The owners of Easton Roofing. (Suzanne Sausville/WBZ NewsRadio)
MANSFIELD, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — The Mansfield Police Department is apologizing for mistakenly adding a legitimate roofing company to a list of scam businesses to avoid.
Mansfield Deputy Police Chief Michael Ellsworth said the department takes full responsibility for mistakenly putting Easton Roofing on that Facebook list.
"Yeah, we're wrong, and we own up to that," Ellsworth said. "I'm not here to pass the buck, I'm here to say, at the end of the day, a legitimate business got put on a list that it didn't deserve to be on.
Owner Megan Fitzsimons said she had no idea what was going on when their cell phones started blowing up with calls and texts about the department's Facebook post.
"This can't be true," she said. "And then when we looked it up online, it was kind of like, the bottom falls out, your stomach drops, and immediately, how do you fix it?"
After the owners confronted police, Easton Roofing was taken off the list, and Fitzsimons said Chief Ellsworth called them the next day.
"They're definitely doing their due diligence to find out how it happened, and make sure it doesn't happen again," she said.
In a follow-up Facebook post, the department apologized, and explained that the owners of Easton Roofing were able to prove they were licensed and insured.
"If you see Easton Roofing working in the area, please don’t put them in the same category as the scammers that we posted about last night and who are taking work away from their legitimate business," the department wrote. "In an effort to alert the public of the potential for them to be victimized by these scammers, we published the information last night along with photos of businesses that had been reported to us as involved in this activity. Unfortunately, we made a mistake."
"We made extra steps to ensure that everybody knows that Easton Roofing is not on the list, shouldn't be on the list," Chief Ellsworth said.
Mansfield Police said they've made some policy changes, and are providing more social media training.
Fitzsimons said she accepts the apology, but "only time will tell" if it affects their business.
WBZ NewsRadio's Suzanne Sausville (@wbzSausville) reports
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