Tyler Falconer Resigns As Burlington Firefighter After Being Charged With Animal Cruelty As A Result Of Turtleboy Investigative Reporting

 

Tyler Falconer was arraigned yesterday on charges of animal abuse as a direct result of our investigative reporting on his dog training business Falco K9. He also formally resigned as a Burlington firefighter. His wife, WCVB reporter Katie Thompson Falconer, was not with him in court. Now that he’s officially been charged WCVB has decided to write about it.

A former Burlington, Massachusetts, firefighter and former owner of a dog training facility in South Boston appeared in court Wednesday on felony animal cruelty charges. Falco K9 shut down in March after customers said their dogs were abused at the training and boarding facility owned by Tyler Falconer. Falconer, 30, pleaded not guilty to three felony counts of animal cruelty and three counts of dog tethering-confining. According to the criminal complaint, a conviction on the charges could lead to prison time

The case involves the alleged mistreatment and neglect of three dogs whose owners told investigators they boarded their dogs for two to three weeks at Falco K9, and when they picked them up, their pets had lost so much weight they required medical attention for that and other injuries. Former employees of Falco K9 painted a disturbing picture of an understaffed business that was not transparent with its customers.

“I saw dogs being left in their kennel for seven or more hours straight, left in their own feces,” a former employee told investigators.

According to court documents, the employee also said they saw dogs not being fed.

“I saw dogs who sat in their crates for a week and a half, and they would finally bring them out to ‘train’ a few days before the owners got there,” the employee told officials.

Falconer had no comment as he left court. He was released on personal recognizance and ordered to stay away from the dog owners and witnesses in this case. He is due back in court on July 18. In March, the town suspended Falconer with pay from his job as a firefighter when the investigation became public. He remained on leave from the fire department through Wednesday, when the department announced that he had resigned. Falconer is the husband of NewsCenter 5 EyeOpener traffic anchor Katie Thompson.

Let’s be clear – there would be no investigation if we didn’t publish this story in March. I interviewed the former employees that investigators suddenly decided to investigate. I spoke with several customers about what Falco K9 did to their dogs. I interviewed Tyler Falconer directly as he tried to explain away the abuse. These people had been trying to get the attention of investigators and the media for years but no one did anything about it. Then we wrote our story and 3 days later Falco K9 was closed for good, and 2 months later he was criminally charged.

This is a text message from a former employee, stating that she was contacted by WBZ’s dumpy investigative reporter Cheryl Fiandaca in 2021.

Here is the same former employee in May of 2021 after WCVB reporter Katie Thompson Falconer messaged her in order to try to prevent the woman from cooperating with an ARL investigation that had been initiated.

Here is a text message one of the victims sent Tyler Falconer, in which she acknowledges that WBZ News had been sent information about the dog abuse.

Here is an email from one of the victims to ARL investigator Paul Parlon, informing him that the media had been contacted about the story.

Here is an email from Sgt Parlon telling the woman that he had no interest in investigating the dozens of other complaints of animal abuse going on at Falco K9.

Here’s a Boston Globe reporter asking people to contact her for a story she never wrote.

As you can see, the authorities and the media were all well aware of this story and chose to do nothing. They had the power to stop it, but made the conscious choice to ignore it. Then we fixed it, and now they write their stories without mentioning the fact that none of this ever would’ve happened if we didn’t investigate it.

Tyler has reportedly gotten a new job in sales at a business in Canton (of all places). I’m not gonna say where, because as much as I don’t care for him he has a right to work and his daughter has needs. He had a good job with good benefits, but he got greedy. He didn’t actually care about dogs, he just used Falco K9 as a way to enrich himself. Listen to this audio from a podcast a couple years ago where he explains that “just because I’m a firefighter and get tons of chicks,” it wasn’t enough to satisfy him.

Sure, he gets tons of TV bimbo chicks. But his real love was dogs, which is why he put them all in crates and had them festoon in their feces.

Tyler can’t claim that he had no knowledge of what was happening either. During that podcast he admitted that Falco had cameras that he religiously checked to make sure his employees were walking the dogs, and that “if the smallest thing happened I would flip out.”

Except in this group text message with employees Tyler can be seen laughing at a caged dog that got his collar stuck in his neck because they hadn’t had his collar taken off for days, and could’ve easily died overnight

Sounds like he’s really “flipping out” on his employees for that one.

I have no love for Tyler Falconer and he deserves his fate.  But what doesn’t sit right with me about this is that Katie Thompson is not in any sort of trouble. She knew everything that was going on at Falco K9, and did more than Tyler did to cover it up. She intimidated witnesses and former employees when she found out they were speaking out. She used her pregnancy as a crutch in order to silence whistle blowers and victims. She contacted people’s workplaces to try to get them fired for leaving critical comments about Falco K9. She went to the Plymouth Police Department and filed a complaint against me and one of the victims after baselessly alleging that the victim had wiretapped her. People were more afraid of her than they were of Tyler because of the influence she had by being on television.

Despite all that she’s still on TV every morning for Eye Opener, talking about traffic on Route 3 like none of this happened. It wouldn’t surprise me if she used this as a reason to divorce Tyler and take her daughter with her, as if she wasn’t an equal partner in his crimes. It’s gonna be hard for him to pick up chicks now that he’s not a firefighter though.