WORCESTER – The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into the Worcester Police Department, announced on Nov. 15, 2022, has concluded. The DOJ released its report on Monday.
This Week in Worcester previously covered the finding of the DOJ report related to sexual misconduct. This piece covers the portion of the report related to excessive force.
The report’s executive summary says:
“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. First, WPD uses excessive force. Second, WPD engages in outrageous government conduct by permitting undercover officers to participate in sexual contact with women suspected of being involved in the commercial sex trade.”
The private attorney representing the city in the matter, former federal prosecutor Brian Kelly, released a statement to the Worcester Telegram and Gazette early Monday morning, slamming the report as “unfair, inaccurate and biased.” Kelly added that the report “unfairly smears the entire Worcester police force by claiming there is a pattern or practice by the WPD to engage in excessive use of force and sexual harassment of prostitutes.”
“Instead of identifying individual officers who could – and should – be prosecuted if these serious allegations were true, DOJ has prepared a report by civil lawyers with no prosecutorial experience which makes incredibly broad allegations but fails to identify a single corrupt officer,” according to Kelly.
The investigation by the DOJ, called a “pattern and practice” investigation, does not permit the disclosure of the individuals involved in the examples cited in the DOJ report. The investigation also has no power to pursue criminal charges.
The DOJ’s pattern and practice investigation is civil and conducted as part of the department’s Civil Rights Division. It cannot bring criminal charges. While the report discusses several incidents, it does not name the officers involved in the incidents.
The DOJ said in a statement announcing the report that, “this is the first time the department has issued a pattern or practice finding involving sexual misconduct by officers.”
The executive summary highlights two main points.
The first point says that the excessive force employed by the WPD, which violates the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, includes officers which “unreasonably deploy Tasers, use police dogs, and strike people in the head.” It also says that, “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.”
The second point says the WPD violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause by engaging 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.”
The DOJ investigation, according to the report:
“raises serious concerns that WPD officers have sexually assaulted women under threat of arrest and engaged in other problematic sexual conduct. WPD lacks the policies and practices needed to adequately address reports of sexual assault by non-officers as well, raising concerns about gender discrimination. In addition, the investigation raises serious concerns that WPD’s enforcement practices may result in discriminatory policing against Hispanic and Black people, whom WPD disproportionately warns, cites, arrests, and subjects to force.”
The DOJ did not find “that these racial disparities amount to an unlawful pattern or practice of racial discrimination,” and encourages the department to “collect and assess data about its practices and take steps to ensure they do not have an unlawful discriminatory effect.”
An independent report commissioned by the city, released in March, found that the WPD “does not have a procedure to systematically assess use-of-force incidents, examine any racial or geographical disparities in these incidents, and develop strategies to rectify these disparities.”
This piece presents the findings in the DOJ report related to excessive force.
WPD Use of Force
In the findings section of the report, the DOJ expands on what it calls the WPD’s excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The DOJ says its investigators reviews hundreds of incidents in which the WPD used force from January 2018 to November 202, and February 2023 through April 2023. Investigators reviewed police reports, photos of injuries, cell phone or body-worn camera footage where available, and any associated internal affairs investigations. They reviewed training materials related to force and interviewed commanders, supervisors, and people against whom WPD officers used force.
The reports also states that the “harmful effects of WPD’s use of force practices fall most heavily on Worcester’s Hispanic and Black communities.”
The DOJ did not conclude that this is evidence of racial discrimination, but that “it merits deeper review, which the WPD has failed to do.”
The report highlights five areas of use of force within the WPD that are unreasonable or excessive.
WPD Officers Quickly and Unreasonably Resort to Using Tasers
According to the report, WPD officers reported deploying tasers during 87 incidents from January 2018 to November 2022. From its review of a random sample of these incidents, the report concludes that, “WPD unreasonably uses Tasers to gain compliance from people who do not immediately follow officers’ demands, including by not instantly producing their hands for handcuffing, but who are not actively resisting or posing a threat. WPD officers do so without first trying to deescalate the situation or use lesser force options as appropriate.”
In one incident, the report says that a WPD officers responded to a park after a call reported a group of “kids causing mischief.” The caller said the kids were wearing black.
A WPD officer stopped a 17-year-old who did not match the description and was wearing white. The officer grabbed the teen’s hands, saying, “I’m about to detain your ass.” The teen pulled away, and the officer ordered the teen to get on the ground.
When the teen took a few steps backward with his hands up, the officer fired Taser darts into the teen’s stomach, causing the teen to fall to the ground. Less than five second later, the officer fired a second set of Taser darts into the teen’s back.
