In Massachusetts, sheriffs and deputies are law enforcement officers with limited powers who may assist genuine police officers when requested. But they are not police officers. Sheriffs run jails, transport prisoners, serve eviction and other notices, and are prohibited from patrolling cities and towns — which are chartered (through state laws) to appoint and hire police officers with full police powers (a crucial point mentioned shortly). Sheriffs, however, do enjoy a few limited police-like powers; for example, while they are transporting prisoners through a foreign jurisdiction or when asked to assist in quelling a riot. And that’s about it.

But like Hershel Walker, Bristol County’s Sheriff Thomas Hodgson keeps trying to pass himself off as the police — and whenever Hodgson’s tried it, it’s either been unappreciated or he’s failed at it. Hodgson implies he has police powers by claiming to be tough on crime, but since he has very limited police-like powers all he can really do is suggest that women carry pepper spray, hand out swag to seniors at “safety” talks, lend out canines, and have his jail officers pose with children and his $250K “Homeland Security” command truck at parades.

It may seem like a trivial matter to Hodgson, but democracies require both the consent of the people to be governed — and to be policed. Only law enforcement officers elected or appointed by chartered Massachusetts municipalities have the police powers that Hodgson has repeatedly, and illegally, attempted to usurp.

But don’t expect to see Sheriff Hodgson show up when you call 911

In November 2003, Hodgson (without being asked, and even after being asked to stop) decided that New Bedford’s police force wasn’t doing a good-enough job. So he began sending his officers to patrol the city’s streets. The New Bedford Police Chief was not amused, nor the mayor, and neither was the District Attorney. The Standard-Times reported, “Bristol District Attorney Paul F. Walsh […] said Hodgson has made no effort to coordinate with city police and has a track record of legal failures when investigating crimes inside his own facilities. Walsh also said that arrests made by the sheriff’s deputies, who typically serve warrants and act as guards at the county jail, would be subject to challenges in court. ‘You can’t have the guy who was serving mashed potatoes to inmates last week calling himself a drug detective this week,’ Walsh said.”

But that’s exactly Hodgson’s shtick — playing cop — and he’s been doing it throughout his entire time in office.

Between 1991 and 2005 Peter Larkin was Hodgson’s “Detective Lieutenant of Internal Affairs.” Larkin resigned from the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) three years after botching a drug investigation the BCSO undertook — again without “assistance from other police agencies.” One lawyer described the low quality of BCSO investigators, “They’re not trained for investigative work,” while another called the BCSO itself “a task force of goofballs who couldn’t cut it as real cops.”

ABC6 News reported in July 2020 that Larkin, who eventually found work as an attendance officer with the New Bedford Public Schools, had been fired (again) from that job for advocating lynching Black Lives Matter protesters: “I would roll tanks and bulldozers. Mush any human in the way. Shoot everyone else. Pile up the bodies and burn them on national tv.” Within days Larkin had to resign. This news was no surprise given Hodgson’s membership in a hate group and memberships in several extremist organizations.

On January 12, 2017 the state Supreme Judicial Court considered the legality of a sheriff calling himself a police officer, and drew a clear distinction between law enforcement officer and police officer in Commonwealth v. Gernrich where it concluded that “sheriff’s deputies are not police officers.”

The SJC had to consider the case of an inmate in the Worcester County jail who had lied to a deputy and was charged with violating G. L. c. 269, § 13A, which reads, “Whoever intentionally and knowingly makes or causes to be made a false report of a crime to police officers shall be punished by…” The inmate disputed that the deputy he had lied to was a police officer, so the matter before the SJC was the “issue whether a deputy sheriff is a police officer within the meaning of G. L. c. 269, § 13A, present[ing] a question of statutory interpretation…” The Justices reviewed Massachusetts law and concluded:

“For the reasons explained above, a deputy sheriff is not a ‘police officer’ for purposes of G. L. c. 269, § 13A. Thus, we reverse the defendant’s conviction, and a judgment of not guilty shall enter.”

