The Mashpee police officer should have broken off the car chase that ended in three people dead, including a Marine who had just left his wife and newborn daughter at the hospital, police Chief Scott W. Carline said yesterday.
“The risk clearly outweighed the need to pursue the suspect,” the department’s investigators wrote in a report about the July 28 crash on Route 28 in Barnstable’s Cotuit area.
The 36-page release from Mashpee police includes the full transcript of the internal investigators’ interviews with the officers involved, the police report and a statement from police.
No one from the department who could speak about the report could be reached for comment yesterday.
Police repeatedly refused to answer questions in the days after the crash, acknowledging only several days later that an internal investigation was underway.
The report by Capt. Thomas Rose and Lt. Oliver Naas found (Matthew) Cascio violated department policy by continuing the chase, which reached speeds of about 100 mph in areas that had speed limits of at most half of that.