Police say detective was involved in tawdry love triangle with informant and alleged drug trafficker

Now, though, New Bedford police are acknowledging that her extraordinary claims have merit. The department released an internal affairs report earlier this month that confirmed the crux of her story: New Bedford Police Detective Jared Lucas had an illicit affair with Medeiros and likely used his badge to keep her out of trouble. Around this time, using information gleaned from her, Lucas helped launch a sprawling heroin trafficking investigation in which Medeiros’s fiance was the primary target.

The internal probe — prompted by a Globe investigation into Medeiros’s claims — takes pains to assert that Lucas was the department’s sole bad actor. But the document raises broader questions about the department’s use of informants, and could lead to extensive fallout in countless other criminal cases.

“I wasn’t lying about any of this,” said Medeiros, whose claims were the focus of a Globe Magazine story in March. “I’m just so happy that what I said turned out to be [found] true.”

The department’s findings represent the first acknowledgment of official misconduct in a sordid saga that has roiled the law enforcement and legal communities in the southern Massachusetts port city.

The 118-page internal affairs report, obtained earlier this month by the Globe through a public records request, calls into question the integrity of a yearlong, multiagency investigation into Medeiros’s fiance, Steven Ortiz, who is currently awaiting trial on drug trafficking and conspiracy charges. Ortiz’s defense team, legal observers said, will certainly pounce on the report to highlight alleged bias by law enforcement.

Several criminal law experts told the Globe that the revelations could jeopardize any case in which Medeiros was an informant, as well as any case Lucas handled.

“It’s a mess. ... It’s kind of all tainted now,” said Zachary Hafer, a partner at Cooley LLP and the former chief of the criminal division at the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts. “It goes to the credibility of the informant and it goes to the credibility of the officer.”

Officials from the New Bedford Police Department and Bristol District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III’s office declined to answer questions about the report’s findings. Both agencies have repeatedly denied interview requests.

In an e-mailed statement, New Bedford Police Chief Paul Oliveira criticized Lucas, saying it was “disappointing to see that an officer has used terrible judgment and engaged in unethical behavior.”

“[Lucas’s] egregious behavior while in our employment is an anomaly and does not reflect the true caliber of the men and women of the New Bedford Police Department who serve honorably and selflessly each day,” Oliveira said.

Oliveira said there was little the department can do to hold Lucas accountable for his misconduct because the detective retired in 2021.

In response to a request for comment, Lucas suggested a Globe reporter was motivated by animus.

“I am not quite sure about your infatuation with me?” he wrote in an e-mail. “I do try to understand it must stem from a troubled past of being picked on as a child or some type of abuse. I will pray for you.”

Investigators did not speak to Lucas as part of their probe, saying the internal affairs unit tried twice to reach him. Medeiros also declined to sit for an interview with internal affairs. After consulting with an attorney, the report said, she informed investigators she’d decided not to participate beyond her written affidavit.

Despite their findings, internal investigators declined to propose any disciplinary measures or charges for Lucas, who retired from the department before the investigation began. Since applying for and receiving accidental disability retirement, Lucas currently collects a pension of around $60,000 annually, according to the City of New Bedford Retirement Board.

By law, New Bedford police are required to share the findings of any internal investigation with Massachusetts’ recently formed Peace Officer Standards and Training, or POST, Commission, which has the authority to open its own inquiry and dole out its own discipline, up to and including officer decertification.

In an interview, Enrique Zuniga, POST’s executive director, declined to say whether the findings have been shared with the agency or whether the commission was currently investigating Lucas.

The internal affairs report was sharply critical of Lucas. Investigators found it “more likely than not” that Lucas used his police powers to keep Medeiros out of trouble, including intervening on her behalf on occasions when she was pulled over by other officers. It also shows that Lucas failed to properly register Medeiros as an informant with the department. The report notes she was credited with conducting controlled drug buys and providing information well before detectives registered her as an informant — a violation of department policy.

