This piece is the first part of a series that will examine the response to the U.S. Department of Justice pattern and practice investigation report on the City of Worcester, some of the biggest factors within the Worcester Police Department that led to the need for the investigation, and the near total inaction of the controlling majority of the Worcester City Council and administration officials to initiate real reforms.
There are many people in Worcester’s city government that I like very much, both in the city council and in the administration. That includes leadership in both. My personal political views are more aligned with the minority of the 6 to 5 split in city council, but I have good relationships, maybe even better relationships, with some in the majority. I have also been vocal about my support for Chief of Police Paul Saucier, who I also believe is a good man who wants to do what he sees as right inside the police department.
Despite those personal feelings, I accepted a responsibility to the people of this city to bring them the truth to the best of my ability. When faced with “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object,” silence is betrayal.
Since the release of the Department of Justice report of its investigation of the Worcester Police Department and the City of Worcester, those in power in the administration, the majority of the city council, and the law enforcement community in the city have engaged in a campaign best described as gaslighting.
According to Merriam Webster, gaslighting is “psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.”
The Launch of the DOJ Investigation
On Nov. 15, 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice announced an investigation into the Worcester Police Department and the City of Worcester to determine if the department engages in patterns or practices that violate the civil rights of residents. A report by the Worcester Regional Research Bureau showed that at the time the DOJ announced its investigation of Worcester, it had conducted less than 80 of these investigations since creation of these investigations in the 1994 federal crime bill.
Through public statements, we learned that the inquiry or pre-investigation into the city and its police department began, at latest, in Dec. 2021.
With the pre-investigation work going on that long, any idea the DOJ was going to investigate for two years and come back with nothing is ridiculous.
With that knowledge, both the administration and the city council gave no sign they saw this as a red flag. They gave no indication that it understood the magnitude of what this meant: the federal government was stepping in because the local government failed on a massive level.
That was the beginning of the gaslighting campaign. Nothing to see here folks, this is normal.
It isn’t normal. There are 15,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States. To be one of the 80 investigated means the city is a class of just 0.53 percent. It is an abysmal level of failure by city government, including several iterations of city council and multiple city administrations.
Did city officials express alarm, contrition, lay out a plan of action, express bold leadership and begin a robust reform plan when the DOJ announced its investigation? No. We were told we must wait for the results of the investigation and anyone who expected the city to take action wanted them to interfere in the investigation.
More gaslighting.
The federal investigation covered between 2018 and 2022. Nothing prevented the city from taking action in all of 2023 and 2024. Instead, it waited, and made the decision to enable any unethical or unlawful activity to continue, knowing it would likely be two years before that investigation concluded. Anyone harmed during this time of inaction: too bad for you.
The Release of the Report
After the city avoided all things related to the police department like the plague for two years, the DOJ released the report on Dec. 9, 2024, predictably Two years and 24 days after it announced its investigation. Its two primary 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.”
The gaslighting began hours prior to the release of the report, when the attorney representing the city in the DOJ investigation, Brian Kelley, a partner at the law firm Nixon Peabody, and former prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts for 23 years, released a statement to the Worcester Telegram and Gazette. See the details of this statement in a previous piece.
Kelley said the DOJ rushed the release of the report. That is false. This Week in Worcester learned that then-Attorney General Merrick Garland mandated the delay of many reports, including the report on the Worcester investigation, until after the November election. The report was ready for release weeks earlier.
Kelley also made a series of other claims that were not credible. For example, he criticized the DOJ for citing the case it included in the report anonymously. That’s true of every pattern and practice investigation report DOJ ever produced. Kelley presented these factors as controversial, with the obvious intent to confuse and mislead the public, while claiming the real victim is the City of Worcester. Again, more gaslighting.
Nothing about the investigation in Worcester differed from any other pattern and practice investigation the DOJ has conducted. A 23 year federal prosecutor, like Kelley, knows that.
