Thomas Duffy II, a Worcester Police officer and president of the NEPBA Local 911, the union that represents patrolmen in the Worcester Police Department, released a statement on Friday, May 9, calling for an ethics investigation into District 5 City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj. He also alleged Haxhiaj assaulted police.
Duffy’s call comes after Worcester Police officers intervened in a standoff between residents and federal agents attempting to take an undocumented woman into custody on Eureka Street on Thursday, May 8.
The story that the police department is spinning, and the administration of City Manager Eric Batista is parroting, says that their officers responded to multiple calls about the standoff and moved in to protect the peace. They also say their officers attempted to deescalate.
It’s nonsense. The reality is that as soon as Worcester Police arrived at the scene, the situation escalated exponentially.
Deescalation requires engagement. According to multiple witnesses at the scene, the first Worcester officer to arrive ignored multiple residents who attempted to speak with the individual as they made their way directly to the federal agents.
Eureka Street
The individuals claiming to be federal agents refused to produce any identification or any paperwork that would indicate authority to seize the woman that they took into custody. Worcester Police never appeared to seek verification of their identity.
That may seem to make sense. They were wearing ICE gear after all. There are multiple factors, including Chief of Police Paul Saucier own words, that make verifying these people important.
During a meeting of the Worcester City Council Public Safety Committee on April 15 on the DOJ report, Chief of Police Paul Saucier discussed an individual arrested in Worcester within the last year who he said falsely presented himself as a police officer, including buying a former police vehicle and having a fake state police badge in his wallet. That individual also had a sex crime history.
News reports have also covered the skyrocketing sales of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) clothing on Amazon, and a case in North Carolina where a man who falsely presented himself as an ICE agent allegedly sexually assaulted a woman under threat of deportation.
After Worcester Police officers arrived at the scene in huge numbers, they actively facilitated the federal agents leaving the scene with the woman.
The calculation is quite simple: one of the lords of Worcester saw a uniform that indicated there were those of their own kind there, and lords don’t listen to peasants.
The first verification these men were federal agents came a day later, when the regional office of ICE released a statement.
Haxhiaj appeared at the scene, which is in her district, after learning that agents detained the woman. The situation was tense, with residents standing in the way of the agents leaving the scene.
Duffy’s statement (which This Week in Worcester did not receive) accuses Haxhiaj of being unfit to serve and for inciting aggression towards officers.
This Week in Worcester has requested all body camera footage related to Eureka Street on May 8 through a public records request. City Manager Eric Batista could order all that footage released publicly, as body camera footage is considered a public record, but he won’t, despite how frequently he claims the administration cherishes transparency.
There are many videos shared across social media. None appear to show Haxhiaj doing anything of the sort. Plenty of footage shows officers using force, including putting their hands on Haxhiaj.
In the spirit of conducting a background check on those who submit complaints about an officer to the police department, which the Worcester Police Department does, a review of Duffy’s history seems in order.
Any objective review of his record shows he’s a far more appropriate subject for an investigation.
Listed on the Known Liar List
According to sources inside both city and state government, Duffy is one of the Worcester Police officers on the so-called Brady List.
District attorneys across the country compile a Brady list. The police officers that appear on this list are those which the district attorney won’t put in front of a jury or judge because their track record of lying on police incident reports or in testimony, which makes them ripe for being discredited by defense attorneys.
Any public employee who lies on an incident report commits a crime in Massachusetts under ch. 268 §6A, These lies can lead to innocent people charged or incarcerated.
For the rest of us, filing a false police report is a crime as well, but we may actually be prosecuted for it.
Officers also find themselves on the Brady List for providing false information in court. This is the crime of perjury for the rest of us.
In Worcester, laws are for the peasants, not the lords.
Discipline Record
An officer information card shows the internal investigations that an officer became the subject of the finding by the internal investigation of the department’s Bureau of Professional Standards (BOPS),
BOPS investigations have no credibility. Their investigation reports have a long history of frequently jumping through hoops to dispose of the allegation using multiple different tactics, including simply ignoring evidence. Based on the reports known to the public, a BOPS internal investigation hasn’t found a single Worcester Police officer responsible for unreasonable force in over a decade.
Duffy’s officer information card shows his behavior as a Worcester Police officer has led to 27 internal investigations, including 15 separate allegations of using unreasonable force between 1998 and 2020.
While I have a small portion of under 60 officer information cards of the over 480 officers in the department, Duffy’s officer information card is far and away the worst I’ve seen.
Providing Support to a Suspect to Flee
According to reporting by the Telegram & Gazette, on Feb. 20, 2016, Duffy was at a bar on Water Street when gunshots were fired nearby. The investigating officer, who was not Duffy, questioned a suspect, Jose Batista, who provided the name of a person he said shot at him. That officer then left the area to question other individuals detained by another officer. When the investigating officer returned, his suspect was gone.
Police arrested the man Jose Batista claimed shot at him. He spent eight days incarcerated until a dangerousness hearing. During that hearing, the investigating officer testified that Duffy enabled Jose Batista to flee the scene by putting him in a taxi.
A search for evidence found bullet casings and a firearm on top of a carport, which appeared to be thrown there.
Jose Batista is the brother of Neftali Batista, who served in the same Worcester Police Department unit as Duffy.
Jose Batista remained at large for a year before being arrested. He was eventually found guilty.
But Duffy is a lord. Laws in Worcester are for the peasants.
The Jump Out Boys
Multiple sources inside the Worcester Police Department tell This Week in Worcester that a self-formed group within the department, which included members of the WPD Gang Unit with Duffy as its leader, branded itself the “Jump Out Boys.”
