Since the completion of the recount of the 2025 at-large city council election and the announcement of the results, a narrative about the next city council has emerged. The next council, so the narrative goes, is more “moderate,” less “progressive,” more “practical,” and focused on “local issues.”
Through the lense of the binary thinking we characterize politics in, a result of the two-party monopoly of the political system across the country, there may be some truth to that. The majority coalition within the council began the term ending Dec. 31 with a 6-5 majority. Councilor At-Large Thu Nguyen’s absence left the majority with a 6-4 advantage.
The next council appears an 8-3 majority for the self-proclaimed “moderates,” though I expect Gary Rosen to fill the “swing vote” role filled by retiring Councilor George Russel for many years.
Civilian Review Board on New Council’s Docket
With the Worcester Regional Research Bureau report, which recommended the city establish a civilian review board, and a report from City Manager Eric Batista on a civilian review board (CRB) likely to be before the council early next year, much of the mystery of what will happen is gone.
Anyone with thoughts that the next council will enact a civilian review board (CRB) as an independent oversight mechanism of the Worcester Police Department is delusional.
At-Large incumbents Kate Toomey and Moe Bergman have openly said they oppose a CRB, as has At-Large Councilor-Elect Rosen. District Councilors-Elect Tony Economou, John Fresolo, and Jose Rivera have said the same. That’s six votes, a majority, right there.
Mayor Joe Petty has opposed a CRB throughout his record-setting tenure, though he says he will consider the Worcester Regional Research Bureau (WRRB) report.
Satya Mitra also says he’ll give the concept consideration. That’s hard to believe. Mitra is ex officio chair of the board of the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce and has long been involved in the organization. Given the total tantrum Worcester Chamber CEO Tim Murray threw in response to the WRRB report, it’s hard to see Mitra being in favor of it.
Even in the best-case scenario as viewed by supporters of a CRB, the vote still fails.
The Goal of Oversight is Not Shared
Anti-CRB councilors have made their positions clear. They are against civilian review. I’ll address the talking points they use, and the disinformation within them, below.
I don’t have a problem with the opposition to civilian review. I have written and said many times that I’m not particularly enthusiastic about a civilian review board. They don’t have a track record of effectiveness in many municipalities across the country, often because they are designed to fail by limiting their authority. Many are advisory, which means they write reports that get sent to the police chief. Those reports then meet their permanent home in the “round file,” the trash basket.
I have also written and said multiple times I support the establishment of a municipal Office of the Inspector General in Worcester. Such an office would have a staff with a mixture of skills in investigations, law, accounting, and other municipal government-related experience. Its jurisdiction would extend well beyond the police and across city government. In my view, its mission would be conducting the official investigation of city government into allegations of misconduct by any city employee or contractor and proactively seeking to uncover corruption, waste, fraud and abuse. Inspector generals are critical in every federal government agency, including all branches of the military, the FBI, and the intelligence services. There is also an inspector general for state government in Massachusetts.
Oversight is apple pie-level American and built into the U.S. Constitution. While they didn’t specifically use the word oversight, the founders of the United States implicitly believed in the concept as a tool to reign in executive power. The origins of oversight long predate the U.S. Some historians consider the Magna Carta of the 13th century as the first codification of oversight by enabling a mechanism to ensure the King of England complied with its provisions.
In short, oversight is undeniably a founding principle well worth respecting and continuing.
As I advocate for something other than a CRB, but value the long tradition of oversight in American governance philosophy, I suggested an alternative form of oversight. That seems reasonable to me.
Yet we haven’t seen a single alternative proposal from the elected officials who oppose it.
That begs the question: What is it they are actually opposed to?
Opposition to Any Oversight
Those who oppose civilian review often raise concerns about civilians without experience or training in police operations making judgements about the execution of police operations. There are important questions about who becomes the appointing authority for members of a CRB and the qualifications required. Synthesizing a web of municipal policies, state law, and best practices and applying to a real-life scenario is a complex endeavor. There are arguments of merit there.
