were and how you don t give a bleep if it makes you weird And so right out of the box this week the Commonwealth produced yet another Canton cone head firefighter Dan Whitley Good lord Whitley looked separated at birth from Michael Proctor the capo di tutti Canton cone heads So far the disgraced ex-state cop has only been mentioned briefly in the trial ominously as a cancer Proctor has become the symbol the poster boy of Mass State Police corruption prevailing over very stiff competition Proctor refuses to flee Canton He can t imagine living anywhere else None of them can And despite his disgraceful firing Proctor won t give up the chrome dome you can t be Canton without a cone head But I m notified Proctor has assumed certain protective disguise a beard Proctor s not the first Canton cone head to grow facial hair Take Brian Albert please It was outside his house where the body of John O Keefe his fellow Boston police officer was discovered in the snow in January Albert fast retired from the BPD around the same time as one of his superiors in the Boston Police Department Greg Long Can you guess where Supt Greg Long lived If you look at photos of Long his wife is a -a-year hack judge appointed by Gov Charlie Baker you will see that in a few photos Long is sporting a modified semi-Canton cone head look Brian Albert has an ex-con brother named Chris Albert Jailbird Chris for short Did six months for killing a foreign exchange attendee in in a traffic accident after which he fled the scene His lawyer was the brother of Judge Bev Cannone It s Norfolk County baby Jailbird Chris is of class a full cone head Then there s another local State Police cone head Lt Brian Tully He used to be in Norfolk County DA Meatball Morrissey s office with fellow chrome dome Proctor After the first trial Proctor got fired and Tully has been transferred out with a loss of six personal days That s how good a job they both did Canton cone heads have seen better days But you can t paint all Canton cone heads with a broad brush Lucky Loughran is another lifer Canton cone head but he was one of Karen Read s best spectators in the first trial the salt of the earth Lucky was driving the plow truck during the snowstorm when John O Keefe died and he advised the truth about what he did NOT see which was John O Keefe s body on the snowy lawn In other words he reported the truth This makes Lucky persona non grata among his fellow Canton cone heads By the way Lucky s brother is a Canton selectman And the changes on the board are an indication of just how the Town is climbing out of its white-trash abyss A year ago one of the long-time townie selectmen Tom Theodore was knocked off the board by a couple of hundred votes Just this month an even more odious townie selectman John Connolly lost his reelection bid by an almost - margin In contemporary photos Connolly no relation to the Mob hitman John Zip Connolly is sporting a modified Canton cone head But it appears to be more a feature of male pattern baldness than a follicle fashion report Even more significantly Connolly could be separated at birth from bloated DA Meatball Morrissey But it s not just the selectmen who are at the checkout counter Now the cone heads favorite police chief Kenny Berkowitz has died And his successor the very dodgy second-generation hack Helena Rafferty is likewise stepping down before she can be fired There s an old song about how wedding bells are emerging up that old gang of mine In Canton police sirens are doing the same The sooner the better Troopers Brian Tully Joseph Paul and ex-Statie Michael Proctor left to right who have all key in the Karen Read incident Pool photos