Those aware of the group say there wasn’t much to it besides the name, which seems to have died off since the retirement of former Chief of Police Steve Sargent and the appointment of current Chief of Police Paul Saucier.
However, the name “Jump Out Boys” has a history in other departments among plain clothes anti-crime units, which dress as civilians while on the job.
In New York City, these plain clothes units racked up a nearly endless history of documented abuses. New York disbanded these plain clothed units in 2020, but Mayor Eric Adams revived them after his election.
The Los Angeles Sherrif’s Department (LASD), the largest sheriff’s department and the third largest local law enforcement agency in the country, has over 18,000 employees. It has a long, troubling history with self-created groups.
After years of reporting, academic studies and similar work, the Office of the Inspector General for Los Angeles County conducted an investigation into these groups within the LASD. It has a page dedicated to the issue on its website.
That page shows there are 19 of these alleged groups within the LASD, which have led to 59 claims, lawsuits, and settlement agreements for over $54 million since the early 1990s.
A 2021 study conducted by the Center for Juvenille Law and Policy at Loyola Law School, which is available on the Inspector General’s page, presents that these groups have existed within LASD for 50 years, with multiple sheriffs denying their existence of downplaying their significance.
Sounds a bit like, “the report submitted by the DOJ is a reflection of the person that brought this investigation to our city. A total disgrace,” as Duffy said at the Worcester City Council meeting on Dec. 17, 2024.
The page on the topic on the inspector general’s website has the title, “Deputy Gangs.” The Inspector General and many others have found these LASD groups meet the legal definition of a gang.
The Loyola report says that the LASD Jump Out Boys had a pamphlet which said, “We are not afraid to get our hands dirty without any disgrace, dishonor, or hesitation.” The report also said, “The pamphlet directs that a ‘black book’ containing all member information and dates of shootings be kept ‘off site.”
There are other groups called “Jump Out Boys” in departments in other cities. There is no evidence that they are connected.
Duffy’s use of the name could be generic for those working in plain clothes while on the job. It could just be a reference to those who work in teams and “jump out” of a vehicle at the scene of crimes in progress.
The sources who provided information on the use of the name knew the connection of the name to the LASD gangs. But maybe Duffy didn’t know.
Or maybe he didn’t care. There is always the possibility that it’s exactly what he wanted.
Or maybe he wanted to rub in our faces that the city manager and a majority of the city council have no desire to clean up the police department. Even if they tried, the civil service system, a standardized bubble testing system that also acts as a welfare system to protect bad cops, makes him untouchable.
While the city manager continues to drag his feet on opting out of civil service, no one is going to do anything about it.
2010 False Accident Report
In 2010, while off duty, Duffy drove a vehicle that crashed with another vehicle at Puritan Avenue and Hamilton Street in Worcester. The other driver was then a 20-year-old woman travelling home from work as a dancer at Centerfolds.
The woman drove intoxicated, with a blood alcohol level nearly twice the legal limit.
According to a 2019 article from the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, Duffy’s father, then a captain in the Massachusetts State Police, came to the scene.
The Worcester officer, and co-worker of Duffy who responded to the crash, declined to ask Duffy to take a field sobriety test. According to the Telegram’s reporting, three witnesses said Duffy did not appear intoxicated.
The officer did not charge or cite either driver. The woman suffered significant injuries.
Duffy’s vehicle travelled at 52 mph in a 30 mph zone prior to travelling into the intersection where the crash occurred.
When Duffy submitted the signed accident report, he wrote that the other driver “proceeded through the intersection at Hamilton Street without deceleration” prior to the crash.
Black box data showed that Duffy’s statement was untrue. The woman stopped before pulling onto Hamilton Street.
Let’s Do Investigations
Duffy wants an ethics investigation into Haxhiaj, which I think is absurd, but let’s compromise.
That investigation can happen after an ethics investigation into:
- The BOPS investigators who found a way to cut Duffy loose on all 15 unreasonable force claims;
- The BOPS investigator who investigated the assault and battery on Chris Ayala-Melendez outside the Beer Garden in 2019 and cleared that officer of unreasonable force;
- The BOPS investigator who investigated the assault on Pastor Rizzuti and cleared the officer despite his unhinged, violent assault of the man in front of his children, in his own church;
- The individual responsible for assigning Kevin Pageau to investigate the Cosenza case in which his former partner and co-defendant in a lawsuit that cost taxpayers $2.1 million was the subject.
Duffy also alleges Haxhiaj assaulted police officers. Let’s move forward on those charges after charging:
- The officer that violently assaulted Chris Ayala-Melendez outside the beer garden, as well as the officer who parroted the exact same story, despite surveillance video showing their claims never happened;
- The officer who assaulted Pastor Rizzuti in front of his kids, inside his own church, for the crime of saying a word;
- The officers which a civil jury found manipulated and fabricated evidence in the Cosenza case.
- The officers who were taking phones from bystanders, throwing them on the ground, and stomping on them, potentially destroying video evidence, during the Main Street protests in 2020. Police also arrested journalists for nothing after they checked in with police, and fired pepper ball rounds at a journalist who was observing from where police told him to observe from.
Most importantly, the Haxhiaj charges must come after charging Duffy for enabling a man to flee the scene after he discharged a firearm in the city. For the rest of us, that’s a crime.
Don’t hold your breath. Lords don’t get charged with crimes in Worcester. That’s for the peasants.
Editor’s note: The original version of this piece said Duffy’s officer information card shows him as the subject of 28 internal investigations. That was incorrect, the correct number is 27.
