WPD - Release Your Excessive Force Complaints

City Manager Augustus, Worcester City Council, and Worcester Records Access Officer

This is a petition demanding that the City of Worcester immediately release and publish the City of Worcester’s and Bureau of Professional Standard’s database of citizen complaint histories, excessive force reviews, and disciplinary records of police officers. As residents we are entitled to this information under Massachusetts' Public Records Law. We are also demanding that a searchable copy of this database be made permanently available on the City’s website as is already done with other public databases and the City Council ask City Manager Augustus to end the use of taxpayer money fighting the Worcester Telegram & Gazette’s public records requests in court.

The city of Worcester has spent two years holding up in court a records request from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette seeking the complaint histories of 17 local police officers. Worcester has a long history of shrouding on-duty and off-duty police misconduct in secrecy, violating both state open records laws and public trust. While this problem predates City Manager Augustus, it is a problem he and the City Council can solve by embracing transparency and police accountability.

Ending systemic racism in our law enforcement community starts by increasing transparency.

According to a 2016 study funded by the United States Department of Justice, an average of 1,000 American police officers are arrested each year for crimes involving abuse, assault, drugs and inappropriate sexual conduct. Forty percent of these crimes are committed while the officer is on duty. Of course, many instances of police criminal activity or misconduct are never reported, as officers are protected by their superiors, peers and union leadership.

Many of these crimes lead to lawsuits that cost Worcester taxpayers millions of dollars each year, taking budget money away from underfunded programs. Worcester's leadership is naive at best and enabling at worst if it chooses to believe that this behavior does not happen here, as several City Councilors have suggested. In fact, it has the receipts from the settlements and court rulings proving that it does. Those who have been harmed by the police deserve their settlements for the harm that has been done to them, and we are wasting our tax dollars when the City is embroiled in years-long lawsuits fighting off complaints and public records requests.

Worcester's residents deserve to know if the city employs police officers with lengthy disciplinary histories, criminal convictions, patterns of racist policing or ties to white supremacy organizations, and where the city stands on terminating their employment.
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To: City Manager Augustus, Worcester City Council, and Worcester Records Access Officer
From: [Your Name]

Community complaints against police using excessive and deadly force against Black men, women, and youth are at the core of the nationwide movement to eliminate systemic racism in policing.

We believe Black and Brown lives are less safe in Worcester because our city continues to hide these records and obstructs the release of files and histories of police wrongdoing to Worcester residents. I am adding my name to this request because I believe it is the only way any real changes can take place.

As Worcester residents, under Massachusetts’ Public Records Law, we are requesting a copy of the City of Worcester’s and Bureau of Professional Standard’s database of citizen complaint histories, excessive force reviews and disciplinary records of police officers.

Public release of these records has been repeatedly upheld by the Massachusetts courts and is an absolutely necessary part of any public review and accountability of policing in Worcester. In fact, in his May 1, 2003 court decision affirming an earlier judgment, Justice Grasso wrote, “It would be odd, indeed, to shield from the light of public scrutiny as “personnel [file] or information” the workings and determinations of a process whose quintessential purpose is to inspire public confidence.” We fully agree and are only requesting those parts of the database determined by earlier court decisions to be public information.

Because of the importance of community oversight moving forward, we also ask that a searchable copy of this database be made permanently available on the City’s website as is already done with other public databases.

In addition to requesting the immediate release and publishing of this database, we request the City Council ask City Manager Augustus to end the use of taxpayer money fighting the Worcester Telegram & Gazette’s public records requests in court for related citizen complaint histories, excessive force, and disciplinary records.

As Worcester leaders, you have pronounced a commitment to serving our whole community. Under the public eye, you have knelt with the community to publicly state that black lives matter and we must dismantle systemic racism in policing. Public professions such as taking a knee must be followed with public actions if they are to be believed. Now is the only time to take action. Proposals such as Mayor Petty’s call for a yearly review of Police policies and renewed community calls to create a Citizen Review Commission will not be real if you as City Councilors, the City Manager and Chief do not immediately, and fully, disclose citizen complaint histories, excessive force, and police disciplinary records.