The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released a report on Monday covering the findings of the investigation into the Worcester Police Department (WPD) announced on November 15, 2022.
The over two-year long investigation determined that “DOJ has reasonable cause to believe that WPD and the City engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law.”
The executive summary of the report presents two main findings:
- “WPD uses excessive force that violates the Fourth Amendment. Officers unreasonably deploy Tasers, use police dogs, and strike people in the head. Officers rapidly escalate minor incidents by using more force than necessary, including during encounters with people who have behavioral health disabilities or are in crisis.”
- “WPD engages in outrageous government conduct that violates the constitutional rights of women suspected of being involved in the commercial sex trade by engaging in sexual contact during undercover operations. This violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause.”
Find coverage of the finding of the DOJ report related to excessive force, or coverage of its findings related to sexual misconduct.
A Deliberate Disinformation Campaign
Prior to the release of the report by the DOJ on Monday, December 10, the Worcester Telegram and Gazette reported on a statement by attorney Brian Kelly, partner at the Boston-based law firm Nixon Peabody, who the city hired as representation in the DOJ investigation. The Telegram said it received the statement several hours prior to the release of the report and published its reporting on the statement prior to the release of the report.
This Week in Worcester obtained the full statement by Kelly. The nearly 1000 word statement is titled, “Outside Counsel Statement re: DOJ Investigation of Worcester Police Department.”
Attorney Brian Kelley of Nixon Peabody
Before joining Boston law firm Nixon Peabody as partner in 2013, Kelly served as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts for 23 years. That same office that supported the DOJ Civil Rights Division, which led the investigation of the WPD.
During his time at the U.S. Attorney’s office, Kelly led the prosecution of James “Whitey” Bulger, and two former Massachusetts Speaker of the House, Sal Dimasi and Tom Finneran. Before Kelly left the DOJ, he was chief of the public corruption and special investigations unit.
In reporting in March 2017, GBH reported Kelly as a leading contender for U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts in the Trump Administration. Kelley also led the defense of Donald Trump in a 2023 lawsuit that sought to prohibit him from the Massachusetts presidential ballot.
The Kelly Statement and the City Manager’s Collaboration
No attorney, especially one with Kelly’s experience, would release such a robust statement without consulting their client. Additional evidence shows that the Batista Administration received a draft of the statement prior to its release.
Near the end of the city council meeting on Tuesday, in response to a question from Council Thu Nguyen, City Manager Eric Batista said that the administration received a briefing on the report from DOJ on Friday, December 6. He said DOJ asked them “to not disclose any of this information, and so in confidence we could not disclose whether we received on not received the report.”
See Batista’s comment:
Batista claims that an agreement with the DOJ prevented him from disclosing the report to the elected representatives of the people of Worcester.
On Monday, December 9, despite his commitment to the DOJ to “not disclose whether we received on not received the report, the Telegram reported that the Kelly statement was sent several hours before the Justice Department officially released the investigation with an online posting and press release”.
The Telegram reported on Tuesday, December 10 that Mayor Joe Petty said he saw a draft of Kelly ‘s statement on Sunday: “Asked about the statement Tuesday, Petty said he was provided an advance copy of it Sunday night before it was sent out.”
The Telegram also reported in its first reporting on the Kelly statement that “City spokesperson Tom Mathews confirmed Kelly is representing the city with respect to the investigation and deferred comment to Kelly.”
Given that the city knew of the findings in the report on Friday and circulated a draft of Kelley’s statement on Sunday, it is clear the administration actively participated in its creation and was aware of its content, prior to its release.
- The facts suggest the only reasonable conclusion is the Kelly statement reflects messaging intended by the Batista Administration.
Batista has also influenced the police unions to join in his disinformation campaign.
The IBPO Local 504, the union that represents police officials, first expressed being appalled at the report. They later released a statement that said:
“Initially, much like the public at large, we were appalled by the summarized findings, however after further analysis and conversations with city administration, we find the DOJ investigators were extremely inaccurate in how they portray the Police Officials and Police Officers of the WPD.”
Similarly, the Telegram reported:
“The patrol officers union New England Police Benevolent Association Local 911 alleged that the report shows a “profound misunderstanding of the dangers of modern policing” and that it was “apparently rushed to completion ahead of the change of Presidential administrations.”
