MA State Police Superintendent's Son Pleads Not Guilty To Charges

BARNSTABLE, MA — The son of Massachusetts State Police Superintendent Christopher Mason pled not guilty to multiple charges of improperly storing weapons on Wednesday.

Reid Mason, 22, of West Barnstable, entered the plea for five charges during an arraignment hearing in Barnstable District Court.

The charges date back to a Feb. 18 encounter with Barnstable police in which responding officers found him slumped over the wheel of his car after midnight in a Hyannis parking lot.

Officers said Mason refused medical attention and said he was sleeping. They also mentioned an "overwhelming smell of alcohol" coming from his vehicle, and noted his "red glassy eyes and disoriented behavior."

In addition to his physical state, officers also found five firearms in the front passenger area of his car, as well as ammunition inside two backpacks.

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An officer wrote that he was concerned about the presence of weapons combined with Mason's state of being.

"Based on my opinion of Mason's sobriety, I believe he lost the ability to exercise control over the firearms located inside of the vehicle," an officer wrote in a police report.

Rather than arresting him, however, he was handed over the the district attorney's office.

He was later released on his own recognizance and an unidentified "family member" drove him home.

Mason's attorney, Peter Lloyd, initially tried to ask McDonough to defer the charges for a year under the pretenses that the officers never conducted field sobriety checks, left out key details in their description of the car and that Mason complied with police with no issue.