As of January 1st, 2021 Massachusetts law on School Resource Officers (SROs) has changed.

In past years the deployment of SRO’s was entirely up to the Chief of Police. But the choice of whether to place armed police in schools is now entirely up to school superintendents.

When Governor Baker signed S.2963, the compromise police reform bill, it redefined many elements of the SRO program, striking Section 37P in its entirety, and now gives superintendents the final word on whether they want armed police in district schools:

“(d) For the purpose of fostering a safe and healthy environment for all students through strategic and appropriate use of law enforcement resources and to achieve positive outcomes for youth and public safety, a chief of police, at the request of the superintendent and subject to appropriation, shall assign at least 1 school resource officer to serve the city, town, commonwealth charter school, regional school district or county agricultural school. In the case of a regional school district, commonwealth charter school or county agriculture school, the chief of police of the city or town in which the school is located shall, at the request of the superintendent, assign the school resource officer who may be the same officer for all schools in the city or town.”

I’ve attached a PDF of the legislation.

The New Bedford schools, which last October kicked off a community “conversation” with a propaganda video supporting SROs, have now enlisted community members to help improve the program. But instead of improving the optics of their SRO program, the school district now needs to justify its continued existence. And there are two questions the School Superintendent must answer:

1. what risks do placing armed police in schools pose to children, particularly children of color?
2. has the police presence in schools actually kept children safe and deterred rampage shootings?

The NAACP New Bedford Branch is sponsoring a community discussion on January 28th from 6-7PM via Zoom which may offer some answers to these questions — questions the schools ought to be asking as well. The panel will feature: Leon Smith, Seq., Executive Director of Citizens for Juvenile Justice; Dr. Ricardo Rosa, Co-Chair of New Bedford Coalition to Save Our Schools; Matthew Cregor, Staff Attorney at Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee; and will be moderated by NAACP member Moriah Wiggins.

Everyone is welcome to attend. Connect via Zoom at 6PM on Thursday, January 28th:

On January 6th Bristol County Sheriff and Massachusetts Trump campaign Chair Thomas M. Hodgson condemned in the weakest terms possible the violence of fellow Trump supporters storming the Capitol building, planting bombs, preparing to lynch both legislators and the Vice President, and attempting to prevent certification of Electoral College votes. Hodgson tweeted, “What happened at the United States Capitol today was outrageous and completely unacceptable. It is never acceptable or appropriate for anyone to resort to violence and malicious destruction to express grievances.”

Hodgson, a supporter of United Cape Patriots, a Massachusetts group that descended on the Capitol on January 6th, echoed the rioters’ false claim that the vote had been stolen: “The fastest way to end the ongoing debate over elections issues and the deep divide in our country is to have an audit prior to Jan. 20 so both Democrats and Republicans can be assured they can continue to have faith in our elections.” The problem is, post-election vote audits are not a Constitutionally-permitted alternative to counting Electoral College votes that the states have already certified.

The January 6th siege, which claimed the life of at least one police officer, was barely two months from the date Hodgson praised Trump for his “commitment to uphold the rule of law and support law enforcement in our mission to keep our families, neighborhoods and nation safe.”

Hodgson hypocritically claimed right before the election that Trump’s enemies were “attempting a ‘coup’ based on their ‘Russian Hoax’, in an attempt to deny the American people the legitimate outcome based on our nation’s electoral process.” Hodgson’s non-condemnation of the protesters and complete dismissal of the President’s responsibility for inflaming them, tell us a lot about his concern for the electoral process, the rule of law, or even Hodgson’s support of law enforcement. There is none.

The Bristol County Sheriff knows full well that marauding rioters at the Capitol had been enraged by Trump’s non-stop lies that the presidential election was fraudulently stolen from him, an assertion that Hodgson has not sufficiently distanced himself from.

If Hodgson is truly sad at “disorderly and violent behavior” then let him acknowledge the Massachusetts Attorney General’s report that he, himself, was largely responsible for an unjustified attack on detainees in his own jail. Hodgson, who has repeatedly been found by both state and federal judges to have violated the civil rights of his prisoners, personally attacked and unleashed dogs on non-resisting ICE detainees on May 1st, 2020. Hodgson would not consent to be interviewed by the AG, and the ACLU has had to sue for tapes of the riot that Hodgson provoked, which Hodgson will not release.

It seems that Hodgson shares a lot of political DNA with the Capitol rioters. And Hodgson’s well-established neo-Confederate and his white supremacist connections make his perfunctory condemnations of white supremacist and white militia violence meaningless.

If Tom Hodgson truly wants “an election audit before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration” — an audit whose only goal is erasing over 60 state court rulings rejecting challenges to their election outcomes — he ought to welcome audits of his own jail. But Hodgson crudely dismissed the Attorney General’s report: “It’s about halfway down the sewer pipe,” Hodgson said. “That’s about how much value I put into the attorney general’s recommendations that are politically motivated.”

The validity of the presidential election was certified in fifty states, upheld by a multitude of court decisions, and then supported by Republican and Democratic officials who adhered to their oaths of office. But that’s not good enough for Hodgson, who only a day after the coup attempt said, “I do believe that there’s likely fraud, based on what I’ve seen so far, it appears that [fraud] is very likely.”

Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Capitol insurrectionists were fed false and fantastical conspiracy theories that undermined any possibility of accepting a valid election outcome. They assembled, marched and viciously attacked the Capitol because of those lies.

Lies that Hodgson continues to spread.