The reasoning behind the ruling is critical. The Justices wrote that G. L. c. 41, § 98 defines “unique” police powers that other law enforcement officials lack; therefore only police can be called police:

Although the term “police officer” appears in a variety of statutory contexts, we adopt the definition in G. L. c. 41, § 98, to guide our analysis of the issue. General Laws c. 41, § 98, which authorizes the appointment of “police officers” for cities and towns, is an appropriate guide for the interpretation of G. L. c. 269, § 13A, because it permits a distinction between the broad class of law enforcement officers empowered to perform only certain police duties and those expressly designated as “police officers” without such limitations. The definition of police officer in G. L. c. 41, § 98, encompasses a broad range of authority, including the power to make warrantless arrests, that is unique within the class of law enforcement officers. In other words, a police officer is a law enforcement officer, but not all law enforcement officers are police officers. It is this broad authority, granted only to persons appointed as police officers by cities and towns, that defines the term for the purposes of G. L. c. 269, § 13A.

Bottom line: “a deputy sheriff is not a police officer.” You’d think that a ruling so clear and from the highest court in the state would stop Hodgson from trying to impersonate a cop.

But no.

Barely three months following the SCJ ruling, the Fall River Herald News reported that Hodgson and disgraced former mayor (and now incarcerated felon) Jaziel Correia had entered into a backroom deal to have Hodgson run Fall River’s police lockup. Hodgson had tried and failed to sell a similar scheme before when Deval Patrick was governor. This time around Hodgson enlisted the help of a con man. The now incarcerated former mayor swore up and down that two local state representatives had promised to find state funding for Hodgson.

There were just two problems with the Correia-Hodgson deal. The Fall River police reminded all parties that policing by sheriffs was illegal. And Carole Fiola, who served on the Joint Ways and Means Committee and whose name Correira dropped, had to set the record straight when she told the Herald: “It was the first time I heard about it and I am not aware there is a budget request.”

The scheme was both illegal and based on lies.

Classic Hodgson.

Paul Heroux at the State House

Not only in Bristol County, but all over the United States, sheriffs are on the ballot. Given the previous administration’s love affair with Anglo-American sheriffs, America is now paying a bit more attention to these races than ever before.

In Massachusetts sheriffs have extremely attenuated powers but extremely long terms — rivaling that of a U.S. Senator — and very little accountability — all of which affords them a lot of time and opportunity to get into mischief.

By now everyone knows about Bristol County’s Angry White Man sheriff — the community college dropout who has been running our jail by the seat of his pants while making frequent trips to the border with militia members and white supremacists. Not to mention letting an indecent number of people die by suicide while half-starving inmates and gouging their families with usurious phone charges.

Tom Hodgson is like your neighbor, the do-it-yourself plumber, who broke the toilet, flooded the first floor, and left sewage all over. Now cooler heads have to call someone with professional skills — somebody who actually knows what the hell he’s doing — to fix the mess the stubborn hubby has made.

And Paul Heroux is just the guy to do it. Heroux has a bachelor’s in psychology, a master’s in corrections, has worked in corrections doing corrections, and has been running a city government with a budget three times larger than Hodgson’s.

In the process Heroux has also managed to steer clear of the state auditor, the state attorney general, and the Department of Homeland Security — unlike the incumbent clown who couldn’t document a third of his expenses to the auditor’s satisfaction, misplaced ICE payments in one of a dozen slush funds he keeps, who has systematically violated the civil rights of his prisoners, and last year lost his prized 287(g) program because of gross incompetence and cruelty — cruelty borne out of pandering to and offering Republican voters angry red meat.

Thomas Hodgson in an election ad telling voters that jail is not a country club.

