Civilization and its Discontents

The nation’s right-wing sheriffs flock to the White House for vanity photos of themselves, often captured in embarrassing thrall to the President.

Among the many White House emails returned from the ACLU FOIA request, there are at least fifty that include photos of Tom Hodgson in rapt attention to the stirring insights of Donald Trump, who is sometimes pictured holding a photo of his border wall.

These taxpayer-funded photo-ops are meat for the President and manna for the sheriffs. But sometimes even the dozens of photos offered by the White House are not enough. Here Hodgson’s media guy Jonathan Darling is found begging for more:

Emails were not the only product of the ACLU’s FOIA request to the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO). Eventually, the BCSO had to cough up travel documents and Tweets as well.

When the ACLU asked for Twitter records from accounts @Sheriff_Hodgson and @BCSO1, the Sheriff’s Office initially tried to avoid producing the documents by changing the account handles to @SheriffHodgson and @BristolSheriff. But ACLU counsel threatened to sue. So the BCSO responded like grownups with grainy, low-quality screenshots of a surprisingly small number of private communications.

But rather than discussing programs for rehabilitating his prisoners — surprise! — Hodgson’s private Tweets were almost all about scheduling media appearances to spread his anti-immigrant gospel and to market his own “brand.” And the many free media opportunities Hodgson was (and is) given to develop his “brand” represent nothing more than unreported “in-kind” campaign contributions.

The majority of Hodgson’s Tweets were to and from local radio station WBSM 1420, which features mainly right-wing bloviators like Barry Richard, Ken Pittman, Howie Carr, and Chris McCarthy. And they were all from radio host Chris McCarthy — whose job it is to feed Hodgson stories to comment on:

Tom should see this ASAP (23 Jan 2017)

McCarthy strokes Hodgson’s ego by comparing him to the president:

The Sheriff and you as his media person changed the national conversation in the way only a President can usually move an issue. Tremendous job. (28 Mar 2017)

McCarthy passes along an article by Howie Carr lambasting acting U.S. Atty. William Weinreb for Hodgson to read:

Jonathan- Howie wanted to make sure TH saw this column (4 May 2017)

McCarthy then directs Hodgson to an interview he did with Michele McPhee, who has just been a guest on his show — before he discusses it with Hodgson:

J – I interviewed Michele McPhee about her book on the Marathon Bombing yesterday. She discusses UMass Dartmouth and the bombing and I hope you can share this with Tom. She names a UMD professor. (15 May 2017)

We learn that, besides Jonathan Darling, BCSO legislative liaison Brock Cordeiro also handles Hodgson’s media work. Hodgson does not simply do radio interviews, he has a radio schedule:

Hi Chris, I’m out of the office this week. Brock is handling this stuff and has his radio schedule for the next few days. Give him a hollar at brockcordeiro@bcso-ma.org or send him a facebook message. Good luck — Jonathan (23 Jun 2017)

At Hodgson’s request, Darling suggests to McCarthy that he give Hodgson a regular spot on his show:

Hi Chris, Congrats on the new show. Sheriff asked me to get in touch. He mentioned you wanted him to come on sometime. Right now, our best bet is a call in tomorrow or an in-studio on Tuesday or Wednesday. Also, if you want to set something regular up, say every Friday or every other Wednesday or the first Thursday of the month or whatever, we’re open to that as well. — Jonathan (3 Jan 2018)

McCarthy acknowledges the amount of work they do together:

Jonathan – we do enough together to have you call or text me – my number is 781-308-5662 – send me a text when you have a moment so we can communicate rapidly when needed. Thanks

Remember those unreported “in-kind” campaign contributions.

Sometimes McCarthy tries to elicit information or get Hodgson to speculate on local politics:

Thanks – I’m hearing the same thing. I understand the Commies at the Coalition for Social Justice are going to run SEIU organizer Lisa Lemieux in the special. (2 Feb 2017)

and

Off the record: Have you heard anything about Jill Ussach running for the open NB Ward 3 CC seat? (2 Feb 2017)

Darling replies:

Hi Chris, Consensus of some of the clued-in folks around here is she’s no doubt interested, but if she actually pulls the papers and runs is another story.

In another Tweet Darling refers McCarthy to an order form for a t-shirt a local group produced for its visit to the governor to lobby for an investigation into Hodgson’s abuses:

Hey Chris. Tom wanted me to send this to you: He can’t wait to get a t-shirt: bccjustice.wordpress.com/2018/09/29/baker-is-the-new-orange (1 Oct 2018)

But Hodgson is a self-appointed expert on everything from Iran to marijuana. Darling offers Hodgson as an anti-marijuana spokesman:

Hi Chris. Sheriff was interviewed by the herald today about that stoned kid who hit the school bus in Gloucester. Just wanted to let you and the other radio guys know he’s available to take the anti-weed side if anyone’s interested. Thanks, and merry Christmas. — Jonathan (21 Dec 2016)

At one point McCarthy sends Hodgson a private text about New Bedford City Councilman Hugh Dunn’s letter to the state legislature on marijuana dispensaries — to feed Hodgson answers for a forthcoming interview:

I sent TH a text with the letter NB CC Hugh Dunn sent to the state legislature asking them to change the law on local control. This story is going to be big and I wanted Tom to have all the information in advance of the media. (1 Jun 2017)

Darling replies:

Awesome. Thx Chris. We will be ready for it when it hits. (1 Jun 2017)

Darling sends sheriff A. J. Louderback a photo of himself with Trump — under the assumption Louderback loves vanity photos as much as Hodgson:

Sheriff, I thought this was a nice picture. It’s from the Associated Press from Friday’s meeting. Catch up soon — Jonathan. (14 Jan)

Darling sends McCarthy a Tweet thanking him for Hodgson’s chance to vent on his favorite topics:

Hi Chris, just wanted to follow up and say thanks for having the Sheriff on this morning. Trump, immigration, Elizabeth Warren … he was in heaven. Anytime you want to chat again on Herald of BSM, just drop us a line …. thanks, Jonathan (1 Dec 2016)

McCarthy returns the compliment, sending Hodgson a link to a press release from Hamilton Strategies:

Jonathan, I just spoke with the Sheriff and scheduled him to call in to Boston Herald radio this Friday morning at 7:20am to discuss this press release: hamiltonstrategies.com/news/open-letter… (14 Dec 2016)

A word on Hamilton Strategies.