Part 3: Comparing your city’s police spending to others

Part 1 of this series was a quick overview of New Bedford’s 333-page FY2021 city budget along with a spreadsheet created from those numbers. Part 2 was a look at New Bedford’s department funding and how it changed from last year’s numbers. In general, the New Bedford Police is being spared the brutal “defunding” that other departments will suffer — even as COVID-19 wipes out the city’s cash reserves.

What should a community really be spending on policing? How much is enough? What do similar-sized communities to ours spend? Is there a relationship between spending on policing and crime? Education and police? Do grants and state subsidies permit municipalities to spend more on police? How are poverty and race related to policing?

There are 75 communities in Massachusetts with populations over 25,000 for which more extensive demographic, economic, racial, and policing data are available than the state’s smaller towns. Since larger communities wrestle more with police issues we’ll focus on this subset.

You can find some useful data here:

• FBI Law Enforcement Staffing data
• FBI Violent and Property Crime data
• MA 12-Month Average Unemployment data
• MA DESE data on the racial composition of students
• MA DESE Full Time Teaching Staff data
• MA Median Household income from the Census bureau
• MA Presidential Election results 2020

From these downloaded numbers I constructed a second spreadsheet and built multiple worksheets which look at policing rates (measured as officers per 10K population) compared to staffing of teachers, crime rates, median family income, degree of political conservatism, and race.

You can refer to the spreadsheet for city-specific data, but the graphs depict only the general relationships between factors.

1. Increasing officers per 10K did not affect (raise or lower) teachers per 10K population. In Massachusetts many communities are free to spend a greater percentage of their budgets on police since they know the state will pick up the tab for education. New Bedford is one of these. Not every community spends similar proportions of their budget on police or teachers; and the data shows it.

2. Increases in police per 10K population correspond to increases in violent crime. Note that some communities with lower crime rates have the same proportion of officers per 10K as others with higher crime rates. There is great variation in what a community deems an appropriate level of policing for the crime it experiences.

3. The next graph surprised me. There seems to be no connection between the degree of a community’s political conservatism and an increase in officers per 10K. I had suspected that the more conservative the community, the larger its police force would be. But in fact the trend line for officers per 10K decreases almost imperceptibly as Trump support rises. Go figure. Massachusetts.

4. Another result that matched prediction was that the higher a community’s median family income, the lower the police per 10K. The trend line shows that upscale [and usually whiter] communities do not police themselves as intensively as poorer communities.

5. Finally, race. I computed the percentage of non-white students in each community’s public schools and plotted them against policing per 10K. As I had suspected, as the percentage of Black and brown children increases, police per 10K increases as well.

We have known for a long time that poverty is an incubator for crime, and that racism creates conditions that create and sustain generational poverty.

A simple-minded solution for dealing with crime is to militarize, surveil, and occupy neighborhoods with over-policing, and to fill jails and prisons with people who after entering the “system” will never work, vote, or have sustained connection to their children or communities again.

For many of our elected officials there is always some excuse for slashing social programs but there is always money in the budget for mass-incarceration and increasing police presence on our streets and in our schools.

So while we debate whether the New Bedford police budget ought to be $32 million or some other arbitrary number, or if armed police serve any useful purpose in our schools, we should not forget that lifting people out of poverty, not promoting a police state, is the only thing that reduces crime in the long run.

Part 2: Most departments “defunded” except for the New Bedford Police

Budget: bud-jet; n. A systematic plan for the expenditure of a finite resource, such as money or time.

Part 1 of this series is a quick overview of the City’s 333-page FY2021 New Bedford City budget along with a spreadsheet created from the numbers. In this post we look at department funding and changes from last year’s numbers. Besides the generous funding they receive, and even with a delay in building a new police center, New Bedford Police will be spared the brutal “defunding” that other departments will suffer — even as COVID-19 continues to overwhelm city resources and cash reserves.

Let’s jump right into the revenues. In 2021 the Buttonwood Zoo will bring in $150K less, revenue from traffic tickets will decrease by $200K, building permits will be down by $200K, half a million dollars in investment income are up in smoke, and a quarter of a million dollars of “miscellaneous non-recurring” revenue will be lost. But the most painful loss of all will be $3.9 million of so-called Free Cash revenue lost to the pandemic; this is the money carried over from the preceding fiscal year. It’s all gone now. Consequently, funding for many city departments will be slashed in 2021. But the NBPD is not one of them.

On the Expense side the loss of $4+ million in revenue doesn’t worry City Council enough to stop it from giving themselves a 5% raise while taking away $50K in funding from the Mayor’s office and another $50K from Purchasing. “General Government” — the catch-all budget category for most familiar city services — fares worst of all, losing more than a million dollars in funding.

The Department of Public Safety will also be defunded — that is, all departments but the Police. The projected FY2021 Police Department budget increases ever-so-slightly, but the Fire Department is defunded to the tune of $1 million and EMS services loses $180,000 despite contributing an additional $200K in revenue. This has got to be an especially painful slap in the face for public employees who actually save lives.

While the City spends $50 million a year on “Public Safety” (most of it for the police) it spends only $5 million a year on human services. In 2021 New Bedford will spend slightly more ($1.2 million) on Community Services than it did last year but will slash Health Department funding — even as the pandemic is still raging. You might think of Veterans Services as a federal responsibility, but the City pays more ($2.7 million) for Veterans Services than Community Services and Health combined.

The budget is just full of surprises.

The Zoo and libraries get a tiny boost in 2021, and there is another $35K more for parks and beaches, but funding for tourism and marketing will be slashed by $65K.