Kelley also demanded that the DOJ release the names of the officers involved in the cases in the report. This became the demand of many city officials and led to a petition to the city council by police union leaders making the same demand.
The section of the 1994 crime bill that created pattern or practice investigations is just over 200 words. You can find it at the bottom of page 277 of the bill. In federal law, they are:
34 U.S. Code § 12601 – Cause of action
34 U.S. Code § 12602 – Data on use of excessive force
(Note: The provisions related to these investigations have been reclassified in US code, so the citations in the original text of the bill are now incorrect.)
In the second section, under § 12602 (b), the law says the following:
“Data acquired under this section shall be used only for research or statistical purposes and may not contain any information that may reveal the identity of the victim or any law enforcement officer.”
These demands call on the federal government to break federal law. They won’t do that. Obviously. The city calling on the DOJ to do something the city knows it won’t do, while laced in moral indignation as if the city is the victim and being persecuted, is yet another attempt to make the public question both reality and what your eyes read in the report. Gaslighting.
Despite the petition calling for the federal government to break the law, which is clearly outside the purview the city council cared so much about last October, six councilors voted to forward that petition to the Public Safety Committee.
Five Months of Gaslighting
Since the release of the report, the manipulation hasn’t stopped. It’s been a long, infuriating campaign of the city crying that it’s the victim. Big, tough guy police personnel, whining that they are the victim. If you question this narrative, they say you hate the police and are pro-crime and pro-criminal.
There has been no substantial mention of the survivors of sex crimes and those who have been the subject of clear violations of the department’s use of force policies.
The attacks on the report continue.
City officials are reveling in pounding away at the federal government. Yet they’ll only appear in carefully orchestrated or safe environments, where they control everything. In five months, no one has held a press conference. When they open themselves up for questions, the time is very limited and they’ll only answer the questions they choose to answer.
The gaslighting moved into another phase on Tuesday, April 15, during a meeting of the City Council Committee on Public Safety held 29 months, to the day, after the DOJ announced its investigation.
The Bureau of Professional Acquittals
During this meeting, Chief Saucier spoke for nearly an hour, as This Week in Worcester covered here. He talked about the changes the department has made for over 20 minutes, but none of it because of the report. Instead, the chief says the department completed or began all these changes before the release of the report.
On Friday, the police department released a nearly 5,000 word rebuttal to the report.
In other words, the report wasn’t necessary, everything is fine, nothing to see here.
In the five months since the release of the report, no city official has publicly acknowledged a single word of the report it true.
This is a common gaslighting technique. Although there are cases mentioned in the report where video evidence of the incident exists, your eyes lied to you. Maybe you are just too stupid to know what your eyes see, because you hate cops and love criminals. Gaslighting 101.
The Beer Garden
Let’s look at one of these cases which occurred outside the Beer Garden on Franklin Street in 2019.
A young man, Christopher Ayala-Melendez, asked a police officer a question: can I pass through this area to go home? The interaction lasted less than four seconds before officer Shawn Tivnan grabbed him from behind and pulled him into the police canine he was handling, which attacked and bit Ayala. The officer then arrested him.
That could be a momentary lack of judgement. That night, multiple fights occurred at the Beer Garden on Franklin Street, which led to a rare call for all officers on duty to respond. Officers intervening in fights became the subject of attacks themselves. It was a terrible, and I’m sure frightening, situation.
However, Ayala had nothing to do with that scene. He wasn’t there. He simply lived in a building on Franklin Street and was walking home when he came upon the scene. Despite the area being closed off by police, an officer allowed Ayala to enter the area. The Worcester Police Department, to date, has refused to identify that officer.
They are transparent, though. Just ask them.
However, Tivnan made another decision that was not a momentary lack of judgement, but a premeditated, deliberate attempt to wrongfully incarcerate Ayala.
Tivnan filed a host of charges against Ayala, including charges of assault on a police officer. The Office of Worcester County District Attorney accepted and began pursuing those charges until Ayala presented video footage of the incident, captured by cameras outside a nearby building.
Here is what actually happened.