Hamilton Strategies advertises itself as a “mission-driven, full-service communications firm serving Christian non-profit organizations” which exists to: “connect ministries with media, engage Christians in the culture and inspire all to share the miracle of Jesus Christ throughout the world.”

Hamilton Strategies is also a propaganda center for Islamophobia and Homophobia.

McCarthy’s item for discussion is the interfaith celebration of an “Anti-Hate” event at the Islamic Society of Boston. Hamilton Strategies has issued a press release blasting liberal Jews and Christians who attended the event, including Marty Walsh and Elizabeth Warren, and has. accused the Islamic Center of being a “terror-linked, Saudi-funded radical mega-mosque.”

McCarthy also wants to link the Islamic Center with a terror attack [that never happened] on a mall in Attleboro. Once again McCarthy feeds an article to Hodgson like somebody fed SAT answers to Felicity Huffman’s daughter:

There is a section in the press release that mentions a planned machine gun attack on a “mall in Attleboro, MA” which we will be asking about. counterjihad.com/terror-experts… (14 Dec 2016)

The author of the article for discussion is Paul Sperry, part of a “Counter-Jihad” network with connections to every Islamophobic organization in America.

Thanks, ACLU. Keep the FOIA requests coming.

Tom Hodgson is not friend of the truth — even when it comes to stories of his own father.

On April 18, 2013, halfway through the Obama Administration, a group of eight senators known as the Gang of Eight stood before cameras in a Senate conference room, confident that their immigration reforms would shortly become a reality. At precisely the same moment in another room, Alabama Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (named for both a Confederate president and general) had organized a parade of county sheriffs, including Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson, to lobby against the reforms as a gratuitous “amnesty” for “criminal aliens.”

When it was his turn at the microphone (set up by Session’s aide, Stephen Miller), Hodgson painted a picture of five million people patiently waiting in lines outside American borders to become citizens — and another twelve million dangerous, criminal aliens living among us, “disrespecting” American laws. Hodgson invoked his Anglo-American heritage: “My father immigrated from England, and he raised thirteen children here.” Hodgson later told PRI: “My father didn’t walk around the streets hiding every time a police car came by, put his head down or what have you. My father came the right way.”

Hodgson went on to blast undocumented immigrants as filthy, disease-ridden burdens on their communities: “Illegal immigrants are creating public health hazards, public safety concerns,” Hodgson said, “living in homes, one-room apartments with three families, taking mattresses off the streets that are infested with bedbugs, filling our emergency rooms for lack of a better care and costing the taxpayers millions and millions of dollars.” The Gang of Eight’s immigration reforms were scuttled.

But Hodgson was not only lying about immigrants — but also about his “model immigrant” father.

Actress Tina Alexis Allen, Hodgson’s youngest sister, published a memoir in 2018. Her story of family trauma and recovery is hers alone to tell. But “Sir John” Hodgson, as he insisted on being called — the sheriff’s father, Knight of the Holy Sepulcher, Vatican courier, a man who carried four passports and racked up half a million miles a year in travel — is a central character in both Allen’s memoir and in Tom Hodgson’s mendacious narrative of immigration done the “right way.” Allen’s recounting of her father’s immigration to the United States and how a fourteenth Hodgson child immigrated to the United States reveal her brother the sheriff’s narrative as nothing but a tale woven out of whole cloth.

From Allen we learn that her father “Sir John” claimed to run the War Office in British-mandate Palestine as a 24 year-old and that he became an American citizen — not by waiting in line or immigrating the “right way” — but by courting and eventually marrying an American nurse two years older than himself and wrangling a transfer to Washington DC. That nurse, a native of New Bedford, MA, not only gave “Sir John” a sure path to citizenship as a male “war bride,” but her family connections in Bristol County helped pave the way for her son Tom to burrow his way into the county’s political establishment.

Matt Cameron, a Boston immigration attorney, disputes historical revisionists like Tom Hodgson who claim there is an equitable and orderly immigration line. “Where is this line? Where does it start? How long is it? Are there bathrooms?” Cameron points out that, thanks to overtly racist policies before 1965, Anglo-Saxons like Hodgson’s father were always preferred. “You can whitewash your own family history all you want, but it’s always been this way.”

It also helps if you’re a rich white man who can game the system with high-level connections.

In 1954 — when Tom Hodgson was three months old — “Sir” John Gerard Hodgson and Anne Marie Hodgson adopted a 10 year-old Anglo-Arab orphan named Victor Charles Joyce, the son of an Army comrade of Hodgson’s, and a child who did not qualify for naturalization under existing immigration quotas.

While the elder Hodgson could have made his adoptive child wait in line until it was his turn, “Sir John” instead used his connections with U.S. Maryland Senator John Marshall Butler, who like himself was a virulent anti-Communist, and whose campaign Joseph McCarthy managed. Butler officially notified Arthur V. Watkins, Chairman of the Senate Immigration and Naturalization Subcommittee on the Judiciary, that he had filed a private bill for Hodgson. From the Congressional Record:

Dear Arthur: on June 23 I introduced Senate bill 3652 at the request of Mr. and Mrs. John G. Hodgson, American citizens residing in Maryland at 5 East Irving, Chevy Chase, Md., for the purpose of bringing their adopted son, Frances Timothy Mary Hodgson, age 11 years, from the Franciscan Orphanage in Jerusalem, Jordan, to the United States of America.

“At the time of adoption, it was assumed that the adopted son be charged to the Jordan quota and could enter the United States under fourth preference of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which is at present open. When petition was filed, birth and baptismal records showed that the boy was born on June 13, 1943, in Nazareth, Palestine, which city is now in the State of Israel. The fourth preference for the State of Israel is oversubscribed and bill S.3654 has been introduced to permit Francis Timothy Mary Hodgson, adopted son of John Gerard and Anne Marie Hodgson to enter the United States under the fourth preference quota for the Jordan Kingdom as he has resided in Bethlehem and Jerusalem since shortly after birth in Nazareth. Records show the boy was baptized in Bethlehem (Jordan) July 5, 1944.”