The report says the officer claimed that while trying to remove the first set of Taser darts from the teen, he shocked himself accidentally. That shock, he claimed, caused him to fire the Taser a second time.
The report says video of the incident contradicts the officer’s explanation. Investigators wrote that the officer never attempted to remove the Taser darts until after h fired the second darts.
The report concludes that “Both of these Taser deployments were unreasonable uses of force against an individual not even subject to a lawful detention, who did not try to flee, and was not resisting at the time of the deployments.”
The report also discusses two other cases of unreasonable uses of a Taser. An officer fired a Taser into a fleeing man’s back. The report says “Using the Taser was unreasonable: the man posed no immediate threat and the only crime the man had committed was loitering.”
The third incident, which includes a picture, makes the incident easily identifiable as taking place at Cornerstone Baptist Church, then in Worcester. Body Camera footage of the incident was released in 2022.
The DOJ report says that, “the officer illegally ordered the man to go back inside a nearby church,” then threatened to arrest him for disturbing the peace. As the video shows, the report says that the officer chased the man inside the church, tackled him, and demanded the man relax his arms to be cuffed. “Then, without warning and in front of children and congregants,” the officer “delivered a five second drivestun to the man’s back.”
A judge acquitted the man of all charges, which included, “disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and assault and battery on a police officer.”
The report also notes that ,”WPD’s internal investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of the officer.”
WPD Officers Use Dangerous and Unreasonable Head Strikes
The DOJ report says that its investigators reviewed “many incidents in which WPD resorted to unreasonable strikes to the head.” It also notes that, “officers also struck the faces of people during calls for service related to behavioral health.”
In one incident at Walmart, an officer “punched a shoplifter in the face and midsection after observing the shoplifter get into a
waiting vehicle, then sprayed him with several bursts of pepper spray.” The report concludes that “These uses of force were unreasonable in light of the minor nature of the offenses and the officer’s failure to note in his report any other attempts to control or handcuff the man before resorting to punches.”
In another incident, the report finds that “officers escalated one welfare check, where a man who was exhibiting mental health-related symptoms was upset to hear he would be taken in for a mental health evaluation, by punching the unarmed man twice in the face after he retreated into an apartment.”
In another incident, “officers responded to a call at a skilled nursing facility to bring an agitated patient to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation and treatment.” The patient resisted being escorted to a stretcher by pulling his arms into his chest, spit on an officer’s uniform, thrashed on the bed in attempt to pull away from the officers, and kicked at both officers.” One officer punches the patient three times in the face, according to the report.
In July 2020, an officer struck a man being transported for an emergency psychiatric evaluation while restrained in a stretcher. Teh officer did not report the use of force until a video from a passerby became public a day later. When the officer filed the supplemental report, he said, according to the DOJ report, ” that it had been appropriate to use of force in order to ‘momentarily redirect his attention from spitting on [the officer].”
The DOJ report says, ” It is not reasonable to use a head strike against a restrained individual, even if the officer was concerned about COVID.”
The report notes that the officer “was never held accountable for this excessive use of force, though he was disciplined for failing to report the incident.”
WPD Officers Use Unreasonable Force that Escalates Minor Incidents, Including During Behavioral Health Calls for Service
The report finds that:
“WPD rapidly escalates situations and uses excessive force during encounters involving minor violations of the law—or sometimes no crime at all. Rather than trying to deescalate and contain encounters, officers instead unreasonably ramp up the level of force they are using to conveniently control individuals, including when interacting with people with behavioral health disabilities or experiencing a mental health crisis,”
The report recounts one incident where officer responded to a call about a group riding dirt bikes erratically. One man tried to get away, and eventually hid in a child’s playhouse in a backyard. When officers found the man, while trying to remove him from the playhouse, one kneed him in the thigh and punched him at least three times, including two strikes to the head. Two other also struck the man.
The report concludes that, “The force was unreasonable because the officers had probable cause only for minor violations related to riding a recreational vehicle, without any other specific evidence that the men posed a potential threat.”
During a call about a minor verbal disagreement between roommates, a 35-year-old man refused to answer questions from officers, citing his Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. The officers told the man he was under arrest for interfering with a police officer. The man resisted by interlocking his hand in front of his body. After officers tackled the man, on officer kneed the man and a second officer deployed OC spray.
The report concludes that, “not only was this an unreasonable use of force in response to a minor incident, but the officers’ arrest and use of force were clear retaliation for not engaging in their investigation.”
This section also says that “WPD officers’ failure to appropriately handle minor incidents is apparent when they engage with individuals who they know or should know are in crisis or have behavioral health disabilities.” The report concludes that “in many of the incidents reviewed, WPD officers instead rapidly resorted to force.”