Two big changes in City expenses are a $30 million increase in the school budget and a $25 million decrease in Health and Life Insurance. These numbers are related because, in a bookkeeping change, the school budget now reflects healthcare costs. This is not the case with other departments, however.

It would be nice if future budgets would do the same for all departments — reflecting health care costs in their total operating expenses. Future budgets should also reflect pension obligations and the portion of debt maintenance that each department or Enterprise Fund incurs, as well.

The City Council — over-represented by bankers and real estate agents, beneficiaries of patronage, and the Chamber of Commerce — has consistently opposed raising property taxes on City residents but is only happy to cash state checks which fund more than half of all City programs. And when the “free money” or state aid dries up the City has always been quick to borrow. In fact, it’s done so much borrowing over the years that it now pays roughly $12 million in debt service each year to lenders.

Besides the New Bedford Public Schools, the City’s single largest expenditures are $32 million in pension payouts, a similar number for police, $18 million for healthcare, a similar number for Fire, $6 million for running Greater New Bedford Voc, and a similar number for EMS.

Some city services are organized into Enterprise Funds which are somewhat self-supporting. The airport costs about $1 million a year to run, cable access costs about $1.2 million a year, the parking authority $1.2 million, wastewater $25 million a year, and city water $17 million. But these are use-based services which invoice customers instead of levying taxes. Unlike police or general government, Enterprise Funds themselves fund the wages of those who provide their services.

When it comes to police spending, the best estimate of the cost of the 302 officers on the job in 2021 and the infrastructure required to support them is about $32.6 million. This number is derived from the $25,527,814 shown in the budget, plus another $4,235,554 in estimated pension payouts and $2,894,190 in estimated health premiums, for a total of $32,657,558. This is a conservative estimate because police benefits and salaries outstrip everyone else’s and police pensions are much higher. In all likelihood total police costs are much higher than $32.6 million.

So when we look at city budgets we ought to return to the definition of a budget — planning around a finite resource called money — and think about what else we might purchase with all those finite resources.

The cost of the New Bedford Police Department is more than all the tax money the City spends on EMS, highway and street repair, Community Services, Health Services, Veterans Services, Parks and Beaches, Refuse Management, and making interest payments on its debt — combined.

A “budget is a profoundly moral document,” presidential advisor Paul Begala once noted. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be.”

Part 1: Introduction to New Bedford’s City Budget

In the wake of a national moment of reckoning with policing in America, while some communities are making deep cuts to their police budgets, others have begun to examine them. To my knowledge no one has yet started the process of studying the New Bedford Police budget, so I offer this introduction to the City Budget as nothing more than a starting point for anyone who wants to open an honest conversation about how the City spends taxpayer money.

Download and read through the 333-page FY2021 New Bedford City budget. You may also want to download the spreadsheet I created from the budget numbers (I also talked with the City’s CFO, Ari Sky, to obtain additional insight into the percentages of pension and healthcare money spent on various departments).

The 2021 New Bedford City budget is slightly over a third of a billion dollars — $363,897,500. Of that amount, local taxes raise 8%, real estate and property taxes pull in 36.7%, and borrowing and grants account for another 2.77%. But the largest chunk of revenue — a whopping $190,962,433, or more than 52% of the budget — comes in the form of state aid.

The $190 million in revenue from the Commonwealth is very nearly the entire cost of running the New Bedford Schools. The remaining revenue, which New Bedford residents themselves contribute through assessments and property taxes, is $167,247,075 and must be used to pay for everything else.

Of this portion paid by New Bedford taxpayers, 20% goes to the New Bedford Police, 15% to the Fire Department, 14% to state and county assessments, 7% to debt service, and the rest to running a variety of municipal services — highways and streets, inspections, human services, culture and recreation, refuse management, and many others. Naturally, the greatest expenses occur in departments which offer pensions and healthcare to large numbers of employees. My spreadsheet reflects departmental pensions and healthcare in Department budgets.

According to the FY2021 budget the City will employ 3,227 people — 2,162 school employees and an additional 1,065, including 302 police officers, 211 firemen, 88 Water Department employees, 70 City fleet mechanics, 64 Public Infrastructure workers, 42 EMS technicians, 34 Wastewater workers, 25 zoo employees, and 24 library workers. Many of these other services appear under “General Government” in the graph above. The New Bedford labor force numbers roughly 42,308. Of these, 38,482 are employed. This means the City of New Bedford is a major employer, providing work for approximately 8.3%, or one out of twelve people.

What is striking about the budget numbers is that, while two-thirds of all City jobs are in the New Bedford Schools, of the remaining jobs almost a third are police officers.

So read the budget yourself. Crunch the numbers yourself. Create a budget with your own priorities.

And ask yourself — should a hard-luck city that can’t even pay a half of its own expenses be spending 20% of its taxpayer money on police — and reserving 30% of its non-teaching jobs for police?

Wouldn’t New Bedford’s many pressing needs be more appropriately met by employees whose toolkits aren’t limited to a Glock and a Taser?

Last night I read through Charlie Baker’s objections to S.2693, the conference version of the Police Accountability Bill.

In his 13-page letter to both the House and Senate, Baker proposed extensive changes to the Legislature’s reforms. His main objection to Police Accountability was public accountability itself. Baker’s amendments to the Police Accountability bill remove:

• civilian oversight

• specifically, advice and oversight from racial justice groups

• provisions to ban facial recognition

As Progressive Mass points out, Baker had three options. “(1) He could show that he cares about police accountability and listen to the activists demanding action and just sign it. (2) He could show that he doesn’t care and simply veto it. (3) Finally, he could again show that he doesn’t care, but by sending back amendments to weaken the bill. He chose #3.”

