12-08-2025
Suffolk Sheriff Tompkins's office dropped tens of thousands on trips over last year
Tompkins,
His arraignment in Boston has not been set.
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Tompkins, who oversees all operations of the Suffolk County Jail and the Suffolk County House of Correction, did not return messages Monday or Tuesday. No one answered the door when a reporter visited his home Tuesday.
A review of his expenses filed with the state shows an active travel schedule for his office, with members of the department's staff sometimes travelling thousands of miles away from Boston, where the department is anchored.
On Oct. 12 of last year, for instance, the sheriff's department paid more than $1,500 for lodging at Paris Las Vegas Hotel. Months later, in March of this year, the sheriff's office dropped more than $2,800 for a stay at a Hyatt Regency in Baltimore.
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The records leave many questions unanswered: specifically, they do not make it clear which staffers from the sheriff's office attended the various trips. And while there are state guidelines about what can and cannot be reimbursed, it's unclear if any of the expenses violate the law.
The comptroller's parameters allow reimbursements for airline tickets, registration fees, and food up to a certain point. It does not allow for cash advances, gift cards, legal services, or alcohol purchases.
The records show the sheriff's department spent $131 at Carrie Nation, the Beacon Hill watering hole, on Nov. 20 of last year. That line item in the comptroller's p-card spreadsheet is listed as 'Drinking places (Alcoholic Bevs) - Bars.' But the receipt that would show whether any booze was bought was not immediately available Tuesday.
The Globe has requested itemized receipts for all of the purchases, which the office must provide to the comptroller.
Some of the trips clearly aligned with industry conferences. For instance, the department dropped more than $5,000 last August for lodging in New Orleans during the same week a conference of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives was held there. Tompkins is an officer in that organization, known as NOBLE. During that trip, the department expensed nearly $670 at Creole House Restaurant & Oyster Bar, which says it specializes in 'New Orleans Classics.'
NOBLE was holding its 2025 conference in Hollywood, Fla., from Friday through Monday, but it wasn't immediately clear whether Tompkins was in attendance when he was arrested.
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The records show various other food expenses, including a collection of purchases from Dunkin', and $92 worth of food from South Boston's Andrew Square House of Pizza last December.
The office also expensed $1,900 worth of food at the Margaritaville Beach Resort in the Bahamas at the end of May this year. That trip resulted in more than $6,500 worth of expenses from the sheriff's office.
More than $3,400 of expenses were filed for outings at TopGolf in Canton last year.
The largest single expense on the list for the office? That would be $6,500 spent last November at the Liberty Hotel, a luxury property on Beacon Hill that used to home to
the Charles Street jail. Today, it features a bar called Alibi.
Andrew Ryan of Globe staff contributed.
Danny McDonald can be reached at