Paul Heroux, who sometimes comes across as a brainy technocrat and not a movie-goer’s image of a Western sheriff, is nevertheless unlikely to jet down to the Texas ranch of militia members at taxpayer expense to play dress-up with Western sheriffs, take time off to run the Massachusetts Trump campaign, pose on the Capitol steps with Ted Cruz, Louis Gohmert, or various extremist and anti-government groups he belongs to, or sit on the national advisory board of a hate group — like the incumbent.

Heroux’s not going to put inmates in chain gangs, try to circumvent laws that keep Massachusetts sheriffs from doing police work, try to make deals with a Fall River mayor now serving time in federal prison, do favors for a New Bedford waterfront crime boss, or break federal law by deputizing military recruiters (which earned Hodgson a visit from Navy investigators). And no multi-million dollar legal appeals for lost cases that would never have been heard if the incumbent hadn’t broken laws by violating the rights of inmates or his employees.

No, it’s going to be the sound of crickets again when Heroux is elected sheriff.

Besides not racking up massive legal bills paid for by taxpayers for grandstanding and law-breaking, Heroux is also not going to write “love letters” to racists like Stephen Miller, Trump’s evil genius immigration advisor, or rat out his own church like Hodgson did for the “crime” of his parish caring for undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers. For a guy who likes to remind his Trumpy base how “Christian” he is, Hodgson sure seems to have forgotten Exodus 22:21: “You shall not oppress or mistreat a stranger, for you were strangers in Egypt.” Like everything about Hodgson the poseur, even his piety is all show.

But the million-dollar question is — do voters want an aggressive grandstander who just won’t stay in his lane and do his damn job — or are they ready for a little professionalism in a sheriff? I honestly have no idea. Who truly knows the heart of the fickle American voter?

But I’m not the only one to speculate. The Marshall Project covers criminal justice issues and only yesterday published a timely piece: “Progressive Sheriffs Are Here. Will They Win In November?” Since Trump was elected, Progressive sheriff candidates have increasingly run and won.

Sheriffs in the thrall of the Dear Leader

Part of that reason is that voters are beginning to realize just how extremist these overwhelmingly Trump-fanny-kissing sheriffs really are. Overwhelmingly white, a survey by the Marshall Project of sheriff’s political views showed that less than 1% consider themselves liberal, 75% support ultra-right politics, most regard protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder to be orchestrated by left-wing provocateurs and not reflect an authentic response to a police murder. And forget accountability. Less than half are in favor of tracking bad cops. And so on. In addition, a majority of sheriffs think they are more powerful than a sitting U.S. president and can interpret the Constitution any way they see fit and selectively enforce laws.

In short, today’s sheriff’s hold views diametrically opposed to those of majorities in Democratic states like ours.

In Essex County, Massachusetts, social worker Virginia Leigh ran against incumbent sheriff Kevin Coppinger in the Democratic primary and got 48% of the vote — not bad for a first-timer. In Hampshire County, Caitlin Sepeda, a nurse and (again) a first-time challenger, garnered 25% of the primary vote but hammered away on services. Sepeda ran on a platform of delivering treatment to inmates, pointing out that 60% of her county’s incarcerated people have substance abuse problems and 70% self-report mental illness. “Those are not law enforcement issues. Those are nursing issues. Those are social service issues,” Sepeda told one reporter.

And she’s absolutely right. Which brings us to the general election on November 8th.

In Barnstable County, Donna Buckley, who is running on a platform of prioritizing programs for inmates and “preparing our inmates for pre-release,” got 30,000 primary votes in the Democratic primary, while Republican Tim Whelan got only 18,000. May these proportions hold in the general election. Besides delivery of services to inmates, federal ICE programs are on the ballot. Buckley has promised to end Barnstable County’s 287(g) program, the only county jail program remaining in Massachusetts.

In Bristol County, Paul Heroux is similarly promising to use — not Hodgson’s cruel medieval approach — but 21st Century tools to run the county jail, to provide services to inmates, to use data-driven management to evaluate rehabilitation programs, and to focus on the mundane job of care, custody, and control of incarcerated people.

