External affairs

Worcester's police have been fighting a bad image in recent months, and department critics say the time is right for a civilian-review board

by Chris Kanaracus

The call has gone out in Worcester for some sort of police accountability, evidenced most dramatically at the Worcester Human Rights Commission's (HRC) public hearings, the first of which -- held in late February at the Great Brook Valley housing development -- was a chaotic, emotionally charged affair, one that at times was so heated that it threatened to unravel completely.

The meeting -- the first of its kind in the city in more than 10 years -- was intended to provide a forum for city residents to voice complaints over such matters as job, housing, and racial discrimination in the private sector. (As of 1996, the HRC's jurisdiction does not cover city services or employees.) But instead, what the nine-member panel received was a scathing series of attacks on the Worcester Police Department (WPD), the content of which ran the gamut from instances of rude language to shockingly detailed accounts of physical and sexual abuse.

A 13-year-old described how police would stop and search him on a daily basis, even going so far as to fish around in his underpants in search of drugs. The family of a 76-year-old man tearfully described the day police allegedly forced the man to remove his underpants in public. Twenty-year-old Joel Vega described the afternoon he was interrupted by police while picking up trash in front of his house -- according to Vega, officers verbally harassed him, then illegally entered and searched his home. Even the ghost of Cristino Hernandez (who died in 1993 from injuries suffered during a routine arrest) was invoked via occasional shouts of his name from the audience.

A small but growing number of city residents say that civilian oversight of police complaints may be the solution, and the public at large may have a chance to voice its opinion on the matter as soon as November; for perennial candidate Bill Coleman has filed a petition to the city council proposing that a non-binding question concerning civilian review be added to the ballot. The council has yet to act on the petition.

Proponents of civilian review say that a review board would provide a third, fresh option for potential complainants. As it stands now, citizens have two avenues when seeking to file a complaint against a police officer: the WPD's own internal-affairs division or the Massachusetts Coalition Against Discrimination, which has the investigative power to effectively resolve complaints but is by all accounts hopelessly backed up and woefully underfunded. Thus, complaints often take years to resolve, if they are at all, critics charge.

And public trust in the WPD's internal-affairs department has almost certainly been eroded as of late due to the high-profile struggle over the release of the internal-affairs records division, which have been requested by the Telegram & Gazette. In fact, that battle is only one of the latest in a series of public-relations disasters for the Worcester police.

MANY ACTIVISTS SEE the WPD's troubles beginning with the 1993 death of Cristino Hernandez, a 38-year-old Salvadoran who died from a brain injury 10 days after police were videotaped beating him up. After an internal-affairs investigation, the two officers involved in the case were absolved of guilt, which ignited widespread and protracted protests from Worcester's minority community.

"They brought it on themselves with the way they handled that," says Gordon Davis of the Worcester area Rainbow Coalition, a grassroots community organization. Relations between the WPD and minority groups were further strained by repeated, sometimes violent run-ins with guests and staffs of Worcester's Youth Center in 1994 and 1997.

In 1997, WPD Lieutenant William Goddard -- who was at one time head of the department's community-policing program -- was ousted from the force after a 1995 indictment that charged he embezzled more than $37,000 from the S.M.A.R.T. anti-drug program. (in all, Goddard pleaded guilty to 11 counts of larceny).

And in early March, Chief Edward Gardella himself came under fire -- not from the public but from his own employees. Four WPD captains, led by Capt. Gary Gemme, filed grievances to the department accusing Gardella of sexual and verbal harassment. One incident, as told by T&G columnist Dianne Willamson, alleges that Gardella stuffed his hand into an officer's pocket in a doughnut shop. Gardella was later reprimanded by City Manager Tom Hoover.

Regardless, police officials insist there is no need for civilian involvement in the monitoring of the WPD. They say that the problem can be, and has been, handled internally. They cite studies that show such review boards fare no better than internal-affairs divisions in the successful resolution of citizen complaints, and, with surprisingly public cynicism, say that regardless of who conducts the investigations, the public will never have confidence in the results. Are they right?

"That's hogwash," says Delanot Bastien of Worcester's Rainbow Coalition.

"A review board that is representative of the community, not handpicked by the city, will be efficient and effective."

Not only effective, says Bastien, but beneficial to the WPD's image in the community. "Right now, no one really trusts the police," says Bastien. "If you let people in, let them get involved with what you're doing, they will pay you back. They will call in if they see crimes committed. They will cooperate with investigations. Right now, people don't want to do that."

Gardella responds, "We're always trying to improve the way we deal with the public. More needs to be done, however . . . I believe that the public needs to know more about how the process of filing a complaint works, and about the job of being a police officer. It's more complicated than people think.