This wasn’t a passive veto, and yet it wasn’t Baker negotiating either. This was the governor mailing a Fuck You Very Much letter to racial justice advocates written for him by the Massachusetts police lobby.

After George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were murdered, Baker made all the right noises, giving lip service to the concerns of civil rights groups, civil libertarians, and people of color. In early December Globe columnist Joan Vennochi asked, “Will Charlie Baker back police reform or police unions?” It was mainly a rhetorical question, as she reminded the governor that it ought to be a no-brainer since he claimed to believe in the bill’s reforms. In the end, of course, Baker caved to the police unions.

In rejecting civilian oversight Baker even regurgitated the police line: “I do not accept the premise that civilians know best how to train police.”

Until recently the United States has had a tradition of excluding ex-military from running the Pentagon. Baker himself ought to understand how it works: the National Guard is ultimately under his command, not its own. Only in weak and failed states are paramilitary organizations accountable only to themselves.

But in rejecting civilian control Baker struck a number of sections from S.2963 (3, 5, 7-8, 12, 14, 17, 19-20, 24-25, 27-29, 31-36, 40, 55-56, 62, 66, 71, 75-76, 81-82, 88-89, 93, and 121) — for the most part simply restoring the name of the training committee from the Legislative reforms to the original “municipal police training committee.”

Baker also struck section 26, which barred the use of facial recognition, and significantly modified section 30, which requires officers to use proportional force and de-escalation techniques and which prescribes decertification and revocation procedures. Baker’s section 30 makes officer misconduct subject (as before) to internal affairs investigations that can take up to a year or more to complete and places additional constraints on officer interrogation. Who else gets to investigate themselves but police? And where else but a police state?

It was apparent that the unions had leaned heavily on Baker because he also removed section 60, which specifies the process required for an officer to return to work after a year-long break in service; and section 61, which describes requirements for returning from physical or mental disability. Baker also removed Section 74, which defines an officer as a trainee regardless of collective bargaining agreement, until the officer has completed his certification course.

There are few bright spots in Baker’s hollowed out and gutted version of police accountability. But one may be that the Governor left the Legislature’s changes to SRO programs in place, the most important of which gives School Superintendents discretion to use SROs instead of Police Chiefs.

Baker’s letter to the Legislature opens by completely cutting the public out of public oversight of the police and restructuring the Municipal Police Training Committee. His letter calls for 16 voting appointees, each to serve a 3 year term: five police chiefs by region; one selected by the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association; one of his own choice; one officer from the Massachusetts Police Association Executive Board; two sheriffs of his choosing (God help us if one is Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson); the chair of the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement (Eddy Chrispin); president of Massachusetts Association of Women in Law enforcement (Marie Cleary); Boston Police Commissioner (William Gross); Colonel of the State Police (Christopher Mason); Attorney General (Maura Healey); and one person designated by his EOPSS Secretary.

The Municipal Police Training Committee also includes several non-voting members from: Personnel Administration; Corrections; Youth Services; Probation; Parole Board; Committee on Criminal Justice; Chief Justice of the Trial Court; Chief justice of the District Court; Commissioner of Education; Massachusetts Bar Association; Special Agent in charge of the Boston FBI; a District Attorney; and a grab-bag including city administrators; the Clerk of Superior Court; one social worker; one mental health clinician; and one lonely public defender.

Baker’s training committee is responsible for re-writing policies for Use of Force and hiring new officers. Given that the public now has no say in their own policing, neither the type of officers hired nor the manner in which they are trained to shoot to kill or interact with civilians will change.

No reforms, no oversight, no accountability, no change. Just the way the police lobby likes it.

But Blue Lives most certainly matter to the Governor. Baker’s police version ensures that police officers get a 2-hour in-service course each year to help them with their PTSD and suicide prevention, and each officer will attend and complete a course on mental wellness and suicide prevention. Unfortunately, the public won’t know which officers are time bombs ready to go off. But even if we could identify them, we’d have no say in removing or disciplining them.

The tepid reforms that made it into the conferenced version of S.2963 were weak and disappointing enough after the House stripped out limits on Qualified Immunity. But now the governor is determined to deliver the coup de grace to police accountability. Police will continue to be accountable only to themselves, shielded by a governor who has decided that Black and brown lives don’t matter all that much — and that the real goal of police reform is complete impunity for cops.

Ignoring the concerns of people of color, deaf to the demands of civil rights and racial justice advocates, Baker’s edits are not only bad — they’re an insult to the people of the Commonwealth, especially those who need protection from bad cops the most.

On December 1st, after an endless and opaque process of reconciling House and Senate versions of police accountability legislation, both houses of the Massachusetts legislature voted to send S.2963 (“An Act Relative to Justice, Equity and Accountability in the Commonwealth”) to the Governor’s desk for signing.

Following national outrage at the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and thanks to unrelenting pressure by police reform advocates, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Joint Judiciary Chair Claire Cronin were unable to bury police reform, as the House often does with reforms or progressive legislation.

Still, the reconciliation process ended up shielding police unions from many of the reforms in the Senate version. Among the legislation’s bitter disappointments: it preserves Qualified Immunity for police officers; fails to reform civil service laws which govern the hiring of police officers; leaves unchanged shoot-to-kill training for police cadets; doesn’t touch structural racism anywhere — including police departments; and fails to create alternatives to police handling of medical and psychiatric emergencies.

On the plus side, S.2963 adopts language regulating the use of face recognition, establishes a POST (Peace Officer Standards and Training) Commission with subpoena power to certify and investigate law enforcement officers — though not corrections officers. The bill also spells out the types of evidence necessary to suspend or revoke officer certification.