Worcester Police Department policy 1503.1 Unnecessary Force reads: “Using more physical force than that which is reasonably necessary to accomplish
a proper police objective.”
The official BOPS report on the incident related to the arrest of Ayala, filed in March 2020, which considered the video footage above, exonerated Tivnan on the allegation of unreasonable force. The report says that, “after reviewing all reports, policies, and videos, it does not appear that excessive force was used to affect the arrests,” referring to multiple arrests that took place that night, including the arrest of Ayala.
The proper police objective accepted by the BOPS investigation was Tivnan’s claim that he announced lawful orders to Ayala three times. Other officers at the scene corroborated Tivnan’s statements.
As the department does not dispute that Ayala wasn’t at the scene prior to coming into the frame of the surveillance video, it is plainly obvious this is a lie.
The BOPS report completely avoids the obvious fact, as seen in the video, that Ayala committed no crime and presented no threat.
The official position of the Worcester Police Department internal investigation: what you see in that video is not an unreasonable use of force, and police officers treating you this way in Worcester is perfectly acceptable.
The BOPS investigation found a policy failure related to the department’s policy on canine handling, saying, “It is recommended that Policy NO. 401 be reviewed and updated. Currently, the policy is deficient in clarity. It does not currently state what certification course is required prior to deploying a K-9 team on patrol.”
Months later, in August 2020, only after public controversy about the case, then-Chief of Police Steve Sargent reopened the file to add a finding that Tivnan violated department policy on submitting reports.
Tivnan did much more than violate policy. He broke the plain language of Massachusetts Law in Ch. 268 § 6A, which says:
“Whoever, being an officer or employee of the commonwealth or of any political subdivision thereof or of any authority created by the general court, in the course of his official duties executes, files or publishes any false written report, minutes or statement, knowing the same to be false in a material matter, shall be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars or by imprisonment for not more than one year, or by both such fine and imprisonment.”
As far as This Week in Worcester is able to determine, Tivnan never appeared for arraignment on that misdemeanor. Even if charged and convicted, a misdemeanor conviction does not result in termination. Only a felony conviction may result in termination.
I contacted and met Ayala in 2022, something no city official has ever done. He told me that Tivnan said that he “felt betrayed by the department” for being found responsible for lying on an incident report. This is a great example of how broken the culture is inside the Worcester Police Department. While that sentiment isn’t held by all officers, a contingent, including Tivnan, apparently believe that whatever conduct they engage in should be considered appropriate and/or legal by virtue of them doing it.
That conclusion is the product of learned behavior.
Years of BOPS acting as the official misconduct cover up unit within the department has conditioned officers to believe that they can do the what is easy because there will be no consequences, rather than do the hard thing because it is right. This is a critical component to the breakdown of discipline within the department that residents have endured for many years and a critical factor that led to the DOJ investigation.
Tivnan falsified a police incident report to file charges against a city resident for crimes they never committed. Without the surveillance video, Ayala would have faced a trial of his word against Tivnan’s and the testimony of other officers, which echoed Tivnan’s plainly false testimony in the internal investigation. Ayala being convicted for crimes he never committed was a plausible, if not likely outcome, if the surveillance video never existed.
The BOPS investigation had the video available to it at the time of their investigation.
Tivnan lied to internal investigators, saying he issued three commands to Ayala before attacking him. It is plainly obvious that such a thing does not happen on the video inside the under four seconds Ayala engaged with another officer, before being attacked from behind. The department doesn’t dispute that Ayala was not at the scene before walking into the frame of the video.
Nothing prohibits officers from lying to internal investigators, nor is there a penalty for doing so.
All those officers, including Tivnan, remain employees of the Worcester Police Department.
“Personnel Issues” and Transparency
It is not clear what discipline Tivnan faced other than reassignment out of the canine handling team. Sources tell This Week in Worcester the department since reassigned him back to the canine unit.
