DOSSIER: Detective Tucker Jenkins
Core Identity: Police Detective, Shelburne Police Department.
Federal Court Status: Primary Individual Defendant in Mlynick v. Town of Erving et al (U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, 3:24-cv-30108).
Operational Pattern: Manufacturing fraudulent criminal probable cause by intentionally omitting material contract data; compiling demonstrably misleading police reports; initiating cross-jurisdictional, warrantless arrests over purely civil contract disputes.
Executive Summary: The Pierced Shield of Qualified Immunity
For years, Detective Tucker Jenkins relied on the bureaucratic risk-aversion of Chief Gregory Bardwell and the Shelburne Selectboard to insulate his career from cascading public scandals. However, on March 12, 2026, United States District Judge Mark G. Mastroianni stripped away Jenkins' primary legal defense, denying his motion for qualified immunityregarding Count 1 (Federal False Arrest).
The federal court determined that Jenkins deliberately ignored clear, black-letter contract law to orchestrate the warrantless arrest of a private citizen. By treating a lawful property dispute over a dog homing agreement as an array of felony charges—including animal cruelty and larceny—Jenkins crossed the line from a negligent investigator into a primary, federally prosecutable civil rights violator under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
Part I: The Forensic Anatomy of a Fabricated Arrest (August 2021)
The federal court record details a calculated, multi-day effort by Detective Jenkins to manufacture a criminal profile out of a standard, documented civil contract. In August 2021, a private citizen, John Mlynick, took possession of a dog pursuant to a signed 2018 "Homing Agreement" after the owner, Ashley Audet, explicitly stated she could no longer care for the animal due to unstable housing.
When Audet subsequently demanded the animal back in violation of the contract, she contacted the Shelburne Police Department. The structural mechanics of Jenkins' subsequent civil rights violations are laid bare in the federal docket:
The Civil Dismissal: The initial police dispatcher explicitly categorized the dispute as a strictly civil matter. Upon intake, Jenkins himself formally determined that the Shelburne Police Department did not have geographic or legal jurisdiction over the complaint.
The Five-Day Extralegal Campaign: Despite acknowledging his total lack of jurisdiction, Jenkins chose to execute a rogue, five-day investigation.
The Construction of the Fraudulent Report: Jenkins compiled an official police report that intentionally omitted the existence of the binding 2018 contract. He fabricated claims that the citizen was residing in an "inadequate non-residential mill building" and falsely asserted—without any medical guidance—that the citizen had illegally altered the animal's medication.
Using these manufactured and incomplete assertions, Jenkins falsified an executive conclusion that probable cause existed to arrest the citizen for felony animal cruelty, larceny under $1,200 by false pretenses, and receiving stolen property.
Part II: Cross-Jurisdictional Cartel Policing & Proximate Causation
To execute the arrest while evading his own department's jurisdictional boundary, Jenkins distributed his misleading report across town lines to Sergeant Adam Paicos of the Erving Police Department. On September 2, 2021, acting entirely on Jenkins’ fraudulent brief, Paicos arrested Mlynick and seized the property.
In the March 2026 federal ruling, Judge Mastroianni completely rejected Jenkins' legal attempt to deflect liability onto the arresting town, establishing a critical precedent for Section 1983 proximate causation:
"Here, it was reasonably foreseeable that Paicos would arrest Plaintiff based, in part, on the 'misleading information' that Jenkins provided him with... Jenkins cannot escape section 1983 liability merely because he conducted the investigation but not the arrest... [Their] actions combined to produce the single, indivisible injury consisting of Plaintiff's arrest."
On July 11, 2022, a state court completely dismissed all of Jenkins' criminal charges for an absolute lack of probable cause.
Part III: The 2026 Federal Docket and Current Legal Exposure
The federal civil rights lawsuit is moving rapidly through active litigation before the United States District Court in Springfield. Following the partial survival of the complaint, the court has placed Jenkins under an ironclad litigation schedule:
| Procedural Deadline | Court Mandate / Status |
| March 12, 2026 | Federal Court enters order DENYING Jenkins' Motion to Dismiss Count 1 (Personal Capacity). |
| April 14, 2026 | In-person Scheduling Conference held before Judge Mastroianni. |
| June 15, 2026 | Deadline for Amended Pleadings. |
| January 29, 2027 | Final Deadline for Completion of all Federal Discovery (Depositions, Subpoenas, Internal Communications). |
| February 4, 2027 | Mandatory In-Person Status Conference, Hampden Courtroom. |
Because Jenkins' motion to dismiss was denied under the Iqbal/Twombly standards, he is now legally exposed to the federal discovery process. This means Jenkins is personally subject to depositions under oath, and all of his internal emails, personal cell phone text logs, and department memos are subject to federal subpoena.
Part IV: The Local Systemic Link
The federal court findings in Mlynick v. Erving & Shelburne provide the definitive structural link to the ongoing John Sendelbach archive. For six years, the Shelburne Police Department claimed that its refusal to process Sendelbach's exculpatory video metadata was merely standard procedure.
The Mlynick federal docket proves the exact opposite: it establishes a clear, documented pattern and practice where Detective Tucker Jenkins and his supervisors systematically ignore written text, ignore legal contracts, and ignore exculpatory evidence to assist favored local complainers while weaponizing the state's arrest powers to crush targeted individuals.
This documented behavior is the exact definition of the Cold Cruel Sidestep-Walkaway-DARVO architecture. Jenkins’ habit of using incomplete, misleading information to execute wrongful actions directly mirrors the department’s behavioral record during the April 7, 2026, criminal arraignments of Katherine Hennessey and Brook Batteau.
Conclusion & Master Index References
Detective Tucker Jenkins spent years operating under the assumption that the municipal boundaries of Franklin County would shield his investigative misconduct from federal oversight. As of the Spring of 2026, that shield has officially shattered. He stands stripped of qualified immunity in a federal courtroom, facing a civil rights prosecution that exposes his entire investigative methodology to the light of day.
The Shelburne Selectboard may have protected his job during his 2025 school resource officer scandal, but Judge Mastroianni’s federal court docket is now the permanent, un-erasable record of his structural liability.
For the primary federal dockets and cross-referenced legal filings auditing Detective Jenkins’ exposure, consult the master vaults here:
The Federal Case File: Mlynick v. Town of Erving et al, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Case No. 3:24-cv-30108-MGM.
The Core Law Enforcement Audit:
The Police Department That Walked Away Framework The Master Chronology:
The Tell-All Edition
All updates on this dossier page are transcribed directly from official electronic clerk's notes, federal judicial orders, and active scheduling mandates issued by the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.