The bill was not drafted to provide a non quota visa but it was felt that as the adopted child resided in Jordan all his life, that he could be charged to the Jordan quota.

On August 19, 1954 Hodgson’s private bill quickly moved from one express line to another in the U.S. House of Representatives (relevant portions of Congressional Record here) — a professional courtesy for a fellow “Anglo Saxon” immigrant.

Interestingly, Butler went out of his way to argue that this special legislation for Hodgson was not really an effort to bypass immigration quotas, but that the boy had lived in a formerly Jordanian part of Israel “all his life” — a kindness Tom Hodgson today is not prepared to extend to DACA recipients.

When asked to help place this maneuver in historical context, immigration attorney Matt Cameron noted that “today’s closest analogue might be the Special Immigrant Juvenile process, a fourth-preference visa available for minors who were abused, abandoned or neglected by one or more parents (many are orphans). As with the fourth-preference beneficiaries from Israel, SIJ from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador (the countries which have benefited by far the most from the program) is seriously oversubscribed and wait times are now well over two years.”

“Given that this process is available for qualifying individuals up to the age of 21, I would guess that hundreds of SIJ-eligible people have been locked up in Hodgson’s disgrace of a jail over the years and deported either before they had a chance to apply or while waiting ‘in line’ for a visa in the same category as the one that his family had no problem manipulating to their benefit 65 years ago.”

Travel records the ACLU received from the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office feature the same sloppy paperwork and potential abuses of taxpayer money that a State Audit warned of last February and which Bristol County for Correctional Justice (BCCJ) found in documents from its own FOIA request last year.

BCCJ has previously called for a forensic audit of the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office — not just because two of its officers were convicted of federal money laundering charges in the “Godfather” case — and not merely because the sheriff is now being sued for receiving kickbacks from a phone vendor.

Tom Hodgson has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant and forfeiture money that were intended to be used for opioid treatment — and now we learn that he has never written a single email relating to MAT treatment — and that he lied to the public about his communications with other sheriffs at a 287(g) hearing last April.

One reasonable conclusion is that the Sheriff’s Office is simply pocketing the grant money and using it to subsidize ICE agreements which actually lose money for the state.

And we’ve said this before, too: the sheriff is using large sums of taxpayer money to fund a private war on immigrants — a war designed by and coordinated with white supremacists within and down the street from the White House. All while neglecting the rehabilitation of prisoners in his jail.

The ACLU’s information request proves it. Their FOIA request shows hundreds of Tweets and emails between White House and anti-immigration zealots, including 74 with the White House’s resident white supremacist, Stephen Miller — but nothing related to helping people with opioid use disorder.

If you believe in math, this is a ratio you can’t ignore.

And then there’s the sheriff’s travel — again. In 2017, shortly after the Trump inauguration, Hodgson spent almost two weeks in Washington, DC and in his hometown of Chevy Chase, Maryland. The hand-written cover sheet attached to his travel invoices states that the Sheriff was attending the PREA Conference (the National Prison Rape Elimination Act Resource Center Conference).

This sounds plausible enough — since no one ever really bothers to scrutinize sheriffs’ expenses — until you find that the Massachusetts Department of Corrections indeed convened a PREA Conference that month, but it was at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel — that’s Boston, not DC — and that Bristol County Sheriff’s Office CEO Lawrence Oliveira attended it, not Hodgson.

So what was Hodgson doing in Washington, DC for twelve days between January 30, 2017 and February 12, 2017? The Sheriff’s Bank of America statement shows him staying at some pretty swanky places in the nation’s capital. And he didn’t even send us a thank you.

Absent any oversight of the sheriff’s finances — and absent any thorough audits — this would have gone undetected if not for the ACLU’s FOIA request.

Was Hodgson visiting family, taking a winter vacation, huddling with his white supremacist buddies at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, meeting with the Trump administration, or what? And why were Massachusetts taxpayers once again footing the bill?

We just don’t know. And Hodgson’s deceptive record-keeping certainly doesn’t shed any light on the truth. It’s hard to imagine what sort of pressing county business requires a county sheriff to spend two weeks in luxury hotels in Washington, DC.

Two decades of friendly “performance” audits by the state have failed to improve Hodgson’s record-keeping habits or stop his abuses of taxpayer money. Once again we call for a forensic audit of the Bristol County House of Corrections.

For over two years Bristol County for Correctional Justice has been hammering away at a painfully obvious truth: Sheriff Tom Hodgson is neglecting the job voters elected him to do — caring for and rehabilitating prisoners — at the expense of his collaboration with white supremacists.

Recent disclosures of responsive documents from a FOIA request the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts (ACLU) made to the Bristol County Sheriffs Office (BCSO) last March prove just how true that contention is.

In the ACLU’s repository there are literally hundreds of communications between White House officials, including dozens from White Supremacist Stephen Miller and demonstrating coordination between Hodgson, the White House and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Hodgson’s real and only focus. Yet even though a majority of Hodgson’s prisoners have substance abuse disorders, his office could not provide a single email or Tweet documenting a shred of concern for helping prisoners with medically-assisted treatment (MAT).

The ACLU archives make for pretty interesting reading. Hodgson’s slavish, unctuous attempts to ingratiate himself with the White House are exposed in 74 emails to Stephen Miller. We find White House talking points that Hodgson receives, and we see Hodgson notifying Miller that he’s been a good boy and used them in various interviews. We see his pettiness in action as he blasts New Bedford representative Tony Cabral, the Immigrant Assistance Center, and — as Yvonne Abraham reported in the Globe — Hodgson even removes information cards on ICE from the back of his own church, St. Julie’s in Dartmouth, and dutifully reports it to Miller. And although the ACLU did not request Hodgson’s correspondence with FAIR, he CC’s fairus.org in emails with Miller and Britt Carter, Associate Director of the White House Office of lntergovernmental Affairs. The ACLU’s trove of documents follows the release by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) of extensive correspondence between Stephen Miller and a number of white supremacists.

