Joe Pecevich's Letter to the Marshfield Select Board and Town Administrator

A look at the letter that brought Marshfield's chief of police to the Select Board for a discussion of his character and reputation.

Jul 01, 2025

The overflow crowd watching the Select Board meeting on Zoom on their phones.

A full report of the meeting will follow in a separate story.

June 30, 2025 (Marshfield) — On Monday night before an overflow crowd full of angry police officers and residents, the Marshfield Select Board voted 2-1 to take no action on a resident’s complaint about the police chief.

In a June 24 letter, copied below, resident Joseph Pecevich asked the Select Board and interim town administrator to have Police Chief Philip Tavares “cease and desist” what Pecevich called “intimidation tactics and threats”.

Tue, Jun 24 at 12:02 PM
To The Selectboard and Acting Town Administrator:
A short time ago, I received a telephone call on my cell phone. The caller I.D. indicated the Marshfield Animal Shelter as the source or origin of the call. The caller identified themselves as Phil Tavares and that they were calling on an "unrecorded line." I believe this was a reference to a previous call I had received from "Phil Tavares" which I received at about 0830 on this past Sunday, which was to me from the business line (837-6655) of the Police Department from the same person and which was announced to me as being on a recorded line.
This morning's call from Tavares can only be described as starting out somewhat slowly but rapidly escalating into an off-the-rails rant, laced with threats and proclaimed plans to incite and encourage the 'public' to go after me including having everyone file Public Records Requests about me. He also said that he had 'up to now never bothered me' implying that he had let certain issues or possible legal violations by me slide. He said that I should get prepared to deal with what sounded to me like a campaign and onslaught from him against me. According to him, this is going to include regular appearances during Selectboard meetings to express his opinions and thoughts about me and what he called my "lies" about him. All of this seems based on what Tavares claims are false statements made by me about the personal or professional behavior of him and others in relation to incidents that I was involved with in Marshfield in 2010 and Pembroke in 2016 and my commentary on the 2010 matter on the cable access/podcast program that I have.
This is deeply disturbing behavior and I request immediate action by the Selectboard to have Chief Tavares cease and desist from his intimidation tactics and threats.
Sincerely,
Joseph A. Pecevich

Tavares had called Pecevich to discuss comments he made on a recent edition of his local public access television show the Control Room.

In the episode, Pecevich compared himself to Karen Read.

They had to raise over a million dollars in donations to get the defense team in place for Karen Reed. Over a million dollars! The state must have spent probably an equal amount of money to prosecute this case over the two trials. From the start, it was flawed. It wasn't investigated properly. There was all the points of evidence. There was the idea that Mr. O'Keefe's sweater had nine puncture holes, but on his arm there were 31 lacerations. So how do you get 31 lacerations from a broken tail light through nine small puncture holes, which are obviously dog bites? Okay, it was so obviously a bad case and poorly run, poorly investigated. It was just a farce.
And the state still spent all that money, and a lot of people came out. Why? Because of mistrust of the government, because of the blue line, because of the, you know, cops defending cops. And I got nothing against cops, okay, but that's what people perceive—that the government will do whatever it has to to defend its own, to get what they want, and spend unlimited funds, which they have because it's your tax dollars.
And again, I'm not—I don't want to overstate my situation—but when I was arrested, okay, and I was dragged through the system for 16 months, finally getting to having to, like, borrow some money and raise money to pay for my defense, okay, when I had a public defender initially that said, "Joe, you're never going to win this. You have to plead guilty." I said, "I'm not guilty of anything." I fought the case. They dragged me through the system for 16 months.

Referring to his 2010 prosecution for trespassing at Marshfield Public Schools, Pecevich said he was found not guilty in 15 minutes and that the leaders of Marshfield, including Tavares, “ran like rats” from the courtroom after the verdict.

And the courtroom was full of, uh, Phil Tvaris and Jim Robinson and all the mucky-mucks in town. They were all there. "Oh boy, we're getting Joe now because he asked too many questions at town meeting. He asked too many questions, period. He challenges us too much." And it took the jury less than 10 minutes to say, "This is a joke. Not guilty on all charges." And the way the town officials fled—they ran like rats from the courtroom.

Last night during a discussion of the matter, the chief said that he was not in the courtroom that day, and he denied any wrong doing during that phone call.

On June 25, Peter Morin, the interim town administrator, wrote to Tavares to invite him to come to an executive session to discuss matters relating to his “reputation, character, physical condition or mental health.”

Tavares chose to have the meeting in a public session.

Town Counsel Robert Galvin had provided a process memo to the Interim Town Administrator Peter Morin on Monday morning providing suggested directions on how to deal with the executive session.

Believing that the Board would seek to investigate the matter, he prepared a motion for an investigation.

Normally, to avoid legal action, towns investigate complaints such as this even if they are believed to be entirely baseless.

The Board, however, voted 2-1 to do nothing with only Chair Eric Kelly voting against the motion.

Observers of the proceedings noted that given the crowd’s evident anger, it wasn’t necessarily safe for board members to vote for an investigation.

Later, the Board voted 2-1 not to reorganize. Only Vice Chair Stephen Darcy voted against that motion.

At the last Select Board meeting, Darcy moved to put a reorganization of the Select Board on the agenda.

New member Trish Simpson said that she could not be chair because she’s new and that she would not vote for Darcy due to the way he treats residents. Darcy was arrested for operating under the influence in April. He has pleaded not guilty.

Members also voted 2-0-1 to declare June and July Pride Month in Marshfield. Kelley abstained due to his opposition to proclamations.

Kelley had removed a vote on Pride Month from the agenda for the last meeting because Kelley is against all proclamations because he wants to keep national politics out of Marshfield.

Outside the meeting in front of Town Hall, residents organized a rally to “Support Phil and the Pride Proclamation.”

In interviews, about two dozen protesters all agreed that they could not understand Kelley’s stance on proclamations. All but two said that there was no need to investigate Tavares because they knew he did the right thing.

When asked if they knew that the First Amendment protected speech people might not like, such as name calling, most became angry and said that name calling is wrong.

Residents are organizing a petition to recall Kelley.