FALL RIVER, Mass. (WPRI) – When Fall River police shot and killed Anthony Harden in November 2021, the two officers involved said it was necessary because Harden attacked one of them with a knife.

Bristol County District Attorney Thomas Quinn agreed and ruled the deadly force was “justified.” He indicated one of the officers, Michael Sullivan, feared for his life and the other, Chelsea Campellone, had no option but to kill Harden.

“There is no basis to conclude that either Fall River police officer committed a crime,” Quinn wrote in his April 2022 deadly use of force report.

In most of these types of cases involving police in Massachusetts, Quinn’s ruling would have ended the matter. But that didn’t happen with Harden, whose brother Eric Mack has spent more than two years challenging Quinn and his conclusions.

“I went into this situation thinking that they were going to tell me the truth,” Mack told Target 12. “Be honest, and I would take their word for it. But at every single turn, they blocked me, and they’ve lied.”

Mack, who is an attorney, has since called on the state’s highest court to remove Quinn from elected office, saying the evidence he has fought to obtain over the years shows that at best the district attorney mishandled the investigation.

At worst, Mack alleged, Quinn is covering for members of the Fall River Police Department, which for years has been pockmarked with controversy, lawsuits and criminal activity. And Mack is now asking the U.S. Department of Justice to get involved.

“It was definitely a cover-up,” Mack said. “The story just doesn’t make sense on its face.”

Quinn, who’s been the county’s top prosecutor since 2015, didn’t respond to multiple requests to be interviewed for this story.

‘Never disclosed’

In court documents filed over the past two years, the district attorney has argued there’s no basis for Mack’s legal argument to have him removed from office, suggesting the brother’s judgement is clouded.

“It is understandable that [Mack] is personally suffering from the loss of his brother, but that connection makes him particularly unsuited to determine whether criminal charges should issue,” Quinn argued in a 2022 court filing.

“The question of whether to criminally prosecute requires decision-making based not on sympathy or emotion, but on careful review of the evidence and ethical considerations of the sufficiency of the proof,” he added.

Mack has countered, arguing Quinn has gone to great lengths to “protect his friends, shield the guilty and make the interest of the public subservient to his personal desires, his individual ambitions and private advantage.”

One of Mack’s top complaints is that Quinn shouldn’t have been involved in the investigation to begin with because of his personal relationship with one of the officers, Sullivan, who’s friends with the district attorney’s son, according to court documents.

Quinn was also criticized for initially refusing to disclose the names of the officers involved. His office was eventually fined by a Superior Court judge for withholding the information.

The district attorney has since argued that “a direct friendship does not create a conflict of interest.” But Mack said Quinn never publicly disclosed the relationship at any point during his investigation.

“He never disclosed that conflict and I believe that he gave [Sullivan] favorable treatment,” Mack said.

Mack’s petition is highly unusual in Massachusetts and the judiciary hasn’t removed a district attorney in about 70 years. In a 2022 interview with The Boston Globe , Quinn stood by his investigation into Harden, and he accused Mack of trying to undermine his credibility.

“This is serious when [Mack’s] trying to make these allegations that I’m turning a blind eye to somebody murdering an innocent civilian, which is the furthest thing from the truth,” Quinn told the newspaper.

‘Goals of police accountability’

Mack’s petition to remove Quinn, however, is only part of a broader legal battle he’s been waging.

He also sued Quinn in 2022 under the Massachusetts public records law in order to obtain underlying documents tied to the investigation into his brother’s death.

A year later, a Superior Court judge ruled in favor of Mack, ordering the records be released and for Quinn’s office to pay Mack nearly $45,000 in legal fees and damages, according to court documents.

Quinn appealed the decision to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, arguing much of the underlying video, photographic and interview evidence collected in connection with Harden’s death was exempt under the public records law based on privacy, policy deliberation and investigations.

In April, the state’s highest court disagreed, upholding most of the lower court’s ruling and ordered many of the previously withheld records to be released. The court also said Mack could seek additional legal fees from Quinn because the district attorney had appealed the decision to the high court.

“To require an investigation to end with a finding of police misconduct places the cart before the horse and runs counter to the goals of police accountability and transparency,” Justice Frank Graziano wrote.

As a result, Quinn’s office recently released dozens of previously undisclosed videos and police documents, which Mack said has only reinforced his belief that Quinn fumbled the investigation into his brother’s death.

“There are some individuals who did the right thing and the best thing they could do in that situation and actually told the truth afterward,” he said. “But the process at play here has been corrupted.”

‘What appeared to be a knife’

Mack has many concerns about the investigation, including the alleged conflict of interest, the physical evidence and why Quinn has fought so hard to keep details about the incident secret.

But one of Mack’s biggest concerns is about the knife his brother was said to have been wielding.

“The story just doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Campellone and Sullivan responded to Harden’s apartment that evening because an ex-girlfriend had accused him of abusing her two days earlier.

Campellone opened fire within two minutes of entering the apartment, spurring Sullivan to radio for backup.

When other officers arrived, newly unredacted records show Harden was found alive, bleeding on the ground in handcuffs. He was transported to the hospital and pronounced dead.

