This story was jointly reported and published as part of a coordinated investigative and explanatory reporting project of The Maine Monitor and the Bangor Daily News’ Maine Focus team. This project enhances in-depth local journalism and expands public access to the reporting. Read more about the partnership.
The Maine State Police suspended a state trooper for punching a handcuffed woman in the face during an arrest last fall, marking the first time the agency sustained an excessive force complaint against an officer in at least a decade.
Trooper Jacob Murphy-Canto was securing a shackled woman in the back of his cruiser on Sept. 12, 2025, when she kicked him multiple times in the chest, according to a discipline record obtained by The Maine Monitor and Bangor Daily News.
In response, he “punched her twice in the face with a closed fist.” The state police suspended him in December for 15 weeks, saying he violated its use of force policy after prosecutors declined to bring criminal charges against him, the record says.
The state police reached that finding at a time when its use of force practices were under public scrutiny, several months after reporting by The Monitor and BDN had called the state police’s perfect record of clearing officers into question.
In mid-September, just days after the Murphy-Canto incident, The Monitor and BDN published an investigative series into a March 2024 arrest in which a member of the same field troop punched a handcuffed man, Justin Savage, in the face and was cleared of wrongdoing. Savage was one of two people to file separate excessive force lawsuits against the agency last fall.
Policing experts who reviewed the footage of Savage’s arrest, which showed a trooper repeatedly punching him in the face while he was pinned to the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back, questioned the trooper’s conduct and said it cast doubt on the agency’s process of investigating the use of physical force by its officers. Between 2015 and 2024, the agency investigated 33 complaints about troopers’ use of force and did not find a single case in which it was excessive, the Monitor/BDN investigation found.
That changed last December, when the Maine State Police determined the amount of force Murphy-Canto used was “not necessary under the totality of the circumstances” and violated department policy. The Dec. 16 decision, which does not identify the woman who was punched or detail the nature of her arrest, only recently became public.
Murphy-Canto, who could not be reached for comment, is appealing the decision, according to Rebecca Graham, director of policy and legislative affairs for the state police.
Shannon Moss, a spokesperson for the state police, declined to answer any questions about the incident or the agency’s decisions in the case “because this is an ongoing personnel matter that is still going through the process.”
The investigation should have exonerated Murphy-Canto, Sgt. Joseph Bureau, president of the Maine State Troopers Association, said in an interview.
“The investigation concluded that he did everything that he was taught,” Bureau said. “It was the subjective opinion of Maine State Police management that he violated policy, but on the merits of the investigation, we argue that he did not.”
Murphy-Canto has completed his suspension and is back at work, Bureau said.
The investigation was spurred by an internal review process, not a complaint from the woman Murphy-Canto arrested, according to the decision. A troop commander referred Murphy-Canto’s use of force to the Office of Professional Standards, the state police’s internal affairs unit, for investigation after an initial review, according to the discipline record. The agency put Murphy-Canto on paid leave while it investigated him for excessive force and failing to de-escalate the situation.
It ultimately referred the trooper’s use of force to Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey’s office but prosecutors determined that Murphy-Canto’s conduct did not warrant prosecution.
Col. William Ross, the head of the Maine State Police, also asked the Maine Criminal Justice Academy, which trains and certifies police, to conduct a “use of force analysis” of the incident. It is unclear how often the agency requests this additional layer of review following a criminal referral.
The academy determined that Murphy-Canto, a member of the southern state police field troop based in Alfred and Gray, acted within the scope of his training and Maine law. But the state police concluded that the amount of force Murphy-Canto used violated the department’s policy because it was “not necessary under the totality of the circumstances,” the record states.
The violent March 2024 arrest of Savage also involved a member of the Southern Field Troop delivering head strikes to a shackled suspect. But the review of that case played out differently.
Three troopers went to Savage’s Limerick home in response to a domestic violence call. Savage initially behaved calmly and complied with their orders, but the situation quickly escalated, especially after a sergeant broke his ankle while tackling Savage in the driveway. Later on, an officer straddled Savage on the ground and struck him in the face, video shows.
He suffered a broken nose and facial injuries that left him almost unrecognizable. Prosecutors eventually dropped all criminal charges against him, including assault on an officer. Savage’s girlfriend filed a complaint with the agency soon after, claiming the officers had used excessive force.
In the Savage case, the troop commander who initially reviewed the arrest found that the officer who threw the punches, Jamie Fenderson, acted properly. None of the three officers involved in the arrest were disciplined. Internal affairs did not initially investigate the episode, though it is required by policy to investigate allegations of serious misconduct, including potential criminal conduct. It only did after state police leaders feared a possible lawsuit.
Before the review was complete, the agency promoted Fenderson for the first time in 16 years on the job.
Lawmakers briefly questioned Public Safety Commissioner Michael Sauschuck about the state police’s handling of excessive force complaints during a January hearing. He refused to answer them, citing the pair of lawsuits against the agency.
A second ongoing lawsuit, filed just weeks after Savage’s, alleges that a trooper aggressively slammed a Chelsea woman against the hood of his cruiser during an arrest.
Josh Keefe is a government accountability reporter for The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit investigative newsroom. He can be reached at josh@themainemonitor.org.
Callie Ferguson is the deputy investigations editor for Maine Focus, the BDN’s investigations team. She can be reached at cferguson@bangordailynews.com.