Former Scranton Police Officer Thomas McDonald's attorney stated this past week that his client "fully expects" to be criminally charged based on the allegations made against him in a federal lawsuit filed earlier this year. The lawsuit was filed by two women that claim McDonald used his badge to coerce them into performing sexual acts. According to the lawsuit, the two women were snitches that had agreed to work for McDonald as confidential informants in drug cases, so to McDonald's credit they do not sound like credible people. Anyone that gets busted and stabs people in the back to avoid doing their time is capable of anything. It wouldn't surprise us if the sexual acts were in fact consensual attempts to bribe McDonald hoping that if they stooped to the level of prostitution that they would not have to sink even lower and snitch, but consensual or not it was not appropriate and gross misconduct on the part of McDonald. As a result of this scandal, charges have been dropped against 18 people because their cases were handled by McDonald and prosecutors no longer consider him to be credible.
McDonald's lawyer, John P. Finnerty, argued this past week that the federal lawsuit should be put on hold to protect his client's rights. He argued that if he were to be deposed during the discovery process that his client would have to choose between invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination or giving prosecutors a look at his defense strategy in the event of his likely prosecution. That is a valid argument in our opinion. People should not be able to get around the Constitutional protections that criminal defendants are entitled to by suing them and making them choose which case to defend. The motion to delay the lawsuit is currently pending before U.S. District Judge Malachy E. Mannion.
McDonald was arrested in a different case on July 1st for allegedly threatening his former co-workers after he was fired. He was booked into the Lackawanna County Prison with a $100,000 bail on charges of making terroristic threats and harassment. He has since been released.
According to the mainstream press (see video below), during this investigation text messages were found on McDonald's phone indicating racial profiling. It is not clear what role if any those texts have played in the sexual misconduct cases or if they influenced prosecutors' decisions to drop cases that McDonald investigated.
Public records contain the following information about McDonald:
THOMAS J MCDONALD
MALE
DOB: AUG-1974
AGE: 45
Recent Address History:
38 CAROUSEL CIR
DOYLESTOWN, PA 18901
1999 - Now
78 VICTORIA DR
BARTO, PA 19504
2006 - 2020
10 FRIESLAND DR
SOUTHAMPTON, PA 18966
1994 - 2020
Owner
Possible Email Addresses:
thomas_mcdonald[at]msn.com
tmcdon2926[at]comcast.com
thomas_mcdonald[at]mcn.com
thomas_mcdonald[at]live.com
thomasmcdonald[at]juno.com
We are leaving McDonald's address visible because we expect him to be charged with sex crimes in the near future and we believe in doing all we can to create a criminal cop sex offender registry.