All Hodgson’s efforts paid off recently when he was rewarded with a White House doggy bone — honorary chair of Trump’s Massachusetts re-election campaign.

Last April members of BCCJ attended a so-called “public hearing” on ICE 287(g) agreements and the topic of medically-assisted opioid treatment came up.

Hodgson has received several large grants for opioid treatment, so the public is entitled to know what he’s doing with all the money — a question that still must be answered. In addition, under Section 98 of Chapter 208 of the Acts of 2018, five sheriff’s offices have started piloting MAT treatment of prisoners — Hodgson isn’t one of them.

At the 287(g) hearings Hodgson offered a number of excuses for not offering treatment. The worst was that his officers — now serving as state-paid, part-time ICE agents — can’t afford ten minutes to supervise the treatments.

Currently, prisoners now receive a spritz of Vivitrol — a drug Alkermes already gives National Sheriff’s Association members a “taste” of for free.

Needless to say, BCCJ was not satisfied with Hodgson’s response and on September 23, 2019 we began trying to get better answers to what kind of MAT treatments, if any, the BCSO and its medical contractor provided. We contacted Beth Cheney, the Chief Operating Officer of Correctional Psychiatric Services (CPS), to ask what sort of treatment CPS provides prisoners in Bristol County.

In response, Cheney sent us a link to an article about the sheriff’s pilot program — the very program Hodgson and CPS refuse to participate in. Cheney also directed us to Jonathan Darling, the Sheriff’s spokesperson, for authorization to speak to CPS. So we did — and Darling passed the buck back to CPS:

“If you feel that CPS is not answering your questions, that’s an issue between you and CPS.”

In October we tried again, telling Darling that the “public would be well-served by knowing what types of MAT treatment the BCSO currently offers its prisoners.”

On October 22, 2019 Darling agreed — but he never followed up:

“I agree, I think we can do a better job at sharing with the public about our Mat and substance abuse programs. I’ll be working to update our website with more information on this. I believe you’ll find your answers there in weeks ahead.”

But the ACLU was also interested. On March 18, 2019 the ACLU requested the following from the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office:

8. All records of any request, decision, or recommendation by BCSO to participate in, or not to participate in, any pilot program for the delivery of medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder at county correctional facilities, including under Section 98 of Chapter 208 of the Acts of 2018.

9. All records concerning the formulation or preparation of any request, decision, or recommendation described in paragraph 8, above, including without limitation any discussion of the reasons for such request, decision, or recommendation

The responsive documents the ACLU received to the request show that — while Hodgson was emailing Stephen Miller and numerous White House and anti-immigrant organizations almost daily — there was absolutely no correspondence regarding medically assisted treatment. None. Zero.

On May 29, 2019 — more than two months past the required 10 day window for response to FOIA requests — Hodgson’s office replied to the question of MAT treatments:

“No records exist that are responsive to this request.”

So on August 20, 2019 the ACLU’s legal counsel at Foley Hoag LLP wrote back to the Sheriff’s Office to obtain information the sheriff refused to divulge.

Among the many non-responses to the ACLU’s FOIA request, the BCSO had refused to provide records from the sheriff’s supposedly “personal” Twitter account.

The ACLU also disputed the BCSO’s contention that no records existed on MAT treatment because the Sheriff had made a public statement about collaboration with other sheriffs at the aforementioned 287(g) hearing on April 10th:

At the BCSO’s annual 287(g) steering committee meeting held on April 10, 2019, Sheriff Hodgson publicly announced that the BCSO will not implement the pilot program established by Section 98 of Chapter 208 of the 2018 Acts, and will, instead, continue its current practices for treating inmates for opioid disorder. ‘ During this meeting, Sheriff Hodgson made a number of statements that suggest he and/or the BCSO have records concerning this decision. For example, he stated:

• “The sheriffs all met not too long ago — a few months back — and collectively we decided, for those that were going to decide to use medically-assisted treatment, that there would be a sampling of four or five sheriffs who were going to do it to see how it goes. Medically-assisted treatment is very controversial with regards to the types of medication that have to be given. For example, when somebody is on a medically-assisted treatment program, there are certain medications where it takes ten minutes per person to have that medication dissolve in their mouth, and they have to watched by a person on our staff until it is done.”
• “We have probably the most difficult county when it comes to detoxing people for drug use.”
• “I am not going to institute a program that’s going to have people come to jail who want to get off drugs, be exposed to more drugs. Because if you can’t go to jail to get off drugs, I don’t know where you’re going to go to get off drugs.”
• “We aren’t going to institute programs that we don’t know [are] working yet, as are a number of other Sheriffs, until we know it works.”

Accordingly, no later than September 10, 2019, please: (1) confirm whether records responsive to Requests 8 and 9 exist and produce any such records; (2) confirm whether any documents responsive to Requests 8 and 9 are being withheld on the basis of any assertion of privilege; and (3) provide a description of what, if any, searches the BCSO undertook to identify records responsive to these requests, including the sources and custodians BCSO searched and any date ranges and/or search terms that it applied.

The BCSO replied on September 20, 2019, offering the following explanations to Foley Hoag and the ACLU:

• “… the Sheriff’s Office states that Sheriff Hodgson is referring to a Massachusetts Sheriff’s Association Meeting (‘MSA’). any records of decisions made, if any exist, would be records of the MSA.
• “… Sheriff Hodgson’s statements refer to his decisions to not institute medically-assisted treatment in its entirety. The decision was not reduced to writing and, thus, no record exists …”

Apparently Hodgson didn’t have time to jot anything down. He was too busy being a White House errand boy.

On September 27th, the same day Tom Hodgson was giving the president an award in Washington, DC on the taxpayer dime, one of his prisoners died.

Scott Lajoie’s death set another gruesome record for a sheriff who seems to have no interest in his day job. Already leading the state in suicides and coming in a close second on both recidivism and assaults by correctional officers, Hodgson’s jail now comes in second with three times the state average for pre-trial detention deaths.

Since January 2019, 13 people have died in pre-trial custody. That’s an average of less than one per county.

Hodgson’s death count is already up to three.