Under the POST Commission established by this legislation there are to be two divisions: one for police training and certification; another for police standards. This second division maintains a database of complaints of misconduct for each officer, and investigations carried out are subject to public records law (with some limitations).

The bill before the Governor limits the use of chokeholds, attack dogs, tear gas, and specifies de-escalation policies. It is the POST Commission’s responsibility to enforce these use of force standards. The bill also ends no-knock warrants — unless police can demonstrate they are life-saving.

School Resource Officers (SROs) will now be assigned by request of the school Superintendent, not the Chief of Police. And both school personnel and SROs are prohibited from sharing certain types of student information with law enforcement. The bill also expands expungement of juvenile records.

S.2963 defines police violence as a public health issue and requires the Department of Public Health to collect and report information on injuries or deaths at the hands of law enforcement. Besides the commission to study Qualified Immunity, the bill also establishes commissions to study: body cams; facial recognition; emergency hospitalization; civil service law; police cadet training; structural racism in correctional facilities and in the parole and probation systems; rewriting the model Memorandum of Understanding for SRO programs; and examining alternative emergency services.

While not daring to touch discriminatory hiring practices, the bill tweaks hiring, promotion, and discipline rules, especially where overtime fraud, corruption, and patronage may be involved.

The many study commissions established and the many decisions deferred by S.2963 show that the legislation is only the beginning in achieving real police accountability in the Commonwealth.

The City Councils of Springfield and Boston — where there have been numerous and high-profile cases of police abuse — have both applauded the bill’s measures. Boston City Council President Kim Janey and Springfield City Council President Justin Hurst penned a letter to the Governor on December 2nd urging him to sign the legislation without delay and without amendment.

In New Bedford, where Councilors were quick to condemn the Senate version of the bill for its Qualified Immunity provision, only a few members of the Council were prepared to offer opinions on any of the other provisions. Most I talked to claimed ignorance of its provisions.

Joseph P. Lopes, Ward 6 Councilor and Council President, said his main concern with the bill was Qualified Immunity and its impact on the morale of police and EMS workers. Lopes supports the School Resource Officer program and is concerned that, whether it’s the Chief or the Superintendent who requests SROs, that they have the discretion to move them around between schools. Lopes claims students want police officers in their hallways and he took a swipe at the Legislature for not inviting student testimony on SROs. Lopes was not alarmed by the establishment of the POST program, but could not comment on other provisions because he said he’d need more time to read through the entire bill.

Brian Gomes, the chair of Mayor Mitchell’s Use of Force Commission, and an author of a letter to the Legislature blasting Qualified Immunity, told me emphatically that he would never support the new bill. In consultation with the Police Union president, Gomes told me, he has determined that the bill will do a disservice to the public. When asked what provisions of the bill he objected to — now that Qualified Immunity is no longer a concern — Gomes told me that’s all he was prepared to say.

Councilor Debora Coelho, who earlier this year enrolled herself in the New Bedford Citizen’s Police Academy, is not only a fan of the police but an enthusiastic supporter of School Resource Officers. Asked about the change in discretion over SROs, Coelho said it’s not necessarily a bad thing to give a Superintendent discretion over their assignment. Similarly, she supports Qualified Immunity but does not oppose establishing a commission to look further into the issue.

Coelho disagrees with the bill’s ban on facial recognition. She has been a long-time supporter of CCTV and sees no reason that facial recognition should not be added to the law enforcement toolbox. Coelho does not oppose the new POST commission; in fact she believes it will ultimately give the public more confidence in officers and, therefore, actually be a good thing for police. Coelho doubts whether the Council will issue a statement on the entire police reform package anytime soon.

Scott Hovsepian, president of the 4,000-member Massachusetts Coalition of Police, is not happy that he didn’t get everything he wanted at the State House. Even after the Legislature yielded to police unions on Qualified Immunity and abandoned reforms of hiring and training of police, any measure of accountability was too much for Hovsepian: “The final compromise legislation is a final attack on police officers by lawmakers on Beacon Hill. It is 129 pages crowded with punitive measures, layers and layers of new bureaucracy and the abridgment of basic due process rights of police. It was delivered with almost zero notice and zero time for our leadership, our legal team and our members to process it before debate and votes were scheduled.”

But police reformers have found enough good in the legislation to get behind it.

Sonia Chang-Diaz is a member of the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus, a fierce proponent of police accountability, and one of the sponsors of S.2963. On December 2nd Chang-Diaz sent out an email to supporters requesting that they contact the Governor about swiftly signing the bill.

Carol Rose, Executive Director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, also welcomed the legislation. “This bill represents meaningful progress for Massachusetts, even as more work remains to be done. The ACLU will keep fighting for reforms to protect Massachusetts communities from over-policing and police violence–and end the impunity with which some officers operate. It’s time for systemic change and an end to policing as usual.”

Marlene Pollock, an organizer for the Coalition for Social Justice and a member of Bristol County for Correctional Justice, characterized the bill as “an important piece of legislation [that] bans racial profiling and chokeholds, creates a Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission which establishes the possibility of civilian oversight of police, among other things. This bill has enough in it that police unions are fighting like mad to tank it. The fact that Qualified Immunity was not tackled shows how much still needs to be done both at the legislative and grass roots level to elevate the many voices of victims of police misconduct.” Pollock urged immediate and un-amended passage of S.2963.