However, of the combined 11 councilors across the current city council and the city council that takes office in January that oppose civilian review, exactly zero have brought forth an alternative oversight concept to a civilian review board.
The posture of fighting against a CRB, but bringing forth no legitimate alternative, is not opposition to only a CRB. It is opposition to any oversight at all.
Given the history of oversight embedded in American governance, and with its origins in medieval Europe, there is no argument to categorize anti-oversight as anything but extreme and authoritarian. It certainly isn’t moderate.
With the council’s long dismissal of the separation of powers, another core American governance value, and its attack on resident participation in proceedings of the council, almost entirely ending resident petitions to the council, this opposition to oversight is entirely on brand.
Major Historical Milestones of Oversight
Oversight is a check on executive power. While the use of the word “oversight” is rather modern, scholars frequently consider its origins from the 13th century.
On June 15, 1215, King John of England sealed the royal charter called the Magna Carta (translation: The Great Charter). For the first time, there were some controls on feudal taxes. It also guaranteed some due process rights, established requirements for judges, provided restitution for those treated unjustly under the law, and more.
The Magna Carta also established a council of 25 barons to monitor the King’s compliance with its provisions.
In colonial America, checks on the power of the crown continually emerged leading up to the American Revolution. Colonial assemblies and governors’s councils acted as checks on legislative and executive power. In the years leading up to the war, Committees of Correspondence collected intelligence on royal officials and documented abuses. Committees of Inspection enforced boycotts, investigated violations, and applied local sanctions. Committees of Safety began replacing royal authority while town committees oversaw enforcement of taxes and investigated officials.
In the Articles of Confederation, which provided no executive or courts, and ultimately found impractical, consensus controlled Congress as a means of a system of checks and balances.
The core, fundamental civics principle within the U.S. Constitution is a means of oversight. Each branch of government with a distinct, exclusive role is oversight. The ability of Congress to conduct legislative inquiry as part of its appropriations responsibility, which the Worcester City Council does absolutely none of, is a direct oversight of the executive branch.
Manipulations, Disinformation and Bad Ideas
In an effort to preserve the status quo and do nothing to mitigate the nonstop stream of civil rights settlements and judgements forced upon taxpayers, or the violations of rights that lead to that hijacking of the city coffers, some councilors have suggested existing systems work well. These arguments are, to put it nicely, spurious. .
POST Will Do Our Job For Us
I challenge the next council to request a representative from the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission to appear virtually at a regular meeting of the city council for a single question:
Is the POST Commission intended to replace local oversight?
There is only one reason to refuse to make this request. They already know the answer.
The primary operational purpose of the POST Commission is to execute a certification program that enables individuals to serve as law enforcement officers in Massachusetts. It also conducts an enforcement program that can revoke those certifications. While it can conduct its own investigations, it primarily relies on the findings of municipalities in making those decisions.
In its 2024 annual report issued in March 2025, the POST Commission reported a staff of 49 individuals. The POST Commission doesn’t have anywhere near the resources to manage investigations of misconduct and discipline for 351 municipalities.
The POST Commission also sets officer training standards and acts as an oversight mechanism in cases of misconduct. It sets standards for the local oversight the city council refuses to conduct or enable.
The POST Commission website has a complaint form where individuals can file complaints against officers. That page, above the form, includes the following:
What happens once I submit a complaint?
When you submit a complaint, we review your complaint, notify the agency about a complaint against one of their police officers, and either decide to investigate immediately or wait for the agency to investigate first.
We may share the information in your complaint with the agency to help them investigate. This could include your contact information, description of the complaint, and any files you included.
Then we can investigate the matter more or accept the agency’s decision for the police officer.
If we investigate and decide to take action against the police officer, we can suspend or decertify the police officer, or require them to take additional training.
(emphasis added)
It refers complaints it receives to the municipal agency. The municipality is the primary investigating agency. The investigating agency, which collects the evidence, is the municipal police department.
