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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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?
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.
“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” — U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2
The U.S. Constitution is a mess. By preserving slavery for prisoners it has never fully abandoned that institution. In creating a Senate orginally intended to be appointed rather than elected, it preserved the vestiges of a House of Lords that gives outsized power to miniscule states. By establishing the Electoral College, we ended up with an institution that has undermined the will of the people several times in recent history.
Though the Founders were tired of a mentally-ill despotic monarch, they absolutely failed to remove imperial rule from the Presidency. It’s been a straight line from George II to Donald Trump. Checks and balances that the Constitution were supposed to provide have created instead a system of gridlock in four-year increments. The resulting inability of legislators to accomplish anything has led many Americans to question democracy itself and to to start flirting with authoritarianism — all to “make the trains run on time.”
But the problem is not democracy. It is the creation our slaveholding Founding Fathers left behind. Their rushed creation, the American Constitution, once a charming house, is now a rotting hulk with a deed that prohibits repair.
One piece of monarchical residue in our Constitution is the presidential prerogative to grant pardons and commutations. In all-too-many cases the President has pardoned cronies who committed serious crimes. Examples include Ford’s pardon of Nixon, Clinton’s pardon of his buddy Marc Rich, Bush’s pardon of Scooter Libby, and any of Trump’s pardons of people whose crimes include: bribery, mail fraud, election tampering, treason, sedition, human rights abuses, and cold-blooded murder.
Changing the Constitution is difficult enough, and downright impossible when the country is as divided as ours is. But we desperately need a Constitutional Convention. Retiring the Electoral College, denying corporate personhood, altering or abandoning the Senate, limiting presidential pardons, expunging vestiges of slavery, returning powers to the legislature long lost to an imperial presidency, permitting snap elections to be held as in most parliamentary democracies — features like these are necessary for the survival of democracy in the United States.
Unfortunately, Americans don’t really want democracy. Especially those who benefit the most from a system slaveholders left behind.
But if Democrats are nauseated by the spate of presidential pardons we’re about to witness, the next President could easily use the power of the pardon for better purposes.
Grant amnesty to illegal immigrants and whistleblowers. Empty the prisons of people over the age of 75. Pardon the nation’s many political prisoners. Pardon Crystal Mason, who cast a provisional ballot while out on parole. Lift the federal death penalty from those sentenced to be murdered by the state. Abandon impossible-to-prosecute cases against the last detainees in Guantanamo, and find someplace to send them before shutting down that national disgrace.
Whatever moniker fits best — monarch or president — the nation’s top executive and her Department of Justice should never have the right to unilaterally thumb their noses at laws established by the people. Overturning convictions should be a power for the lawmakers who originally wrote those laws, perhaps through a Congressional Pardons Commission. Or, at the very least, make presidential pardons subject to House approval.
In the meantime, Democrats ought to exercise the power of the pardon to the max. Perhaps then both Democrats and Republicans could finally agree that such a power is simply too much of a risk in the hands of one person. Such a bipartisan realization might move us one step closer to that much-needed Constitutional Convention.
I don’t mean to veer into satire — it’s not really a strength and this is hardly a joking matter. But yesterday, as I was checking out the limitations of a piece of “freemium” software (as opposed to buying the full “Pro” plan), it dawned on me that our “justice” system is exactly like software with the Freemium model.
The justice most Americans receive — unless they are white, well-connected, tasked with keeping the poor and people of color in their place with state-sanctioned violence, or can buy impunity — is the inferior “Lite” version.
It’s hard to know what Massachusetts Democrats really believe in — besides power. One would be hard-pressed to find a lot of concern for racial justice. MassDems certainly don’t believe in immigrant rights, or they would have supported the Safe Communities Act. They don’t believe there is a problem with Native American mascots or a racists state flag, or they would have decisively fixed both by now. Recently the MassDems overwhelmingly re-elected a party chair who will keep steering the party toward the rocks of irrelevance and decline. When the 420-member state Democratic committee did so, it also rejected two challengers who had both pledged to make the party truly more diverse.
Massachusetts Democrats show unquestioning support for police and correctional officer unions — even the Trump-iest among them, the Massachusetts Correctional Officers Federated Union, got one progressive senator to file legislation to give officers a $100 million raise. No, what keeps legislators up at night is the nightmare that prosecuting bad cops for murdering people of color will somehow undermine police morale.
No surprise, then, that Massachusetts Democrats removed ending Qualified Immunity (impunity) for police from a Police Accountability bill that just barely survived being deep-sixed by the Massachusetts House.
If this isn’t bad enough, Bristol County’s Democratic House Representatives are among the worst of the Democratic Party’s morally-flexible do-nothings.
Thanks to Progressive Mass we can view the results of the December 2nd vote on the Police Accountability bill, S.2693, which now awaits Governor Baker’s signature. Of 14 representatives from Bristol County, only six voted for Police Accountability — even after Qualified Immunity had been stripped from the bill.
What was so wrong with a POST Commission that professionalizes and certifies police officers? What was so upsetting about giving school superintendents discretion to decide whether they want SROs in their schools instead of letting police chiefs decide? The legislators won’t say — only that they get most of their information from the police.
Below is a table of how Bristol County legislators voted.
Remember their names when they ask for your vote in 2022.
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.”