"People don't trust it [internal affairs] because they don't really know how it works," he adds.

Gardella, however, acknowledges the damage done by the T&G dispute, but asserts that there are a number of valid reasons for the lack of cooperation. There is the oft-heard statement of the need to protect ongoing investigations, but also something slightly more convoluted. "All of these complaints stem from the results of an initial call to the police. At the time, textural observations of the scene are made by the officer for his or her report, things like, `The house was full of dirty clothes, the kids were screaming.' Those things are highly subjective, personal observations." Gardella says that to release such records to the public could create the impression of a department-wide bias.

Gardella says that while a civilian review board's very nature -- a representative body independent from the police department -- may pre-empt any potential claims of bias, it doesn't necessarily do a better job of resolving complaints. "I've heard of review board investigations taking two, even three times as long as one done by a police officer."

Yet there exists at least one success story. Dade County, Florida's review board is viewed as very effective, not only by community activists but by police and state employees as well. Perhaps the biggest key to the board's success has been the fact that its jurisdiction falls over all county employees, removing the stigma that the board is honing in on police activity. Regardless, Dade County's experience is rare at best.

Ronal Madnick of Worcester's American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says that most civilian review boards fail because they lack certain "crucial" elements.

"How about no funding, no investigators, no office staff, no independence from the city, no subpoena power, and no policy-making power. A review board can't work without most or all of those elements," Madnick says.

A local example of review-board failure can be found in Hartford, Connecticut, where cronyism, lack of funding, and no power to make its recommendations stick have been cited..

Despite the fact that 35 of the 50 largest police departments in the United States have some sort of civilian oversight, to date there does not exist a single review board with all of the "crucial" elements, namely, policy-setting power.

Michael Zinzun, a longtime Los Angeles activist and head of LA's Citizens Against Police Abuses (CAPA) says, "Portland and Seattle have something close [those boards have subpoena power, investigators, and adequate funding], but even those places haven't been given the type of policy-making power to stop things from happening before the worst types of abuses occur."

Zinzun has seen some success, however, from LA's "business card" program, under which police officers, upon stopping an individual, are required to hand out a card listing the name, badge number, and telephone number of not only the officer but of his or her superior.

Zinzun says the program is a start and something that other communities could benefit from. But Zinzun admits that getting any farther toward his ideal -- independent civilian review -- has been a challenge. "In our most recent effort to get a review board in place, we collected over 130,000 signatures. It still didn't pass."

There is no evidence to suggest that the fight for civilian review in Worcester will be any easier, although Madnick, for one, says one possibility for an effective board in the city would be a completely independent body -- funded by contributions and grants -- that would assemble a number of solid cases against police officers, bring big-money civil suits against both the city and those officers (or otherwise) involved, and win enough of those cases to wake up the taxpaying public, which would subsequently force local elected officials to do something substantive -- if for no other reason than to save their wallets.

MADNICK'S VISION OF CITIZEN-driven justice has yet to coalesce -- right now, the HRC is the closest thing Worcester has to anything resembling such review. What it lacks is power and jurisdiction where it counts. And the debate over those facts is nothing new. Beginning in early 1994, in the aftermath of Cristino Hernandez, the Coalition for a Better Human Rights Commission was formed, made up of 18 separate community-interest groups. Madnick was the convenor of the coalition from its inception to its dissolution in 1996, and says while some changes were made to the HRC's charter due to their efforts (discrimination against sexual orientation was added, as well as the HRC electing its own chairperson, rather than having one appointed by the city manager), the project died simply because many coalition members believed they "were wasting their time."

According to its current ordinance, the HRC cannot subpoena witnesses without the "advice and assistance" of the city solicitor. Its full-time staff consists of chairperson Shirley Wright and a limited number of clerical workers. It has no dedicated investigator. Most important, since 1996, the HRC no longer has jurisdiction over city employees. The official reason for the change in the ordinance stated that a city agency would face conflict-of-interest issues when dealing with city employees, a position that seemingly flies in the face of such institutions as the WPD's internal-affairs division.

In its current form, the HRC acts as an advisory panel to City Manager Tom Hoover. When the series of public hearings concludes later this month, the commission will file a report to the manager's office detailing a number of recommendations. Any action on those recommendations, however, is entirely up to Hoover.

Several activists are wondering what exactly stands between those forthcoming recommendations and the wastebasket. "I suppose nothing, if you want to look at it in such a cynical way," says Wright. "But I will say that Tom Hoover supports this commission very strongly and has treated us very well. You're implying that this is futile. It's not."