POST is not going to do it for you, councilors.
The Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported on Oct. 27 that “Bergman referenced the POST Commission and said it does the job a civilian review board would do.”
No, it does not. Its limited capacity makes that impossible. Unless it finds reason to open an investigation, it does not assess the evidence.
That same Telegram article says, “Toomey also said, ‘the state’s POST program has worked well.”
It has, but its job is not determining the facts; it reviews the municipal department’s determination.
Prove me wrong, councilors. Invite a representative from POST to a council meeting and ask them if they are intended to replace local oversight.
Bureau of Professional Standards (BOPS)
The BOPS unit sits within the police department and acts as the internal investigatory arm for officer misconduct. It is not independent; it is people who work together investigating each other. It has a long history of lies and manipulation. Toomey constantly speaks of it like it’s credible, but refuses to look at a shred of evidence of its long history of widespread failure.
The last time I spoke with Councilor Toomey and attempted to refer her to the writings of a federal judge in the Natale Cosenza case, which clearly displays the vast contradictions between testimony under oath of an officer in Cosenza’s criminal case when compared to the same officer’s testimony in Cosenza’s civil case. I got an eye-roll and told that she is “focused on the future.”
Under Chief of Police Paul Saucier, BOPS appears to have improved. Some officers faced accountablility through the department’s own initiative. We have yet to see a case that is anything close to the serious cases that emerged over the last six years. That doesn’t mean there aren’t cases. It just means there aren’t lawsuits yet publicly known.
The same Oct. 27 Telegram article says that Bergman “also said other professions, including lawyers and doctors are overseen by colleagues, not those from other professions, and believes the same should go for officers.”
Peer review isn’t done by coworkers in any profession. When a scientist writes a paper, it doesn’t get published because he hands it to the scientist he works with and knows. Peer review requires independent oversight, which a majority of councilors oppose.
The same article also said that Bergman “also said that it would be impossible for members of the {civilian review} board to be “purely objective,” and that “everyone has bias.”
Sure, everyone has bias. Including police officers when investigating officers in their own department.
No organization in all of human history has effectively policed itself. It won’t start working now.
The Human Rights Commission
In that same article, both Councilor-elect Rivera and Toomey referred to the Human Rights Commission as having sufficient oversight capability.
When the city manager can unilaterally declare that the Human Rights Commission must stop any police oversight work, as he did in 2023, that’s not an oversight mechanism, nor is it a shred of independence.
The Human Rights Commission was once a strong, independent entity. In the 1970s, it sued the city twice in defense of its rights under the ordinance that established it to investigate police misconduct. It won in both cases.
While the Human Rights Commission has subpoena power, the city council rendered that power useless in the 1990s when it restructured the ordinance that delegates power to the commission. Today, the ordinance requires the commission to work through the city solicitor, an appointee of the city manager, to use that power. The manager is the top law enforcement official in the city. The city charter defines the manager as the Chief Conservator of the Peace.
That’s more investigating themselves, an obvious conflict of interest.
DEI Department
This is the most laughable aspect of the argument raised by anti-oversight extremists. What in the world does the DEI department know about investigating policing? One would think this has all the pitfalls of concerns about a lack of experience with a Civilian Review Board.
There is a reason they don’t voice those concerns. The leader of that department, Chief Equity Officer Kevin Lovaincy, is an appointee of the City Manager.
Again, no independence.
In the same October Telegram article, Toomey also mentioned:
- Random body camera audits – Internal police department function (not independent)
- Police Policy Review Committee – Internal police department function (not independent)
- Accreditation process – nothing to do with investigating misconduct
These arguments are all absurd.
The reality is simple. The most extreme view within the police department demands anything but the status quo is “anti-police sentiment.” These people, who advance these absurd arguments, think they know better than everything Western civilization has learned in the last 800 years about governance.
It is the furthest thing from moderate. It is an extremist view that a government is only accountable to itself, not the governed.
