WORCESTER – The U.S. Department of Justice released a report on Monday covering the findings of the investigation into the Worcester Police Department 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.”
This Week in Worcester previously covered the finding of the DOJ report related to excessive force. This piece covers the portion of the report related to involvement in sexual misconduct.
Two sections of the report focus on sexual misconduct.
WPD Put on Notice of Sexual Misconduct in 2019
The report says that WPD was put on notice in 2019, on two separate occasions, of potential sexual misconduct within the department.
At a Worcester Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation meeting in 2019, community members raised concerns about inappropriate sexual misconduct. The report says that the captain of the WPD Bureau of Investigative Services was present at the meeting.
Separately, footnote 24 says:
“In 2019, graduate student researchers conducted a survey of 45 victims or survivors of sexual exploitation in Worcester about their experiences with sexual misconduct by WPD officers engaged in undercover operations. Over half of the 45 respondents reported that “they have been tricked, misled, and/or forced by an undercover police officer from WPD to provide sexual acts of any nature during an undercover operation. Of those women, 53% had experienced this more than once.”
Of those that reported being coerced to perform sexual acts, “67% responded that the police officer scared or threatened them if they did not engage in the sexual acts.”
When advocates met with WPD officials that same year to discuss the results of the survey. According to the report:
During these meetings, the captain endorsed sexually touching women during stings, erroneously stating that such behavior from officers is not illegal because it was consensual and is not sexual assault because “the prostitutes have been doing it for a while” and it is not necessarily unwanted. He also denied the allegations and denigrated the women involved, stating: “They are not very attractive women that my guys are happy to have in their car, they want them out, they’re dirty, they’re sick, they don’t want to touch them, they aren’t sexually aroused.”
Credible Reports that WPD Officers Have Sexually Assaulted Women Under Threat of Arrest and Engaged in Other Illegal Sexual Conduct Raise Serious Concerns
This section of the report opens by saying that DOJ “also heard multiple credible accounts that WPD officers have sexually assaulted women under threat of arrest, demanded sex acts in exchange for police assistance, in violation of their constitutional rights, and engaged in other concerning sexual encounters.”
Several women reported that they had been sexually assaulted by WPD officers, according to the report.
One woman involved in the commercial sex trade said that a WPD officer sexually assaulter her in 2019. She told investigators that an officer pulled “up in a rental car, announcing he was a police officer, flashing his gun, showing her a bag of drugs, and threatening to arrest her on a drug charge if she did not provide oral sex.” After the woman performed the oral sex, she says the officer gave her $40 and said she was lucky to receive any money at all.
The woman said the same officer forced her to perform oral sex on a second occasion.
When asked by investigators why she did not report the assault to WPD, “she explained that she did not think anyone would believe her, particularly because she had a criminal record.” The report quotes her as saying “Where would I go?”
Another woman said that in 2015, when she was 19 years old and homeless, she became involved in the commercial sex trade. After taunting her on multiple occasions over a couple weeks from his car, asking “if she was a ‘good girl’ or a ‘bad girl,” he summoner her over to his unmarked car.
The woman told a friend, also involved in the commercial sex trade, that she didn’t want to approach the vehicle, knowing the individual in the car was a police officer. “Her friend told her that she should go over to the officer’s car if she knew what was good for her.”
She says the officer took her to a local cemetery and forced her to perform oral sex on him in the front seat. “He then moved her to the back seat where he vaginally penetrated her.”
The woman says the same officer “picked her up and made her provide sex two to three times a month until she was arrested by WPD on an unrelated matter.”
Another woman said that in 2015 she attended a sex party with a man who was trafficking her. The paid got into a fight, and a WPD officer, at the party wearing a badge, intervened and offered to take the woman to a hospital.
Once in the officer’s vehicle, the woman says the officer refused to take her to the hospital until she provided oral sex.
The woman said that “she complied with the officer’s demand to so she could ‘get to a safe place.”
The report also says that the investigation developed credible evidence that:
“WPD officers have engaged in concerning sexual encounters with vulnerable women outside of official enforcement efforts, including paying women for sex and having sex with women they met in their official capacity. Though these actions may not rise to the level of unconstitutional conduct, they reveal a culture at WPD where officers can freely engage in illegal acts with women—without consequence.”
One woman said that in 2019 a WPD officer ‘paid her for oral and vaginal sex while on duty, in uniform, and in his police car, and provided her with drugs as payment for sex on multiple occasions. On one occasion “the officer responded to a call for service while she was still in the police car.” The same woman said that several years prior to those encounters, another “WPD officer paid her twice for oral sex while in uniform and wearing his service gun” inside the officer police car.
“The officer paid her $60 for each encounter—then later arrested her for the same illegal conduct he had engaged in.”
WPD Officers Violate Women’s Constitutional Rights by Engaging in Sexual Contact While Undercover
According to the report, “DOJ has reasonable cause to believe that WPD has engaged in a pattern or practice of outrageous government conduct during undercover operations by allowing officers to engage in sexual contact with women suspected of being involved in the commercial sex trade.”