In one incident, a man repeatedly called 911 making statements, “that indicated potentially delusional thinking.” Then officers arrived, one used their radio to inquire about a mental health evaluation. When the man heard this, he ran back into his apartment. Officers followed him and pushed him on to a couch. The man used his hands to push off an officer’s check while trying to flee. The officer was not injured.
An officer punched the man in the face, twice, “even though the man was unarmed and clearly exhibiting behaviors consistent with a mental health disability, and even though there were three officers present who could have worked together to control the man without resorting to head strike. The report finds the use of force unreasonable. “The officers then used additional force while handcuffing him. These officers had received training on intervening with people in crisis, but still struck the man in the head unreasonably.”
In another call responding to a man who made suicidal comments, but was not a suspect in any crime, officers handcuffed a man, “placed him on a stretcher, and waited for emergency medical responders to arrive to transport him to the hospital.” When the man discovered he would be sent to the hospital, “he began kicking and fell off the stretcher and later elbowed and attempted to head butt officers.” One officer “sprayed the man’s face with pepper spray and placed him back on the stretcher.”
The report concludes that the, “use of force was unreasonable because officers and multiple paramedics at the scene outnumbered the man, had already handcuffed him, and should have attempted hands-on techniques to further restrain him before resorting to pepper spray.”
This section concludes:
“WPD does not prioritize sending officers with expertise or experience in interacting with people in crisis. WPD has a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) staffed with three officers, but its purpose is to ensure that individuals and their families are appropriately connected to proper services following a call, rather than to be first responders for these calls. WPD also provides some officers 40 hours of training in crisis intervention. WPD, however, does not prioritize dispatching these officers to behavioral health calls, and even officers who do receive this training are not necessarily well-equipped to handle these kinds of incidents.”
WPD Police Dogs Inflict Unnecessary Harm
The report finds that, “WPD uses police dogs to inflict unnecessary harm that is disproportionate to the level of resistance or threat officers face.”
From January 2017 to November 2022, “WPD’s police dogs bit people at least 14 times.” The report cites that WPD reported, “displaying” police dogs 41 times to encourage individuals to surrender.” Some of those displays and bites occurred during building searches.
The report says that “some police departments train dogs instead to “find and bark” so that the canines stop in front of a person without biting and alert the police officer as to the person’s location.” However, “WPD’s police dogs are trained to bite when they find someone during a building search.”
WPD’s policy on canine use, “permits officers to use dogs to search buildings when they have probable cause to believe a person hiding within has committed a crime involving the use or threat of “assaultive’ behavior.” DOJ investigators concluded that, “during building searches, WPD police dogs have bitten people who are not “assaultive,” not resisting, are not suspected of a violent crime, and do not clearly pose a risk to others.”
In one incident, a canine bit a, “woman who was hiding under a blanket in a condemned building. WPD arrested her for breaking and entering, destruction of property, trespassing, and resisting arrest—none of which involved assaulting or threatening officers or others.”
The report also found, “WPD has also ordered dogs to bite or allowed them to continue biting when multiple officers had the person surrounded and could have used less intrusive means to control the person.” The report recounts an incident where an officer ordered a police canine to bite a man resisting while he was on the ground, as two other officers attempted to handcuff him. “The police dog latched onto the man’s leg and thrashed its head for at least 15 seconds
before releasing its bite—continuing to bite well after cell phone footage shows officers had the man under control.”
The man suffered serious injuries in the incident. The report found that “the dog bite was unreasonable, as was allowing the dog to continue to bite well after the man was under control.”
The report also cites the following incident as an example of WPD failing to maintain reasonable control over police dogs in crowd settings.
The man attacked by the officer and canine faced multiple charges. “The WPD canine handler reported, “[the man] came towards me and [the police dog] aggressively[,] and assaulted me by pushing me with his hands on my right shoulder.”
The video clearly shows none of that happened. Falsifying a police report is a crime in Massachusetts.
The report notes that “WPD exonerated the canine handler from the excessive force allegations following an internal investigation.”
WPD’s Inadequate Supervision Contributes to Unreasonable Force
In this section of the report, the DOJ finds that “WPD inadequately supervises officers’ use of force.” It said that, “supervisors sign off on use of force reports that either included details indicating the force was unreasonable or that did not include enough detail for the supervisor to determine whether force was reasonable.”
This section includes the following:
“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.”
The report discusses one incident where, “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.” During the internal investigation, three years after the incident, one of the officers filed a supplemental report stating “that he was mistaken when he initially reported that the man punched an officer in the head.”
The supplemental report was filed only after surveillance footage of the event was reviewed, showing the officer’s statements were false.
WPD never disciplined the officer involved.