The Kelley statement includes very similar language:
“In racing to publish an inaccurate report before the change in presidential administrations, without bothering to get the facts right, DOJ has done an extreme disservice to the entire Worcester community and, in particular, to the hundreds of honorable Worcester police officers who risk their lives every day to make Worcester a safe place to live.”
False and Misleading Claims
- “Anyone reviewing this report should ask themselves: if the allegations in this report are true, why hasn’t DOJ prosecuted a single officer and instead simply drafted a report by DOJ’s Civil Rights Division?”
Kelly’s statement presents the DOJ investigation as a wild goose chase where the DOJ made up its procedure on the fly. The reality is that DOJ has conducted nearly 80 of these investigations.
As the DOJ’s “The Civil Rights Division’sPattern and Practice Police Reform Work: 1994 to Present,” says, pattern or practice investigations are not criminal investigations. The civil investigation was designed to address systemic or institutional failures.
In Worcester, those failures created a culture of impunity that enabled the behaviors presented in the report.
- Instead of identifying individual officers who could – and should – be prosecuted if these serious allegations were true.
Just two days after the release of the DOJ’s report on WPD, the DOJ released the report on its pattern or practice investigation of the Mount Vernon New York Police Department (MVPD). It also does not include the names of any officers. See the full report on the MVPD.
On July 8, 2020, the DOJ released the report on its pattern or practice investigation of the Narcotics Bureau of the Springfield Police Department. No names. See the full report on the Springfield PD.
On August 10, 2016, the DOJ released the report on its pattern or practice investigation of the Baltimore Police Department. No names. See the full report here.
- Of course, the City and WPD do not condone any unprofessional or unlawful behavior whatsoever and will discipline employees who commit misconduct to the maximum extent of its authority.
This is the whole point of the report which this disinformation campaign seeks to distract from.
The report repeatedly refers to inadequate supervision.
- This investigation uncovered several officer narratives that were inconsistent with other documentation describing the same use of force, yet no supervisor reconciled these inconsistencies or otherwise inquired about them. In some incidents, officers’ written reports differed from available video footage, and supervisors did not reconcile the accounts.
- This investigation uncovered several officer narratives that were inconsistent with other documentation describing the same use of force, yet no supervisor reconciled these inconsistencies or otherwise inquired about them.Page 14: “WPD inadequately supervises officers’ use of force.
- Officers still are not required to take photographs of injuries following uses of force, which could provide critical evidence for supervisors and WPD’s use of force risk management subcommittee to review and use to hold officers accountable.
- Further, WPD supervisors have not sufficiently monitored officer conduct in this high-risk arena. As such, none of the officers who admitted to engaging in sexual contact in their
reports were ever disciplined for it.
It also repeatedly refers to discipline practices that fail to hold officers accountable
- For example, following one use of force, WPD officers justified the use of a police dog by reporting that a man punched one of the officers with a closed fist to the back of the head. It was only after watching video footage of the event during the internal investigation three years later that one of the officers supplemented his report to state that he was mistaken when he initially reported that the man punched an officer in the head. WPD never disciplined the officers.
- Going forward, WPD must hold supervisors accountable for closely reviewing officer documentation, video, and other evidence to ensure compliance with WPD’s body-worn camera and use of force policies; identifying and addressing any inconsistencies; collecting additional relevant information at the scene; and for providing appropriate guidance and oversight to the officers in their chain of command.
While city and police union officials rage at the claims in the report, despite WPD officers facing no consequences from the anonymized report, it also points out that the department’s investigations of sexual assault are inadequate.
- SAU detectives consistently under-investigate reports of sexual assault, most often by not following up on evidence that could corroborate women’s accounts and by conducting
limited victim and witness outreach. - SAU investigations focus primarily on victim interviews, as opposed to collecting physical evidence and gathering and analyzing other evidence such as medical reports, texts and social media sent or posted by the offender, or witness statements.
- Many of the SAU investigations reviewed were seriously flawed.
- Like the investigations into officer sexual assault, SAU detectives inappropriately closed cases rather than conduct thorough investigations.
- SAU closed one investigation after concluding prematurely that the woman filed a false report. Investigators should “never pressure victims to recant or threaten to arrest them if they don’t ‘confess’ to filing a false report.”
- Studies have found that false reports are rare, and threatening to file criminal charges has a chilling effect on victims, dismantling trust in the detective and the investigative process and deterring future reporting.
Find the full statement here.