You can download the full Courtwatch report here.

Following two more suicides at the Bristol County House of Correction this summer, there has been another death at Tom Hodgson’s jail.

While we do not yet know if the cause of death was suicide or an untreated medical issue, it is important to remember that each of these deaths has a human face.

Scott LaJoie, 49, was the father of five children and a grandfather of seven. He was an Army veteran, a musician, and ran a concrete forms business in Westport. On September 27th LaJoie was transported from the jail to Saint Luke’s hospital, where he was pronounced dead. His family has asked that donations be sent to Disabled American Veterans.

LaJoie’s death occurred while Sheriff Thomas Hodgson was in Washington DC giving President Trump another award. A 2017 suicide at the jail also coincided with a flurry of anti-immigrant lobbying in Washington by Hodgson.

Following LaJoie’s death, his case in Fall River District Court (docket #1932CR002613) was dismissed by Judge Kevin J. Finnerty because LaJoie died while never having gotten his day in court. LaJoie had been locked up without even the possibility of bail pursuant to Mass General Laws Chapter 276, section 58A.

While Sheriff Tom Hodgson has the highest suicides and the second highest recidivism rate in the state, not to be out-done Bristol County District Attorney Tom Quinn has the highest per capita number of 58A hearings and the second (just behind Essex County) total number of 58A hearings in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, according to Massachusetts Trial Court data. Democrat Quinn has also lobbied for even more draconian provisions in the Dangerousness statutes in concert with Republican Governor Charlie Baker.

Court records tell us that LaJoie had been prescribed various medications. In an April 4th, 2019 entry in docket #1932CR001197, Judge Franco Gobourne allowed LaJoie’s motion to see a doctor to get a prescription refilled. It is unclear whether LaJoie ever received those medications. A physician from SouthCoast Health specializing in medical and pharmaceutical management offered condolences.

While it’s too early to say if LaJoie’s death resulted from jail conditions inducing despair, medical neglect, or the absence of medically-assisted substance abuse treatment, LaJoie’s death is the consequence of overuse of pretrial detention by District Attorney Thomas Quinn and Bristol County judges who rubber-stamp his motions, subjecting prisoners to abusive conditions in the Bristol County Jail.

Court records tell us that LaJoie was locked up in June 2019 when his bail status on an earlier case (docket #1932CR001197) was revoked and prosecutors asked the judge to keep him locked up pursuant to Mass General Laws Chapter 276, section 58A (“Dangerousness”) based on the argument that LaJoie was so “dangerous” that no conditions of release could ensure the safety of his girlfriend, Rebecca Campbell.

Campbell had accused LaJoie of threatening to burn down the apartment they shared. As a result, LaJoie was arrested and [incorrectly] charged with an assault on Campbell — and with violating a “no abuse” order issued by the court. The earlier case was dismissed on the trial date, July 16, 2019, when Quinn’s office was unprepared to go forward with a trial. Nevertheless, LaJoie remained locked up on the new case (docket #1932CR002613) as a “danger.”

Attorney Sean A. McDermott was then appointed to represent LaJoie. McDermott did not file a single motion in the case and on the pretrial conference report simply checked off a few boxes. So much for zealous legal representation.

LaJoie’s case was scheduled for trial on August 26, 2019 but was continued to September 24, 2019, and then again to October 25, 2019. One can only imagine the despair of a person repeatedly denied bail and kept in perpetual detention without a trial ever in sight.

On September 27th, 2019 Scott LaJoie died at the Bristol County Jail.

The Mass Bail Fund is looking for additional volunteers to post bail for prisoners at the Bristol County jail. There will be a meeting in Dartmouth in November for those with time to give. Posting bail is the perfect volunteer gig for people with some privilege to put to good use. Email us if you’re interested.

The Mass Bail Fund doesn’t post bail of more than $500. A substantial percentage of those in county jails have not been convicted of a crime but cannot meet even a small bail amount. Click here for more information on how the Bail Fund works — but here’s the short version. You’ll get a call at an inconvenient hour. And when you show up to bail out your client, the Bristol County Jail will make you jump through more hoops than most; you’ll have to wait, come back later, or go to a different location. You’ll front the money for the Bail Fund, drive the client off the jail premises, and get your money back from the Bail Fund in roughly a week.

Anybody is welcome to volunteer, but if you’re older, whiter and a member of a religious organization you will magically get better results for your client. You’ll be doing your part to reduce mass-incarceration right in your own community.

Consider this. The inability to post bail can make a prisoner:

• more likely to lose their children to DSS
• more likely to lose their job, plunging their family deeper into poverty
• more likely to plead guilty just to get out of abusive conditions
• more likely to receive harsher sentences because of the inability to easily access legal resources
• more likely to be found guilty

Email us to discuss attending the Bail Fund’s Dartmouth meeting in November.

Whenever I encounter a story about police abuse it almost always involves white cops and black or brown citizens. If not the police, it’s courts, prisons, or immigration authorities. You don’t have to be particularly perceptive to recognize the dominant factor in all these stories; you just need a long memory and a filing system. Racism permeates every aspect of American life — especially the criminal justice system and, most especially, the police.

So it was no surprise last week, when Scott Hovsepian of the Massachusetts Coalition of Police (MassCOP) blasted Elizabeth Warren for referring to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri as a “murder.” With black men having a one in a thousand chance of being fatally shot by police in their lifetime — two times the rate for whites — there is really no other word that suits this extreme indifference to life but murder. We are in fact so indifferent to these killings that police shootings aren’t even tracked by a government agency.

Delicate ears may prefer the phrases “wrongful death” or “unauthorized use of force.” But who are we kidding? Even when the evidence is crystal-clear that a police shooting was completely unnecessary and violated any number of departmental policies or protocols, officials will rarely admit to a mistake and instead trot out a legal doctrine known as Qualified Immunity which effectively gives policemen a license to kill — even when they have previously exhibited bad judgment, have psychological problems or a history of violence toward the non-white public. Even when the officer lies. Even when there is a video.