NAACP New Bedford Branch President, Dr. LaSella L. Hall, expressed disappointment with a Democratic legislative supermajority tasked with addressing police accountability in the midst of a national reckoning. “In the context of all the blood spilled in 2020, if this legislation is the best we can do, then we have a hell of a lot further to go. This bill is about 25 years too late. Police accountability should not be a political football. It’s about the lives of innocent people.”

Hall faulted the timidity of the Legislature in failing to end Qualified Immunity, the “get out of jail” doctrine that provides impunity for even bad cops. He cited the bill’s limited input from community groups, the disproportionate influence of police voices, weak community representation on civilian boards, ineffectual tweaks to hiring and training, and the lack of value placed on multilingual officers.

Despite the bill’s weaknesses, Hall describes S.2963 as “a necessary step in a long campaign for police accountability. The NAACP will use the measures afforded in the bill as a tool to advance the policies we believe in: community control or abolition of SROs, improvements to a long-overdue POST system, and promoting a task force that will promote ending racial bias.”

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, formerly a Boston City Council member, said that the bill “fell short” of needs and expectations by refusing to rein in Qualified Immunity: “For far too long, the doctrine of qualified immunity has protected the very people charged with enforcing the law from any consequence for breaking it, allowing police officers to use their badge as a shield from accountability. The legislation does not go far enough to address this systemic problem. By merely creating a commission to study the impact of qualified immunity in the Commonwealth, and limiting immunity only for decertified officers, rather than ending the harmful doctrine outright, Massachusetts has missed an opportunity to lead by ensuring that those responsible for upholding the law are subject to it too.”

Pressley continued, “In any other occupation in America, there are standards of conduct and consequences for violating them — doctors can be sued for malpractice, lawyers can be sued for negligence. Policing should be no exception.”

Despite the legislation’s shortcomings, Police Reform Now (MA), a grassroots coalition of civil rights, religious, labor, and other organizations that advocate for legislative solutions to over-policed communities and for greater transparency in policing, is also urging the Governor to sign the bill without changes. But the coalition stops short of calling S.2963 “real” police reform because it doesn’t end Qualified Immunity, fails to include racial justice leaders in the POST Commission, and does not change how police are hired and trained.

Though America’s moment of national reckoning seems to have appeared quickly, it was grassroots organizing and years of advocacy that paved the way for these legislative reforms.

New Bedford police reform activist Erik Andrade, a member of Police Reform Now (MA) and BREATHE!, notes that “this bill affirms the power of the people and the importance of grassroots solidarity across the state. This step forward is promising and yet this is not a promised land. So we must continue to organize until real police accountability and restorative justice is achieved for families like Malcolm Gracia’s and for communities like New Bedford.”

Demands for police accountability aren’t going away in SouthCoast, Massachusetts, no matter what some officials think.

In the absence of progress on police accountability in a legislature with a Democratic supermajority, residents have been attempting to address police abuse at the local level. But at every step of the way they have been thwarted and disrespected by politicians who don’t even bother to conceal their contempt for police accountability or those demanding it.

New Bedford City Councilor Brian Gomes has convened another of his “non-listening” session to consider only the PD’s Use of Force policies. Bigger issues — qualified immunity, SROs, community review boards with subpoena power — aren’t up for discussion. And in any case, neither the Mayor nor the Council care to listen: “The public hearing is not intended to be a forum to engage in debate nor address issues not directly relevant to the policies.”

2020 New Bedford Commission on NBPD Use of Force Policies Public Hearings on Zoom Wednesday, December 2nd, 6:00-7:30pm

https://www.newbedfordpd.com/new-bedford-commission-on-nbpd-use-of-force-policies

United Interfaith Action, which is one of a number of community groups that has been attempting (unsuccessfully) to gain the ear of Fall River and New Bedford mayors, has scheduled two events in both cities:

UIA Police Reform Community Action Fall River: Community Action Meeting on Zoom Monday, November 30th, 6:30-8:00pm

https://mcan.salsalabs.org/uiacamnov30/index.html

UIA Police Reform Community Action New Bedford: Community Action Meeting on Zoom Thursday, December 3rd, 6:30-8:00pm

https://mcan.salsalabs.org/uiacamdec3/index.html

Legislators — take note.

Sometime after midnight on March 13, 2020 Breonna Taylor was sleeping when plainclothes Louisville narcotics officers, acting on faulty information, executed a “no-knock warrant” — a violation of almost everything in the Fourth Amendment — breaking down her front door with a battering ram and killing her in the hallway of her own home.

According to Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, police were looking for a drug stash owned by Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, who did not live with her and had already been arrested. During the botched raid, Taylor’s current boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, assumed it was a home invasion and fired what he said was a warning shot. Police then unleashed a fusillade of 35 rounds on both occupants of the apartment. Taylor was hit six times and several shots were fired into adjacent apartments, endangering three people. As Breonna Taylor bled out, police stood around watching her die, offering her no aid.

Breonna’s killing has brought some changes to Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) procedures and also resulted in a $12 million wrongful death settlement with the City of Louisville.

But holding police to account was a bridge too far.

A Kentucky grand jury presented Judge Annie O’Connell with its recommendation that none of the three officers who shot Taylor ought to face charges. Although former Det. Brett Hankison was indicted on three charges of wanton endangerment — for shooting up the apartments next door — Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove will not face any charges for killing Taylor.

Police have been less than honest. Although at least one officer, Tony James, was photographed wearing a body camera, and another officer was filmed wearing a bodycam mount on his vest, LMPD at first insisted there was no bodycam footage. Then Todd McMurtry, Sgt. Mattingly’s attorney, miraculously produced bodycam footage of the raid that showed that his client, who was shot in the leg, could not possibly have shot Taylor.

