A now-fired Stoughton metropolis worker will face three years of supervised launch for tampering with the municipal water provide.
U.S. District Court docket Chief Choose Denise J. Casper sentenced Robert J. Bullock, Sr., 60, of Brockton, to time served, which is a couple of day, to be adopted by three years of supervised launch. Bullock pleaded responsible in March to 1 depend of tampering with a water system.
In accordance with sentencing memos, Bullock on Nov. 29, 2022, went to the city’s Pumping Station 7 and shut off the chlorine pump that disinfects the water earlier than it’s delivered to the general public. He additionally “zeroed-out the alarm system,” the prosecution memo states, “leaving the Water Department unaware that one of its pumps was not operating safely.”
The 40,000 gallons of unsanitized water from Pumping Station 7 was diluted by the roughly 2 million gallons from the opposite pumping stations, in accordance with protection legal professional Cara McNamara’s memo, which additionally states that “an investigation showed no evidence of any actual harm to any residents as a result of his actions.”
Bullock labored at Stoughton Water and Sewer Division from 2012 till his firing in 2023. He had beforehand labored on the Avon water division for greater than 15 years. He so liked his job, in accordance with his legal professional’s sentencing memo, that he even had the water division’s seal tattooed to his calf because it was a job “that became critical to his identity.”
“For over 20 years, Robert Bullock was entrusted to maintain the drinking water supply, and he did,” federal prosecutor Benjamin Tolkoff wrote in his sentencing memo. “For reasons known only to him, Mr. Bullock decided to tamper with the very system he was entrusted to safekeep.”
Tolkoff famous that Bullock had no prison report and had been a civil servant in good standing for greater than 20 years earlier than the crime, however nonetheless really useful that Bullock be sentenced to a yr and a day in jail.
In the end this crime is about water, a staple with out which we can not dwell. One thing that every of us trusts is being piped into our lives in a situation that’s protected to make use of and drink,” Tolkoff wrote.
“Bullock’s punishment must reflect the gravity of what he did. A sentence of time-served fails to do that,” Tolkoff continued. “It sends a message to the next disgruntled public works employee that if they, like Mr. Bullock, tamper with infrastructure in unsafe dangerous ways, they can expect to receive no custody as a result of their crime. That is not a message this Court can send.”
For his half, Bullock says that he’s “incredibly remorseful, embarrassed, sorry, and have been regretting this since it happened.”
“I let my community down,” Bullock wrote in a press release shared by his legal professional. “I’d give anything to be able to take it all back. But I know I must own this, and I have no one to blame but myself.”