Hovsepian’s angry letter to Warren went out on August 10th:

“I want to make this as clear as possible and every member of the Massachusetts Coalition of Police wants you to understand; your labeling of law enforcement as racist and violent is unacceptable and dangerous. Maybe I didn’t deliver the message strong enough the last time we spoke. YOUR POLITICAL PANDERING FOR PRESIDENTIAL VOTES IS GETTING POLICE OFFICERS AND CITIZENS HURT AND KILLED. […] Your inflammatory rhetoric results in the erosion of relationships that members of law enforcement have developed within our communities. […] Graham v. Connor 490 U.S. at 396-97 (1989), provides in part: The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene…”

Unacceptable and dangerous. For a moment, a reader might be excused for thinking Hovsepian meant the national epidemic of police officers slaughtering black men, two thirds of them unarmed. Hovsepian mentions Qualified Immunity as a police officer’s shield from charges of murder in the second degree — “acts that demonstrate extreme indifference to human life.” But it’s not police killings that we ought to be worried about, says Hovsepian — no, it’s public criticism of the police that is killing officers. Or so he says.

A year ago at Dillard University, Hovsepian took issue with Warren’s characterization of the entire U.S. criminal justice system. Warren said that “the hard truth about our criminal justice system: it’s racist… I mean front to back.” Hovsepian labelled Warren’s characterization “cancerous rhetoric” and again charged that criticism of police was lethal: “Your statements put each and every one of us in danger. Your statement dehumanizes every officer who puts on a uniform…”

Playing the part of the wronged and “dehumanized” party may be nothing but a rhetorical ploy, but it is precisely the same argument as Tucker Carlson’s claim that White Supremacy is a hoax because white people are the real victims of the American legacy of slavery.

Last week the Washington Post reported that, “among men of all races, ages 25 to 29, police killings are the sixth-leading cause of death, according to a study led by Frank Edwards of Rutgers University.” In 2018 police killed 1,164 people. The number of black people killed by police (215) exceeded all police officers who died in the line of duty (148), servicemen killed in action (2) and Americans killed by Islamic terrorists (0) combined. There were only 23 days in 2018 when police did not kill someone. Thirteen of the 100 largest police departments accounted for a large percentage of police murders that year. 99% of all police killings never resulted in officers being convicted of any charges. In 2018 Americans were ten times more likely to die from being shot by a cop than in a mass shooting.

So, if anyone has a legitimate and “reasonable fear,” it is civilians fearing police violence. Americans are also increasingly afraid of militarized policing that is morphing into something very like occupation. Following the protests of Michael Brown’s murder, police turned Ferguson’s Canfield Drive into Fallujah.

While no doubt there are many good police officers and police departments, from the 30,000 foot view Warren is absolutely right. The names of black victims of police abuse, from Rodney King to Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald, and Michael Brown, just keep being etched on headstones. We know what skin colors predominate among America’s 2.5 million incarcerated people. The legacy of slavery is apparent to anyone who has studied criminal justice issues or simply reads the newspaper. The Central Park Five, whose story was recently portrayed in Netflix’s “When They See Us,” embody everything that is wrong with America’s racist criminal justice system — police misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct and overreach, brutal prisons — even an ad from a future president that read like a call to lynch five young men of color.

MassCOP’s Scott Hovsepian has it completely backwards when he charges that criticism of police racism puts officers at risk and undermines their work. It is racist cops who undermine community confidence in police departments and contribute to a community’s fear of helping police reduce crime. No matter how many public relations campaigns, youth programs, listening sessions, or ride-alongs police departments use to blunt community criticism, nothing compensates for all the damage that racist officers inflict.

Take the case of 20 year Muskegon, Michigan police officer Charles Anderson. Anderson put his house on the market and apparently didn’t think to put his KKK application or his Confederate flags away. A black couple touring the home realized the officer was a racist and dug into Anderson’s history, discovering he had been cleared in the fatal shooting of a black man in 2009. It wasn’t a surprise. The killing or the exoneration.

Or a story from August 6th describing Galveston, Texas cops leading a black man, slave-style, between the mounted officers’ horses. Police chief Vernon Hale weakly explained, “Although this is a trained technique and best practice in some scenarios, I believe our officers showed poor judgement in this instance.” Poor judgment that went unpunished.

Sergeant Heather Taylor, a member of the St. Louis Metro police department, was interviewed recently by CBS News as part of its series on racial bias in American police departments. “Do you think that there are white supremacists on the police force?” CBS News correspondent Jeff Pegues asked. “Yes” Taylor replied. “You didn’t even pause,” Pegues said. “Have you seen some of the Facebook posts of some of our suspended officers right now?” Taylor responded. “Yes.”

Taylor could have been referring to Facebook posts collected by the Plain View Project, which to date has permanently recorded over 5,000 racist posts — that’s from only eight cities. The Project’s homepage says that “our concern is not whether these posts and comments are protected by the First Amendment. Rather, we believe that because fairness, equal treatment, and integrity are essential to the legitimacy of policing, these posts and comments should be part of a national dialogue about police” — a dialog shut down by police officials who claim that such a discussions put their lives at risk.

Blue Lives matter to police officers, but the same concern doesn’t aways extend to civilians — especially the black lives. In 2016 an Oregon police officer posted an image of a Black Lives Matter protest with a comment, “When encountering such mobs remember, there are 3 pedals on your floor. Push the right one all the way down.”

The Facebook page of Santa Fe, New Mexico Sergeant Troy Baker, also the police union president and a police cadet instructor, was a veritable cesspool of racist and homophobic rants, violent threats, and Confederate flags. Baker survived an internal investigation when no violation of department policy was determined, and he was allowed to retire early, remaining on the city payroll for eight months to obtain his pension.

Springfield, Massachusetts cop Conrad Lariviere thought white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. running down Heather Heyer in Charlotteville was pretty funny. “Hahahaha love this, maybe people shouldn’t block roads,” Lariviere wrote on Facebook. When confronted with the post, Lariviere told MassLive.com, “I am not a racist and don’t believe in what any of those protesters are doing, I’m a good man who made a stupid comment and would just like to be left alone.”