Likewise, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s whitewash makes a mockery of fact and law. Cameron claims that Walker was the only one at the scene who could have shot Mattingly because all the officers were carrying .40 caliber handguns. But Det. Brett Hankison — the one who shot up the neighboring apartments — had a 9 mm weapon. Worse, Cameron turns justice on its head by declaring that the police had a right to defend themselves from Walker — even after breaking in, unannounced, in error, and plainclothed. Whatever Cameron’s tortured rationale, officers were not defending themselves from a little 26-year-old EMT when they fired almost two dozen rounds at her.

Following the release of Cameron’s findings, on September 21st the same police department that killed Breonna Taylor declared a state of emergency, announcing that in anticipation of protests they would be shutting down traffic, limiting parking, and setting up barricades — to protect property.

Breonna Taylor’s killing has left Louisville in turmoil. Hearts are broken and in the absence of justice many windows are going to have to be broken to vent outrage at a system that values property more than human life, and black lives least of all.

Breonna Taylor. Say her name. Honor her name.

If we truly believe in the rule of law in this country, Breonna Taylor’s killers must be held to account.

There’s quite a story behind New Bedford’s City Council offering up a “Blue Lives” resolution at precisely the time the City needs reassurance that Black Lives matter.

On May 25, 2020 George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer triggered protests all over the country. In New Bedford, where the memory of police murders of Malcolm Gracia and Eric Aguiar were fresh, Mayor Jon Mitchell, a former federal prosecutor, appointed a Use of Force Commission on June 15, 2020 and put it in the hands of City Councilor Brian Gomes, a law and order zealot who supported chain gangs in the late 90’s. Both Mitchell’s Commission, and his choice of Gomes to lead it, drew howls of protest from citizen groups who foresaw that neither Michell nor Gomes were likely to act in good faith.

On July 7, 2020 NAACP New Bedford President LaSella Hall gave New Bedford and county officials a list of demands for protecting communities of color, including establishing a Community Review Board, prohibiting choke holds, training and officer credentialing, reducing blanket surveillance, revisiting the police budget, reopening the Malcolm Gracia case, and stopping High Energy Patrols — aggressive stop an frisk.

BREATHE! Timeline here

But as far as Mitchell and the Council were concerned, they had created a “study” — and that would be the end of it. Behind the scenes the Council was moving — not to reform the police — but to shield it from public accountability.

On August 20, 2020 New Bedford City Council President Joe Lopes requested that

“a member of the Mitchell Administration, the Police Chief, the Fire Chief, the EMS Director, the New Bedford Police Union and the New Bedford Fire Union meet with the members of the Committee on Public Safety and Neighborhoods to discuss the implementation and protection of Qualified Immunity language for the members of the Police Department, the Fire Department, and the Emergency Medical Service.”

The motion carried and was referred to the Council’s Committee on Public Safety and Neighborhoods. On October 14, 2020 the committee met to discuss LED street lights, crosswalks, and vandalization at pocket parks. The Council had also invited New Bedford Police Chief Joseph Cordeiro to consider

“the implementation of using drones to monitor high crime neighborhoods for surveillance across the City, adding another tool in fighting crime; and further requesting, that the drones be used for surveillance and security purposes when the City is holding major events, along with monitoring the City as a whole.”

At this meeting the Council revisited a 2018 request to Mayor Jon Mitchell and then- School Superintendent Pia Durkin to install

“security in all schools throughout the City, which includes panic buttons, cameras, and evacuation plan; and further, consider hiring armed guards possibly using former retirees from the Police Department and/or Veterans; furthermore, that the School Department install a hotline within the school system for students to report unusual activity, threats or even comments about guns or anything that threaten [sic] the wellbeing and safety of all faculty and students, titlle it ‘YOU HEAR IT, YOU SEE IT, YOU REPORT IT, TOGETHER WE MAKE OUR SCHOOLS SAFE.'”

But the highlight of the October 14th committee meeting was to follow through on the August 20 motion on Qualified Immunity. Lopes moved, seconded by Councilor Brad Markey, that the Council write a letter to the State delegation (Rep. Tony Cabral and Sen. Mark Montigny) “voicing the Council’s position against the proposed Qualified Immunity Proposition” in the Police Accountability legislation still languishing in the State House. According to minutes of the October 14th meeting filed by Clerk of Committees Denis Lawrence, Jr.:

“Councillor Lopes asked Police Chief Cordeiro how the current legislation at the State Capital, as it relates to Qualified Immunity, would affect the local police force. He was told if passed, this would cause a problem with the city along with other cities of the same size in Massachusetts. It may end up preventing the police force from protecting the very people they are trying to protect. Neighborhoods that are struggling will continue to struggle if not more so. A police officer will now be hesitant to be proactive if their decisions to act can be used against them. [Cordeiro] believes that the people who should know about the possible problems with Qualified Immunity do not know about it at all. Councillor Lopes expressed his concern for the future quality of police officers this would attract when the department looks to recruit officers; the Chief agreed. The Chief explained that currently the department is operating below their budget and does not have full complement of officers. He predicts an exodus of officers from cities to better communities. The Chief suggested that the Council and other entities flood the State Legislature with calls against the Qualified Immunity proposal. Councillor Lopes expressed his concern of when an Officer uses Narcan to revive a person from an overdose that they can be held liable. The Chief agreed that this could be an issue if passed.”