Investigators “reviewed and analyzed arrest databases and all WPD arrest reports, citations, and incident reports related to sex-related crimes from 2018 through 2023.
The report describes this behavior as “outrageous government conduct,” which it defines as occurring when:
- The government consciously sets out to use sex as a weapon in its investigatory arsenal, or at least acquiesces in such conduct for its own purposes;
- The officer initiated or allowed sexual contact to continue to achieve governmental ends; and
- Sexual contact was entwined with the officer’s enforcement of the law.
This abuse of power by government officials to infringe “upon a person’s bodily integrity in a way that “shocks the contemporary conscience” violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
To investigate this behavior, the DOJ “reviewed and analyzed arrest databases and all WPD arrest reports, citations, and incident reports related to sex-related crimes from 2018 through 2023.” It also interviewed members of the WPD Vice Unit, and spoke with women who detailed their own personal experiences with officer sexual misconduct.
The report includes the stories of those it spoke with. One woman said that, in or around 2021, an undercover officer touched her breast and permitted her to touch his genitals before he arrested her.
Another woman described several incidents she says she endured over multiple years, starting in 2016:
- An undercover WPD officer summoned a woman over to his car and asked if he could touch her. She pulled down her top to expose her breast and he asked her to pull her top down lower, asking, “Can I get some nipple?” After fondling her and twisting her nipple, he drove her to a different area where she was arrested;
- Around two years later, the same woman got into a car with another undercover officer. He exposed his penis and directed her to touch him for approximately 20 seconds. He then drove her to a different location, and she was again arrested;
- The same officer arrested her again in a 2022 prostitution sting.
The report says investigators spoke with both Vice Unit officers and supervisors, and the Worcester County District Attorney’s office. DOJ says “all understood that nothing more than a verbal agreement or offer to engage in sexual acts for a fee is necessary to arrest someone.”
Despite having no basis for any sexual contact by WPD officers, and that the Worcester County District Attorney’s Office stopped prosecuting those arrested for sex work in 2018, “undercover WPD officers participated in this outrageous sexual contact anyway.”
The report also says that female WPD undercover officers posing as “sellers,” avoided participating in sexual activity, rather than acquiescing to requests for sexual contact from male buyers.
The report notes the sources that led to its conclusion were not only personal testimony. The report says that WPD supervisors were, or should have been aware, that WPD officers were engaging in sexual misconduct as multiple officers admitted in their arrest reports to doing so while investigating and arresting women for sex crimes from 2018 to 2022.
BOPS Inadequate Investigations
The report also notes an imbalance in the scrutiny of internal investigations by the Bureau of Professional Standards (BOPS).
In 2013, a woman filed a complaint after an on-duty WPD officer approached a woman in her vehicle, asked her what she would be willing to do to avoid getting arrested, digitally raped her, then ejaculated on her. The officer was terminated, prosecuted, and sentenced to five to seven years in prison.
While the report does not name the officer, the description refers to the case of former Worcester Police Officer Rajat Sharda. A federal judge later ordered Sharda to pay the victim $2.5 million.
In another investigation, the BOPS “closed some investigations into officer sexual misconduct as ‘exceptionally cleared’ because the complainants were reluctant to speak with investigators.” The report says that the unit “closed investigations even when the unit could have interviewed officers or civilian witnesses or gathered and analyzed other evidence to determine whether sexual misconduct occurred.”
A woman who the report said had previously engaged in the commercial sex trade reported WPD officer using excessive force during her arrest. She also alleged one of the officers that arrested her sexually assaulted her in the past.
When the BOPS investigator was unable to reach the complainant, “BOPS closed the complaint as ‘exceptionally cleared’ instead of interviewing the officers about the complainant’s sexual misconduct allegations.”
In another case, a prosecutor reported ‘that a WPD officer rubbed his pelvis against a female colleague’s shoulder on three occasions on a single day.” The woman later elected not to participate in the BOPS investigation.
The DOJ report says that in the report of the BOPS investigation, the investigator “the investigator spoke with three court officers and a probation officer, none of whom saw the specific incident.” The report notes that all three court officers “stated [that the accused officer] was a good guy who was always very helpful and just an all-around good guy.”
When the investigator interviewed the accused officer, the investigator “asked the inappropriate leading question, ‘[Y]ou didn’t bump into anyone or accidentally rub up against them and made [sic] a statement that you recall?”
Rather than seeking to interview another witness the victim contacted about the incident, or seek to review the text messages between the two, BOPS closed the case as “exceptionally cleared.”
The report adds that BOPS closed these and other similar investigations while failing “to pursue available investigative steps to ensure the case was fully investigated.”
The section concludes that:
Despite being on notice of these concerns and reports of officer sexual misconduct, WPD did not undertake any meaningful efforts to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct or assess the severity of the problem. Nor have they ensured that proper controls were in place—including strong policies, training, and supervisory techniques—to ensure that such egregious behavior would not take place in the future.”