Wright's opinion of Hoover is backed by out-going board member Joe Daley. But Daley is slightly more pessimistic about the HRC's chances than Wright. "The HRC should at least have the right to review and investigate the complaints we've received. . . . I'm not sure about a civilian review board, but I can certainly get behind the idea of an empowered HRC."

Daley says the current, (i.e. powerless) status of the HRC is regrettable, but he also sees a role for the commission, namely, in the form of a bully pulpit. "Let's say we [the HRC] release this scathing report to the city manager. Then, you guys [media] can jump on that, can make news out of that, and make it a burning issue. . . . Right now, the HRC is basically a sounding board."

It doesn't seem like that will change in the immediate future. Support among elected officials for civilian review remains scarce. Councilor-at-large Stacey Luster filed a motion to the council for a vote on a civilian review board twice. The first time, in November 1998, Luster says she "got no response [from city officials] whatsoever." In February, Luster submitted her request again and got a prompt answer, in the form of a written letter from chief Gardella opposing civilian review.

Additionally, Luster received no direct support from city councilors on the topic of civilian review. But she remains optimistic. She says that "many councilors believe we should look into the problems" of police harassment. Luster says that the very phrase "civilian review board" is "scary" to city leaders but reasserts that support for "some type of oversight" is present within the council, mayor, and city manager's offices.

Along those lines, Luster also recently filed several unusual requests: internal-affairs personnel records for the past 10 years, and for the same period, a list of WPD officers who have been placed on stress leave.

"I'm not sure I'll get what I want [the motion is pending], but I think it is something that should be looked at. For instance, internal affairs. Has there been much turnover in that department? I hear it's a job nobody wants, that it's pretty unpopular. Records might prove or disprove that theory. If there is high turnover, then the question becomes: is that department as effective as it can be?" Adds Luster, "The same thing goes for the stress-leave records. Are there officers working now that have had a lot of stress leave?" But Luster is quick to point out that she is not passing judgment. "I'm trying to look at the big picture . . . to think about the topic of accountability with a wide perspective."

Indeed. For when all sides of the issue weigh in, it becomes apparent that a need for accountability goes not only toward the WPD, but also toward those individuals who file complaints.

Many of the testimonials heard at Great Brook Valley on February 24 -- however compelling -- lacked such crucial details as specificity, hard evidence, and credible corroborating witnesses. That is not to say the accounts were not lacking in power -- the unbridled anger with which they were delivered painted a grim picture of police behavior in Great Brook Valley -- but the fact remains, without solid evidence to back such claims up, a civilian review board would have little success in deriving any change from them.

A member of the WPD's gang unit -- who prefers to remain anonymous -- says that even the most shocking stories told that evening, such as the diaper incident, lacked objectivity and accuracy.

"That diaper thing happened nine years ago. What happened was this: a car containing the grandfather and other family members -- who were known bad guys -- was pulled over. The grandfather got out of the car, acting out, making a scene, and it was he who started to take off his underpants, saying `Here, look, there's no drugs here.' They left that part out at the meeting."

As to Joel Vega: "He left out some things too. It was his girlfriend's house, he was hanging with three other kids who were known drug dealers, and we saw one of them flash a gun. They ran into the house, and we pursued them inside, which is legal."

"The kids that complained about getting searched? They are known as holders for an older group of drug dealers in the Valley. We always see them there. What else is a 13-year old kid doing hanging out on the corner in the freezing cold at ten o' clock at night? And let me tell you, we never step over the bounds of our authority. We can't search anyone in their private areas unless we see them put it there. We can't, and we don't."

The officer says the public simply doesn't understand the true nature of police work. "When I go to parties, I don't like to tell people what I do. . . . I end up hearing all these stories about this officer, that officer. This is not an easy job. There's a lot of anxiety, every day."

Gardella agrees, "The job is an emotional roller coaster. An officer might take a call for a domestic disturbance. The wife is beat up, the kids are screaming . . . that effects a person." Gardella says that on a subsequent call, such high emotions carry over, and an officer might engage in behavior that could be considered outside the bounds of politeness.

But Gardella doesn't explain everything away. "We are not zero defect. Certainly, there have been problems. But if people don't file complaints, we'll never know. Perhaps people are afraid to do so. . . . They need to know that I personally guarantee to the best of my ability that there will be no retribution."

Gardella was lacking in a specific plan to address the need for more communication between the public and the police but seemingly alters the anti-review stance he took in his reply to councilor Luster when he says, "The department is open to new ways of doing things. We'd be glad to talk about it, and are willing to listen to what everyone has to say."

"I think he [Gardella] means well, but we've heard that same music before," says the Rainbow Coalition's Delanot Bastien. "We've always had a dialogue with him, and it's not enough. Now we want action. These issues need to be addressed . . . people need to know the truth."