The city calls this a “personnel issue” which prohibits disclosure. That’s their policy, that’s not the law. Nothing legally prohibits disclosing discipline sanctions for a law enforcement officer. While they say “can’t,” the reality is they won’t.
During the city council meeting on March 25, the administration appeared to indicate it cannot disclose the employment status of a city employee. Nothing in the law prohibits the city disclosing if an individual remains employed or is no longer employed by the city. The city releases a list of compensation for every city employee every year. We can find who no longer works for the city by comparing lists from year to year. No law prohibits more timely disclosure of the same information.
Employment references are commonplace for any employer. Disclosing the position title and dates of employment in response to an employer inquiry is commonplace.
The city confirmed the termination of a police officer as recently as 2022.
But they are transparent though, just ask them.
Accepting No Responsibility
When two parties settle a lawsuit out of court, the defendant typically has no obligation to admit wrongdoing. This is legal speak, and part of the benefits to a defendant when settling a case they are unlikely to win. This occurs in each of the civil rights lawsuits for police misconduct the city settles.
City officials tell us that these settlements are practical decisions, as the cost of litigation can exceed the cost of settlement.
While that is a plausible reason for settling a lawsuit, when we look at the volume of cases settled and the finding in each of these cases by the internal investigation, the trend is quite clear.
During the nine-year tenure of former Chief Sargent from May 2016 to August 2023, internal investigations by BOPS found a Worcester Police officer responsible for the unreasonable use of force zero times. Never. Not once. In nearly a decade.
A report provided to the city council in July 2023 shows all litigation settlement payments from fiscal year 2019 through fiscal year 2023, all years which. Sargent served as chief of police. The city settled 12 lawsuits alleging civil rights violations by the Worcester Police officer over those four fiscal years, paying $1,103,500.
Although the BOPS investigation reports are public records, the city only releases them in response to a request under the Massachusetts Public Records law. A person requesting these files must know a case exists to request records on it. Knowledge of these cases often comes from lawsuit filings or video captured and released by members of the public.
But the city is transparent. Just ask them.
Some lawsuits for events that took place during Sargent’s tenure are still ongoing. Rev. Joseph Rizzuti, Sr.’s lawsuit remains open, as does the lawsuit related to the police department’s response to protests on Main Street in 2020, which alleges 44 violations by Worcester Police officers.
A judge found Rizzuti not guilty of all charges, and Worcester County District Attorney Joe Early Jr. dropped all charges filed by Worcester officers in the Main Street protests. Both civil cases are not likely to end well for Worcester taxpayers.
Each city administration takes the same position through the process of the litigation of these cases. First, it says it cannot comment on ongoing litigation. Once they reach a settlement, they then refuse to comment. In January 2021, the state made it illegal to include confidentiality agreements in civil settlements related to police misconduct, unless requested in writing by the plaintiff. Until that time, most settlements included confidentiality agreements.
I have called on the city to unilaterally release all individuals subject to confidentiality agreements in these cases. People harmed by officers in Worcester should be encouraged to speak out, not gagged under threat of lawsuit. The first-hand experiences of those who choose to speak out should be informing policy and be an important part of a healing and reconciliation process.
When I called on the city to release those individuals from those confidentiality agreements, the silence was deafening. The city doesn’t want better policy or healing. These cases are politically inconvenient for some elected officials, and we are in an election year. They want it to go away, now.
They are super transparent though, just ask them.
I have a theory. I think in the official glossary of terms for the City of Worcester, there was an administrative error that swapped the definitions of transparency and gaslighting. They constantly tell us how transparent they are, while providing very little transparency. However, the gaslighting over the last five months, since the release of the DOJ report, has been constant.
Future pieces in this series will examine the Natale Cosenza case and just how indifferent city officials are to wrongful convictions and incarceration, and how tolerant it is of bad cops it knows are bad cops. It will also look at the recent claim by Chief Saucier that the sexual assault claims in the report may be the product of individuals fraudulently presenting themselves as police, and just how completely void of any understanding of behaving in a trauma-informed way the police department and city government really is.
