Mass State Police's alleged brawling trooper will have public court hearing after Herald request 20%

By Rick Sobey32%

7/22/2026, 2:10:01 AM

BS Summary: This article contains 20 faulty reasoning types, including Availability Heuristic, Appeal to Authority, and Framing Effect, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 26.5% saturation with 135 hits. Analysis detected 811 faulty-reasoning hits from 509 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 28.7% and a BS Rank of 20% (21,716 of 26,881 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 80.80% of the article peer group.

The Mass State Police trooper seen allegedly pummeling a fellow statie at a local bar will have a public court hearing after the Herald requested it. 
Christopher Regan, whose identity was confirmed by a Quincy District Court official on Tuesday, is accused of assaulting a fellow trooper at ReelHouse brewpub in Marina Bay last month. 
Regan has been suspended with pay by Mass State Police. 
Quincy Police have applied for a criminal complaint in the case. 
That criminal complaint will be heading to a clerk magistrate hearing, which is usually held behind closed doors. 
However, the Herald requested that Regan’s hearing be public, as he’s a state law enforcement employee and there’s intense interest in the case. 
“After researching the relevant case law and applying Criminal Complaint Standard 3:15, which governs public access to show cause hearings, I have made the determination to open this matter to the public,” Jaclyn Burke, the acting clerk magistrate at Quincy District Court, wrote to the Herald on Tuesday. 
“This incident involves the conduct of a public official and has already attracted significant public attention,” Burke added. 
A show-cause hearing is held before a District Court clerk magistrate to determine if there’s probable cause that the person committed a crime. 
The magistrate will determine whether there’s sufficient evidence to issue the complaint. 
Regan’s hearing will be on Aug. 27 — two months after the viral incident at the bar. 
“The public will have access to the courtroom but will be limited to seating availability,” Burke wrote. 
“There will be no standing allowed unless for the purposes of operating a camera. 
” 
Regan and the fellow statie were both working in the Suffolk DA’s office in the elite SPDU unit, but they were taken off that duty following the incident. 
The State Police Detective Unit is the investigative arm of the MSP, where the officers probe cases ranging from murder to drug trafficking under the control of the district attorney’s office to which they are assigned. 
Both MSP troopers after the incident were reassigned to the Division of Field Services, which is responsible for the state’s roadways. 
Regan last year made more than $200,000, according to state payroll records. 
The most he made in a year was $277,000 in 2023 — including $81,000 in overtime that year. 
In the viral bar incident, the two troopers are seen sitting at the end of the bar. 
One of them, wearing a black shirt, walks over to the other man, who is wearing a white shirt. 
The seated man in the white shirt reaches out his arm in what appears to be an attempt to keep the black-shirt man away, but then the man wearing the black shirt throws a punch followed by four or five more and then grabs the man’s head in his hands. 
The man in the white shirt appears limp as fellow bar patrons walk in to check on him, and the bartender covers her mouth in apparent shock. 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 10.6%Rick Sobey: 1.0%bostonherald: 2.6%Confirmation Bias10.6%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.7%bostonherald: 0.7%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 16.7%Rick Sobey: 2.3%bostonherald: 3.7%Availability Heuristic16.7%This article: 3.3%Rick Sobey: 0.3%bostonherald: 1.6%Representativeness Heuristic3.3%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.5%Hindsight Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.4%bostonherald: 1.5%Overconfidence Bias0.0%This article: 10.8%Rick Sobey: 5.0%bostonherald: 6.2%Framing Effect10.8%This article: 3.5%Rick Sobey: 0.1%bostonherald: 0.2%Loss Aversion3.5%This article: 3.5%Rick Sobey: 0.2%bostonherald: 1.2%Status Quo Bias3.5%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.2%Sunk Cost Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.2%bostonherald: 2.9%Optimism Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.5%bostonherald: 1.0%Pessimism Bias0.0%This article: 26.5%Rick Sobey: 13.2%bostonherald: 5.9%Negativity Bias26.5%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.5%bostonherald: 2.0%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 2.0%Rick Sobey: 1.7%bostonherald: 0.9%Fundamental Attribution Error2.0%This article: 4.1%Rick Sobey: 0.3%bostonherald: 1.0%Actor-Observer Bias4.1%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.4%bostonherald: 1.0%In-Group Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.3%bostonherald: 0.5%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias0.0%This article: 7.1%Rick Sobey: 0.5%bostonherald: 1.1%Halo Effect7.1%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.0%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 3.3%Rick Sobey: 0.9%bostonherald: 2.2%Recency Bias3.3%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.3%bostonherald: 0.5%Primacy Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.0%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.2%bostonherald: 1.4%Ad Hominem0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.4%Straw Man0.0%This article: 15.1%Rick Sobey: 3.3%bostonherald: 3.2%Appeal to Authority15.1%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.1%bostonherald: 1.3%False Dilemma0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.5%bostonherald: 0.8%Slippery Slope0.0%This article: 9.4%Rick Sobey: 0.5%bostonherald: 0.3%Circular Reasoning9.4%This article: 2.4%Rick Sobey: 1.9%bostonherald: 2.9%Hasty Generalization2.4%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.2%Red Herring0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.1%bostonherald: 1.1%Bandwagon0.0%This article: 5.3%Rick Sobey: 2.6%bostonherald: 6.9%Appeal to Emotion5.3%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.2%bostonherald: 1.0%Begging the Question0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.7%bostonherald: 1.7%Post Hoc (False Cause)0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.2%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 5.7%Rick Sobey: 0.5%bostonherald: 0.4%Burden of Proof5.7%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.3%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.5%Composition/Division0.0%This article: 9.8%Rick Sobey: 0.5%bostonherald: 0.6%Anecdotal9.8%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.0%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 5.3%Rick Sobey: 0.4%bostonherald: 1.0%Ambiguity (Equivocation)5.3%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.1%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.1%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.2%bostonherald: 0.2%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.1%Genetic Fallacy0.0%This article: 9.4%Rick Sobey: 1.8%bostonherald: 1.2%Unattributed Quote9.4%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.9%bostonherald: 0.8%Quote-first Misdirection0.0%This article: 5.3%Rick Sobey: 2.1%bostonherald: 2.7%Biased Writer Voice5.3%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.5%bostonherald: 0.6%Indoctrination0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.6%Politically Left Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 1.0%bostonherald: 0.6%Politically Right Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Rick Sobey: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.2%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…0.0%

509 words analyzed.

Speakers

1speaker19%attributed speech412writer words
Selected voice

Jaclyn Burke

68%flagged-word coverage
97 attributed words100% of attributed speech84% writer coverage
0%25.0%50.0%Unattributed Quote+49.5 ptsWriter: 0.0%Jaclyn Burke: 49.5%49.5%Biased Writer Voice-6.6 ptsWriter: 6.6%Jaclyn Burke: 0.0%0.0%

Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.

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Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.