Lariviere was eventually fired but the damage was already done. “It will take us months, if not years, to earn back the level of public trust we once had,” Police Commissioner John Barbieri said. “It’s never easy to terminate a fellow officer, and I take no comfort in doing so.” But Lariviere’s union, Local 364 of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, issued a statement saying it was —

“extremely disappointed in the decision of Commissioner Barbieri to terminate the employment of Officer Conrad Lariviere. Officer Lariviere’s comments on Facebook were made in his capacity as a private citizen […] While some may find Off. Lariviere’s comments to have been insensitive, we do not believe that they rise to the level of misconduct, and certainly do not warrant termination, even if there was a clear policy involved […] We also believe that the subject of the Facebook posting was a matter of public concern, and protected speech. We believe that the termination is based on political considerations, not a fair, impartial assessment of the evidence…”

Racist conduct and exercising poor judgement are, for many police associations, insignificant matters for officers charged with serving the public fairly.

In Phoenix, Arizona, 75 cops were caught on Facebook bashing Muslims, African-Americans, gays, and feminists. When Trayvon Martin was murdered, Phoenix officer Joshua Ankert wrote, “CONGRATULATIONS GEORGE ZIMMERMAN!!! Thank you for cleaning up our community one thug at a time.” Officer Dave Swick posted a roadside sign that said, “Ferguson protestors ahead, speed up, aim well.” Police dispatcher Christina Begay shared a picture of two cops laughing with the caption: “They said, ‘F–k the police,’ so I said ‘F–k your 911 call, I’ll get to your dying home boy when I finish my coffee.” Officer David Pallas posted a meme showing the Quran, with a caption that read: “HOW ABOUT BANNING THIS. IT OFFENDS ME!!” The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association defended the posts. “People — including cops — say things they regret.”

Add to a climate of hate the many unfortunate interactions between police officers and young people. Stop and Frisk — violations of the Fourth Amendment — go by many names: “community engagement,” “meet and greet,” “youth liaison.” But they only add to the fear, distrust and hatred many people have of police officers. In New Bedford a young man, Malcolm Gracia, is dead because police officers decided to aggressively “engage” a group of young men at Temple Landing after seeing what they thought was a “gang handshake.”

After allegedly stabbing an officer, Gracia was shot three times in the back and once in the side of the head. But the entire interaction should never have happened. “Even on the [police] version of the facts, the stop would be unlawful,” Judge Thomas F. McGuire Jr. wrote in a memorandum on a civil lawsuit filed by the victim’s sister. The City of New Bedford for many years claimed that the incident had occurred because of insufficient policies on “engagement” with youth. After the ACLU filed several FOIA requests, the city’s argument collapsed. Police should have simply followed the law.

But it’s not just a few bad apples or the frequently-cited lack of clear policies. As we saw in the case of Santa Fe, New Mexico, departmental racism often reflects, and is even encouraged by, the leadership of police unions and associations who represent tens of thousands of officers.

Consider Hovsepian’s Brother in Blue, Ed Mullins, the president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, New York City’s second largest police union. Only last week Mullins shared a video made by white supremacist Colin Flaherty (author of “Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry”) that calls black people “welfare queens,” “scam artists” and “monsters.” The film uses Trump-styled language:

“When a suspect chooses to flee from police, it is never for anything good,” the narrator says. “When a suspect flees a car at night in the projects, it can only be for something incredibly bad. One of the most astonishing aspects of police work in an urban environment, is the fact that almost literally no one has a job. The section 8 scam artists and welfare queens have mastered the art of gaming the taxpayer. Bounce from baby mama to baby mama, impregnate as many women as possible. She gets the welfare benefits, and you get the flop house benefits. Symbiotic.”

Mullins, nose freshly rubbed in his own white supremacy, uttered “I have black friends, white friends, Asian friends. I wouldn’t want to insult anyone. I don’t think one incident defines who I am.”

Or consider the nation’s largest group of sheriffs, the National Sheriff’s Association, which once sponsored its own crowdfunded border wall donation site but has now outsourced it to the American Border Foundation (ABF), an organization managed by white supremacists and supported by armed militias. (After months, ABF has raised only $222K of its $450 million goal).

According to Political Research Associates, a group that tracks nationalist currents in the U.S., sheriff departments throughout the country are riddled with members of the Patriot movement, Constitutional Sheriffs, militia members, Christian Identitarians, and white supremacists. Right here at home, Bristol County Massachusetts sheriff Tom Hodgson sits on the board of a group the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a hate group — FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, established by white supremacist John Tanton.

But combine police racism with hyper-patriotism, militarism and PTSD, and you’ve got a big problem.

Since 9-11 more than 2 million Americans have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Department of Justice runs a program called COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) which provides grants to communities to turn “vets to cops.” In 2016 the DOJ handed out $119 million to help communities pay for approximately 900 policemen. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) has created a recruitment guide for veterans, and veterans can use their GI Bill benefits while attending police academy. America increasingly says “thank you for your service” to its warriors by re-deploying them domestically.

But programs like these, and hiring practices that favor ex-military, have a serious downside. By prioritizing military experience over diversity, police departments put communities at risk. For example, the San Jose Police Department, a force with serious racism problems, sees veterans as naturals for the police “because we have a paramilitary structure, [and] military veterans often times can easily integrate.” What ever happened to community policing?

Then there are the after-effects of war. With an increasing percentage of veterans becoming police officers thanks to programs like COPS, many officers seem to think they are still fighting the Taliban or Iraqi insurgents. Ellen Kirshman, a psychologist who works with police officers, says that between 19% and 34% of all officers show some sign of PTSD: “This is pretty alarming. An officer with PTSD cannot think clearly, is probably hyper vigilant, has a short fuse, may not be sleeping well because of nightmares, might be policing in a reckless manner…” And this is precisely what one frequently sees in videos of police encounters with black men. Legislation has been signed into law to help officers with PTSD, but what about the public? Aren’t there cops who are simply too traumatized to serve the public? Even when they are identified, it’s difficult to remove them from the force.

