BOSTON — The Massachusetts State Police has received national accreditation praise for its "professional standards, accountability, and integrity" — a sentence that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

The recognition comes from a national accreditation review, marking what the agency hopes is a turning point after a stretch of scandals that left taxpayers footing the bill and public trust in tatters.

Colonel Geoffrey Noble, who had to be brought in from outside the agency in 2024 because apparently nobody inside was fit to lead it, has been at the helm during what the department hopes is a new chapter.

It will need to be. The old ones were ugly.

In 2018, an investigation revealed that troopers in Troop E had been billing taxpayers for overtime shifts they never worked — with one trooper allegedly claiming as many as 100 no-show shifts in a single year. Not 10. Not 50. One hundred. Governor Charlie Baker dissolved the entire troop, and the FBI arrested three troopers for embezzlement. They had been fabricating traffic tickets to create the appearance of working shifts that never happened.

Around the same time, it emerged that payroll records for the 140-trooper Troop F — the unit assigned to Logan Airport — had been deliberately hidden from public view and never filed with the state comptroller. For years. Nearly 80 percent of Troop F troopers were earning more than the governor of Massachusetts. One detective lieutenant pulled in over $300,000 a year for three consecutive years. Baker himself called the concealment "clearly deliberate."

Then there was Trooper Leigha Genduso, who resigned in 2018 after reports surfaced that she had been romantically involved with a drug dealer and connected to a money laundering investigation — before she was hired as a state trooper.

And more recently, Trooper Michael Proctor, whose misconduct during the investigation into the death of John O'Keefe became the centerpiece of the Karen Read trial. Proctor was fired after his biased text messages and serious questions about evidence integrity contributed to a hung jury in 2024 and a full acquittal on all major charges in 2025. A case that consumed Massachusetts for years, derailed in part by one of its own troopers.

So when a national body praises the Massachusetts State Police for "accountability and integrity," it's less a clean bill of health and more a participation trophy for finally cleaning house.

Whether 6.9 million residents of the Commonwealth are buying the comeback tour is another question entirely.