On September 21, 2020 the 60-Day Use of Force Commission report was released. There were no surprises. The mayor’s mission had been accomplished in those 60 days — to blunt public anger at the police. On September 24, 2020, reading that political winds were in their favor, Mitchell and Cordeiro backed out of a community discussion on police accountability sponsored by United Interfaith Action.

The Qualified Immunity motion had been the product of closed discussions involving the Mayor’s office, the Police Department, Police, Fire, and EMS unions, Lopes, Gomes, Markey and others on the Council. No troublesome citizens were invited. Gomes rushed to announce the motion in an October 22, 2020 statement to the same Councillors who had voted for it. The list of recipients who would soon receive copies was far more important.

On October 26, 2020 the actual letter was supposedly sent to Tony Cabral and Mark Montigny. On that same date Gomes scheduled a Zoom-based Use of Force Commission hearing, which he said would record public questions regarding the New Bedford Police Department’s Use of Force Policy, but Gomes ruled out answering any questions related to police accountability in general.

On November 13, 2020 WBSM’s Chris McCarthy wrote about the Council’s letter, incorrectly characterizing it as “unanimous” when at least one Councillor was not present, and the New Bedford Police Union celebrated McCarthy’s piece on Facebook.

As of November 14, 2020 at least one of the the intended recipients, Rep. Tony Cabral, still had not seen the letter to him that WBSM, the Police Union, and the Standard Times had all received. And Sen. Mark Montigny, when asked for comment by the Standard Times, had none.

These back-room machinations are a slap in the face to New Bedford residents, community groups, and the religious community that had all attempted to engage in good faith with Mitchell and the City Council on matters of police accountability.

The letter Lopes and the Council sent to SouthCoast legislators demonstrated once again that, rather than reflecting the opinions of New Bedford’s citizens, the Mayor and Council have little regard for them. When the Mayor, the PD, police and fire unions, and much of the City Council (half of whom are not accountable to any specific ward) begin doing backroom political favors for the police — locking the public out of the discussion in the process — voters ought to take notice.

There is no reason that police, who claim to need Qualified Immunity because they make split-second, life-and-death decisions, need it any more than surgeons or air traffic controllers. Accountability to the public by both police and public officials is at stake here.

Just as Qualified Immunity confers special protections on the police that no other citizen enjoys, the Mayor and Council doubled down on the injustice by permitting the “special” police voice to be the only one to represent the city on Qualified Immunity.

Voters in King County, Washington just amended their county charter. Charter for Justice had endorsed the 7 amendments and all passed. Of note were three amendments to the charter that pertaine to sheriffs and a fourth that applies to all law enforcement officers in the County.

According to the Seattle Times, the Charter Review Commission overwhelmingly recommended returning the sheriff to an appointed position. An appointed sheriff can now be replaced between elections in case of wrongdong or incompetence, and it removes politics from administration of the department. In addition, an appointed position enables a national search for the best law enforcement and jail administration candidates.

Amendment 1 requires an inquest any time a prisoner dies in custody. And Amendment 6 gives the county discretion to redefine a sheriff’s duties — rather than giving carte blanche to a sheriff.

Finally, Amendment 4 gives teeth (and subpoena power) to King County’s civilian Office of Law Enforcement Oversight (OLEO).

Remarks at the Pleasant Street Police station on October 24th, 2020 at the BREATHE for Malcolm march.

My name is David Ehrens. I am a member of the NAACP New Bedford Branch and Bristol County for Correctional Justice.

Many of us have viewed Attorney Brisson’s evidence in Malcolm Gracia’s murder. It deserves a second look — not by the New Bedford Police, which rushed to exonerate its own officers. And not by the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office, which produced a disgraceful whitewash eight years ago. They weren’t up to the job then — and they certainly aren’t now.

We have called for an investigation by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Civil Rights Division and by the U.S. Department of Justice. But ultimately only community police review commissions with the power to subpoena and fire officers can really address police abuse. Law enforcement institutions and the legislators they lobby show little interest in holding police accountable to the public. This is what I’m talking about:

• A Police Department that has called the public “thugs” and cannot be trusted to investigate itself.

• A police department that over 2 years paid more than a million and a half dollars in payouts for wrongful deaths.

• A DA who defends his predecessor’s whitewash and is personally responsible for some of the highest pre-trial detention and pre-trial death rates in the state

• A sheriff who serves as a spokesman for a white supremacist group, abuses ICE detainees, and has the highest jail suicide rate in the state.

• An Attorney General who refused to use her Civil Rights Division to investigate those jail suicides and whose predecessor wouldn’t look at the Gracia case.

• Representatives on Beacon Hill who — right now — are trying to water down a police accountability bill

• Police unions whose contract provisions bar the public from participating in police misconduct commissions.

• A mayor who co-opts community voices while refusing to listen to them.

• And in this same community we have a school superintendent who began a “community discussion” about police in schools with a police propaganda video.

What these men and women and institutions have in common is that they are all part of a dual system of justice — one in which the law comes down like a ton of bricks on the powerless, while police and the privileged get a pass when they break the same laws.

We’re supposed to be a nation governed by the rule of law. But this is empty rhetoric when every day laws are applied so arbitrarily — or depending on the color of your skin.

This is what has brought us to this march today — to demand equal justice for Malcolm — and for every other Malcolm.

Police reform is not training the public to accept police control. This is how you train a dog. Police reform isn’t singing kumbayah or having coffee with the police. Police reform is changing how communities are policed, and that will NEVER be achieved by ride-alongs, listening sessions, gimmicks or placebos.

Police reform will only come about when WE have the power to hire, fire, train, and discipline police — and when WE get the final say in how our own communities are served.