The shooting happened before Fall River adopted body-worn cameras, and there’s no video or witnesses from inside the apartment, meaning only Sullivan and Campellone saw what happened before other officers responded.

“When asked, Officer Sullivan explained that he was in imminent fear for his safety and thought that Mr. Harden was going to kill him with whatever object he was thrusting at him,” State Police wrote in a report about the death.

Campellone told troopers she shot Harden without giving any verbal commands because there wasn’t enough time, and Harden “appeared intent on stabbing Officer Sullivan.” Sullivan later told another officer Harden had tried to kill him.

Yet the details about the knife itself are murky.

Campellone told investigators Harden had grabbed “what appeared to be a knife,” which she described as “metallic and sharp.”

Sullivan said Harden “grabbed an item off a small table” and then he was “swinging at his head while holding the object in his hand.”

But neither officer said they saw a knife after Harden went down. And several officers and paramedics who responded after Harden was shot said they never saw a knife anywhere.

Sgt. Ahtanasios Parousis, who did a sweep of the apartment for evidence, didn’t report seeing a knife on his first pass. But he said when he returned for a second sweep, he found a steak knife on a table.

A different officer, Michael Pavao, called Parousis on the phone at “some point later in the evening” and said he’d picked up the knife off the ground and moved it to the table, according to police records. No other officers were present, he said.

Mack said he was initially only provided a still image of the knife. But the newly released crime-scene video evidence shows the knife was tucked away in a tough-to-reach spot behind a TV mounted on the table, which Mack said would have required Pavao to pick up the knife, walk across the room and reach awkwardly to place it out of sight.

“None of the other officers corroborated that story,” Mack said, adding that he believes the story was made up.

“When you have police officers and you have paramedics denying the existence of a knife, and the knife is found later in the evening behind a television set where an officer says he put the knife – that’s just not a credible story,” Mack said.

‘This isn’t a one-off’

Amid his pursuit for more answers about his brother’s death, Mack said he’s learned a lot about the many controversies that have cast a cloud over the Fall River Police Department in recent years.

He points to Pavao, who abruptly resigned from the force one year after finding the knife in his brother’s apartment. An internal report shows Pavao lied to Police Chief Paul Gauvin about his resignation, telling the chief he was seeking employment with the Maine State Police.

Gauvin subsequently found out Pavao had been arrested a day before in a neighboring town for domestic violence, according to the report, and then he tried hiding it from his superiors.

Gauvin determined Pavao violated departmental police, and the chief signed a handwritten note dated April 6, 2022, at the bottom of his typed internal report, saying Pavao “was unfit to serve in any organization.”

Mack said he’s identified 20 incidents in which 22 Fall River police officers have committed misconduct, dishonesty and excessive force between 2017 and 2021.

He’s now asking the U.S. Department of Justice to step in and overhaul the department, arguing the force has repeatedly violated the civil rights of the city’s roughly 94,000 people.

“This isn’t a one-off issue,” Mack said.

In the nearly 50-page report he submitted to both the SJC and the DOJ, Mack points to several other examples, including former Officer Michael Pessoa, who was convicted of beating up suspects and lying about it on reports.

Mack also included the crimes committed by former Officer Nicholas Hoar, who was convicted and sentenced to more than two years in prison for assaulting a man in custody and filing false reports.

After his sentencing, a Fall River family called on the FBI to conduct a new investigation into a 2017 case when Hoar shot and killed 19-year-old Larry Ruiz-Barreto. Like the Harden case, Quinn deemed Hoar’s deadly use of force justified , despite several eyewitnesses contradicting police accounts of what happened.

“The evidence does not match what they claim it says,” Mack said about the Ruiz-Barreto case. “The family’s still out there fighting.”

Mack submitted court transcripts documenting that Campellone, the woman who shot his brother, admitted to withholding information from Massachusetts State Police about a 2021 fight involving her ex-boyfriend in Florida.

Mack also highlighted how a cache of unregistered illicit drugs was found inside the desk and safe of a former vice officer, Joshua Robillard, who was disciplined internally but remains on the force. Mack criticized Quinn for not filing charges in the Robillard case, despite evidence suggesting the drugs were being given to informants in exchange for information.

Mack said he got the idea of asking the DOJ for help after seeing the federal agency intervene in Springfield, Massachusetts. Federal officials in 2022 determined the Springfield department’s Narcotics Bureau had engaged in a pattern of violating residents’ civil rights.

“This is a systemic issue,” he said. “So, I want systemic change.”

Gauvin, who was named police chief in 2022, declined to comment Tuesday.

More broadly, Mack said he’s driven by his brother’s memory to try and find truth in what happened that night he died. But he’s also hoping his legal maneuvering could help another family avoid some of what his own has experienced.

“I’m doing it for not just my brother, but anybody that comes after, and some people that have come before,” he said. “My plan here is to expose everything from beginning to end, and the chips will fall where they may. But it’s important that everybody sees everything.”

Eli Sherman ( esherman@wpri.com ) is a Target 12 investigative reporter for 12 News. Connect with him on Twitter and on Facebook .

Tim White ( twhite@wpri.com ) is Target 12 managing editor and chief investigative reporter and host of Newsmakers for 12 News. Connect with him on Twitter and Facebook .

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