A veteran U.S. Secret Service official who was assigned to the presidential protective division and the agency’s headquarters was named this week as the Baker administration’s undersecretary for homeland security.
Patrick McMurray spent 25 years in the U.S. Secret Service before working for two years as managing director of executive protection at JP Morgan & Chase in New York. Recently, he was vice president at Caesar’s Entertainment in Las Vegas where he also focused on security. McMurray began his career as a criminal investigator in the Massachusetts attorney general’s office and spent two years working as a parole officer. At the Secret Service, he was supervisory special agent in the Boston office, oversaw intelligence investigations, supervised the training of protective details, and managed the Cyber & Electronic Computer Crimes Task Force and Forensics Laboratory. He was also assigned to Secret Service Headquarters and coordinated security for the US Embassy in Ottawa after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The Executive Office of Public Safety this week also announced the appointments of Jennifer Queally as undersecretary for law enforcement and Thomas Turco as undersecretary for criminal justice. Queally is assigned with providing strategic leadership to the Massachusetts State Police, the Municipal Police Training Committee, the Office of Grants and Research and the Department of Public Safety. She recently worked as an assistant district attorney in Worcester County and before that spent nearly 10 years as an assistant district attorney in Middlesex County between 1992 and 2009, a period when she prosecuted more than 100 bench and jury trials in state courts.
According to the Baker administration, Queally helped create and implement a pre-complaint juvenile diversion program that allowed juvenile offenders “to participate in counseling, community service and other programs as an alternative to prosecution to prevent them from receiving a criminal record.” Queally also helped establish a Juvenile Fire Setters Program in Lowell and implemented Community Based Justice and Domestic Violence roundtables in cities and towns.
Turco’s purview includes the Department of Correction, the Parole Board and the Sex Offender Registry Board. He will also serve as a liaison to county sheriffs, who run jails and houses of correction. According to the administration, Turco started his career in 1989 as a probation officer and in 2000 was promoted to Probation-Officer-In-Charge at the Worcester Community Corrections Center. In 2003 he was named Chief Probation Officer of the Worcester Superior Court, overseeing operations for 12 years. Baker administration officials credit Turco for implementing the Worcester Initiative for Supported Reentry program and Fatherhood Program and partnerships with a local treatment provider to offer weekly sex-offender treatment. Turco has served as Parks Commissioner in his hometown of Auburn.
Curtis Wood, undersecretary for forensic science and technology, was appointed to that post in 2011 and will remain in that position, where he is responsible for providing leadership and oversight to the State Crime Lab and Forensic Services Group of the State Police, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services, the State 911 Department and the Office of Technology and Information Services. Wood is also helming efforts on the statewide justice information sharing strategy and the state’s participation in the National Public Safety Broadband Network.