When Elizabeth Warren spoke about the criminal justice system, she was talking about much more than policing. Yet police unions have become powerful lobbies and relentless opponents of criminal justice and prison reform. Natasha Lennard reports in the Intercept on the savage negative campaign the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association (NYSCOPBA) waged against Governor Mario Cuomo’s criminal justice reforms. Likewise, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association spent over $10 million lobbying for the Three Strikes law, mandatory life sentences, and prison expansions. In Illinois, police unions waged a campaign to stop the closure of the brutal Tamms Supermax prison. And we have fifty states just like this.

But nothing shows how racist the criminal justice system is as clearly as the history of opposition to reforming it.

In 1991 Rep. William Edwards introduced H.R.2972, the Police Accountability Act of 1991. The bill made it “unlawful for any governmental authority to engage in a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers that deprives persons of their constitutional or statutory rights, privileges, or immunities.” The bill had only 10 co-sponsors and never made it out of committee.

In 2000 John Conyers Jr. sponsored H.R. 3927, the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act of 2000, which sought to impose national standards on law enforcement as we currently do in education. It had only thirteen Democratic co-sponsors and never made it to a vote. In 2015 Conyers again filed H.R.2875, this time with 48 co-sponsors. But again it died.

In 2015 Rep. Henry Johnson Jr. sponsored H.R.1102, the Police Accountability Act of 2015, which had 15 co-sponsors and died. The bill amended “title 18, United States Code, to provide a penalty for assault or homicide committed by certain State or local law enforcement officers, and for other purposes.” Again in 2017 Johnson filed H.R.4331, with 8 lonely co-sponsors. Again, it died.

In 2017 Rep. Gwen Moore sponsored H.R. 3060, Preventing Tragedies between Police and Communities Act of 2017, which required that police departments receiving federal funding train officers in de-escalation techniques. The bill had only 24 co-sponsors and died in committee — having also failed in 2016.

In 2017 Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee sponsored H.R.47: Kalief’s Law, which sought to amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to provide for the humane treatment of youths in police custody. The bill had only one co-sponsor and there was never a roll call vote.

Whether a majority or minority in Congress, police accountability has never been a priority for Democrats or Republicans. E. Tammy Kim, in an excellent piece in the Nation (“What to Do About the Police”), writes that, “as it stands, the three branches of government are unwilling to regulate the police. Mayors and governors defer to police chiefs and union presidents; judges make cheesecloth of the Fourth and 14th Amendments; and legislators vote again and again to increase law-enforcement budgets.”

In a 2015 ruling the Supreme Court gave police broad latitude to shoot at citizens recklessly and with impunity, when it rejected a suit against a Texas police officer who fired into a car with a high power rifle from an overpass, paralyzing a driver. The officer joked: “How’s that for proactive?”

In 2018 the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in Kisela v. Hughes that police officers can not be sued for arbitrary and unnecessary shootings — effectively granting law enforcement a deluxe edition of Constitutional rights. In dissenting, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the ruling another sign of “unflinching willingness” to protect rogue cops and wrote that the decision “transforms the doctrine [of qualified immunity] into an absolute shield for law enforcement officers.” Cops in America today truly have a license to kill.

With one exception, every piece of reform legislation mentioned above was sponsored by an African-American. And that ought to tell you something — white people are just not stepping up in sufficent numbers to fix injustices involving police, the courts, prisons, parole and probation systems, or to provide adequate rehabilitation and treatment of those ensnared in the “system.”

To quote Warren’s again, “the hard truth about our criminal justice system: it’s racist… I mean front to back.”

Judge Katie Rayburn sentenced FANG activist Amory Zhou-Kourvo to ten days in jail yesterday for blocking the entrance to the Bristol County House of Correction. On August 20, 2018 Zhou-Kourvo and Holly Stein were arrested after cementing their arms to a concrete filled tire and fastening bike locks around their necks to a fence. Zhou-Kourvo’s sentence will be shortened by two days already served and Judge Rayburn is considering a request to permit the sentence to be served in Norfolk instead of Bristol County because of the Bristol County House of Correction’s abysmal reputation, and because of its sheriff’s closeness to the case. A dozen FANG supporters, several local activists, and representatives of the NAACP New Bedford attended the hearings.

After learning of the epidemic of suicides at the jail, widely reported in the Boston Globe and elsewhere, the Attorney General passed the buck to the Department of Corrections and the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security — both headed by Baker appointees. The State Auditor, to her credit, conducted a friendly “performance audit” which, like a previous one, found financial and managerial irregularities at the Sheriff’s Office, but it fell short of a complete investigation that would have shed light on the neglect and deprivation of prisoners. The Office of the Inspector General — also headed by a Baker appointee — was given evidence of the sheriff’s financial abuses of taxpayer money, but again no action was taken. Legislation which would have stopped the sheriff’s giveaways of state money to ICE have been shelved in the Massachusetts House by Speaker DeLeo.

So — hats off to these young people for temporarily inconveniencing a sheriff at the scene of his own crimes.

Sitting through the hearings on Tuesday morning, it took a while to get to Zhou-Kourvo’s case. Right before the nineteen year-old was sentenced to jail, attendees in Katie Rayburn’s court watched her give probation to a fentanyl dealer who had beaten his wife and also been implicated in accessory-to-murder charges. For Rayburn, who insisted on handling the FANG cases herself following the initial arraignments, a message apparently needed to be sent — don’t mess with law enforcement, no matter how crooked it is.

If the name Katie Rayburn rings a bell, you probably just watched the HBO documentary on the Michelle Carter case. Rayburn was the ambitious Bristol County Assistant District Attorney who built a case around a story that a calculating 17 year-old ice princess convinced an adult “boyfriend” (who in reality she had met only a handful of times) to commit suicide by text message — from a 40 mile distance. The case raises so many questions that it is now headed for the Supreme Court.

The only expert witness in the case, psychiatrist Peter Breggin, who looked at the suite of medications both teens had been prescribed, came to a totally different conclusion about Carter’s culpability than in Rayburn’s tale. Even as Rayburn herself continued to try the case in front of the cameras, she slapped a gag order on Breggin. Rayburn was rewarded for her prosecutorial zeal (if not misconduct) with an appointment to the bench by Governor Charlie Baker.

Having seen the judge in action, it’s clear Rayburn still thinks she’s a prosecutor.