The investigation, however, did not offer assessments of several allegations Medeiros made against Lucas: that he used a police database to obtain her personal information, provided her with marijuana he had seized while on the job, and had sex with her in his police cruiser while on duty.

Medeiros also claimed Lucas and a pair of current officers instructed her to plant drugs in the vehicle of a New Bedford man who was later arrested on drug charges. The department’s internal investigation deemed those allegations unfounded, citing the current officers’ denials of wrongdoing and the fact that no drugs were found in the vehicle during the execution of a search warrant.

The report found no evidence that other New Bedford officers had been aware of the romantic relationship between Lucas and Medeiros while it was occurring. Medeiros has remained adamant that other officers in the department’s gang unit routinely witnessed the two interacting intimately.

The heart of this case was a multiyear drug trafficking investigation — dubbed Operation High Stakes — that attempted to strike a blow against heroin dealers in New Bedford.

In the summer of 2016, Lucas — citing information he attributed to an unidentified confidential informant — approached agents from Homeland Security Investigations and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives about an alleged heroin trafficking ring run by Medeiros’s fiance, Ortiz.

Over the next 12 months, investigators from at least five local, state, and federal agencies carried out a massive investigation into Ortiz and his associates. They subpoenaed casino records and picked through trash bags left outside Ortiz’s residence. At times, five different vehicles provided surveillance on members of the alleged trafficking ring. All the while, Medeiros said, she continued to see both Lucas and Ortiz.

In June 2017, a state wiretap of Ortiz’s phone led officers to a Fall River parking lot, where Ortiz was arrested. Officers allegedly recovered nearly 250 grams of heroin and fentanyl from his Honda Pilot. Ultimately, 21 people were arrested as part of the case, and some 400 grams of heroin and fentanyl were seized.

Last year, with the case winding through the courts, Medeiros alleged she’d been involved with Lucas while the operation was underway.

In Medeiros’s telling, she and Lucas regularly began meeting around 2014, when he was still a uniformed officer. She sometimes stayed at his home while he wasn’t there, she alleged, and they grew close enough that she introduced him to her mother and sister.

Most notably, Medeiros said that she believed she was the confidential informant cited by Lucas in the Operation High Stakes case. She believes the detective secretly used information gleaned from their conversations to prompt the investigation into Ortiz.

Since then, the case has become a legal lightning rod. In February, high-profile Boston attorney Rosemary Scapicchio signed on to represent Ortiz, who faces extensive prison time if convicted. Ortiz’s brother and co-defendant, Tommy Ortiz, is represented by Kevin Reddington.

Experts in criminal procedure said the revelations may imperil the case against both brothers, as well as other defendants tied to the case. And the legal implications could be even more far-reaching.

The internal affairs report appears to mention at least three other cases in which Medeiros provided information to Lucas or other New Bedford officers — all of which, experts said, might now be tainted by the pair’s relationship.

The biggest issues, said Brian T. Kelly, a former federal prosecutor and current partner at Nixon Peabody, would likely come in any case where a defendant attempts to show bias on the part of police. In addition to Ortiz, at least one other case currently being prosecuted by the Bristol district attorney’s office involves a defendant who was romantically involved with Medeiros at the same time she says she was in a relationship with Lucas.

“It’s probably just going to really disgust the jury when they find out what’s going on,” Kelly said.

Karen Pita Loor, a clinical professor at Boston University’s School of Law, said the ripples could extend further. Citing the state drug lab scandal — in which the mishandling of drug samples by state chemists Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak eventually led to the dismissal of tens of thousands of drug cases throughout Massachusetts — Loor said that any case touched by former detective Lucas might now be reasonably called into question.

“It’s certainly pretty obvious that if you’re a defense attorney [in a case] where this police officer is involved — with or without a confidential informant — without a doubt there are questions about the ethics and the credibility of the information that this detective would provide,” she said.

Dugan Arnett can be reached at dugan.arnett@globe.com.