To invoke the incumbent’s platform, “Jail is not a country club.” Well, no, it’s not. But it’s also not a torture chamber. It ought to be a short-term treatment center for mentally-ill and chemically-dependent people. The courts and the DA are in the punishing business. The sheriff provides care, custody, and control. Seems simple. Except, perhaps, for some percentage of voters who want sheriffs to impose their own arbitrary punishments on people already being punished.

In her latest essay in the Boston Globe, long-time Hodgson-watching columnist Yvonne Abraham quoted Carol Rose of the ACLU: “Voters are waking up. […] Maybe not this time, but soon, [a sheriff] is going to be held accountable by the voters.” To which Abraham adds: “Please, please, let it be this time.”

Amen to that.

Bristol County’s Chief Trump Bum-Kisser

The New Bedford waterfront has its share of crime, including organized crime. Carlos Rafael, aka the “Codfather,” served time in federal prison on numerous charges, including money laundering. Though no criminal connection has been established between Rafael and Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, two of Hodgson’s officers were convicted of using a Thanksgiving turkey airlift to the Azores (for repatriated deportees) as an opportunity to illegally transfer money offshore for Rafael. The money was carefully divided among couriers (so as not to raise suspicions) and was then recombined and deposited into the “Codfather’s” accounts.

James Melo, a captain with the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office, was convicted in Federal court of “conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States and one count of structuring the export of monetary instruments.” Melo got a mild slap on the wrist: twelve months of probation. Sheriffs Deputy Antonio Freitas was slightly less lucky. Freitas, who also served as a deputized ICE agent for Hodgson, was convicted of charges similar to Melo’s but served twelve months in prison.

There is a fascinating account of Rafael’s money-laundering and the role Freitas played in it buried in an appeal from federal prosecutors Mark T. Quinlivan and Trump appointee Andrew E. Lelling. In the document, Rafael boasted of his close relationship with Hodgson and the influence it played in obtaining both a job and a raise for Freitas:

“I got him the job, I got him the raises, so he’ll do what the fuck I tell him to do. He called me. He says, ‘what the fuck is going on, everybody got a promotion in this fuckin’ place but me.’ So I’m like this [gestures] with the sheriff. I called the Sheriff and I said ‘what the fuck are you doing to me Tom? Fuckin Freitas has been there for so many fuckin’ years, you’re not going to give him a fuckin’ promotion and a raise?’ ‘Jesus Carlos, we do not have enough money in the budget.’ I said fuck off, find a way, give the kid a raise. He got his promotion, right, so he called me and said I want to thank you very much, I finally got my fuckin’ promotion and my raise. So it’s nice to know people.”

Rafael’s claim that Hodgson had assisted Freitas was confirmed by Freitas himself, who admitted to Federal investigators “that he had carried money for Rafael in the past because Rafael had helped him get a promotion [from Hodgson] and had co-signed a home improvement loan for him.”

When Hodgson was called to the witness stand during Freitas’ trial, “Hodgson remembered Rafael saying over the phone that he needed a promotion. But Rafael’s call did not influence his decision, Hodgson stressed.” Incredibly — as in “I don’t believe a damn word of it” — Quinlivan and Lelling simply took Hodgson’s word that he had granted the favor because, well, he was going to do it anyway.

But Rafael had access to the sheriff and knew that Freitas “worked on customs with the immigration unit of the Sheriff’s Department. And Rafael said that Freitas could also help the co-conspirators get their cash out of the country by bypassing airport security.” This is because Freitas had received the requested promotion to deputized ICE agent at the jail and had “completed a multiday training program for ICE officers that covered (among other topics) financial crimes, including structuring and bulk-cash smuggling — an instructor, for example, told attendees that structuring involved”having more than $10,000 in cash and breaking it into smaller amounts to conduct financial transactions in order to avoid the reporting requirements.”

Freitas was not only well-positioned to launder money for Rafael, but perfectly trained to commit the crime.

All thanks to Tom Hodgson.