Feds find Worcester, Massachusetts police used force, had sexual contact with women
WORCESTER, Mass. – Local police in this central Massachusetts city used excessive force and engaged in “outrageous” sexual contact with women during undercover operations, a two-year civil investigation released Monday by the U.S. Department of Justice found.
“The Department of Justice has reasonable cause to believe that the Worcester Police Department and the City of Worcester engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law,” the DOJ wrote in the conclusion of its 41-page report it posted online.
Investigators said they also had “serious concerns” about “credible reports of sexual assault and other sexual misconduct" by Worcester Police Department officers, gender bias that “infects WPD’s investigations of sexual assault” and “law enforcement practices that may have an unlawful discriminatory effect on Black and Hispanic" people.
The DOJ investigators included a list of 19 recommendations they said the city must implement.
The report comes two years after the DOJ announced it had found “significant justification” to investigate whether city police used excessive force or discriminate based on race and gender.
Hours before the report was released, an outside attorney representing Worcester, former federal prosecutor Brian T. Kelly, called it “unfair” in a statement to the Telegram & Gazette, part of the Paste BN network.
U.S. Attorney Joshua S. Levy for the District of Massachusetts said in a statement that it's vital to hold officials to account.
“Excessive force and sexual misconduct at the hands of officers who took an oath to serve and protect deeply diminishes the public’s trust in its sworn officers,” Levy said in the statement.
“We look forward to working with the City of Worcester and the new leadership of the Worcester Police Department to implement reforms that will prevent these kinds of incidents from reoccurring,” he said.
Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who oversees the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said Monday’s findings were “the first time the department has issued a pattern or practice finding involving sexual misconduct by officers."
“The Justice Department is committed to standing firm against sexual misconduct in all its forms,” she said.
According to Clarke, the investigation showed that Worcester police “allowed undercover police officers to engage in sexual contact with women suspected of being involved in the commercial sex trade.”
The Telegram & Gazette exclusively reported shortly after the DOJ probe was announced that investigators were looking at whether police sexually assaulted women engaged in sex trafficking.
The investigation is one of about 80 so-called “pattern or practice” inquiries the DOJ has conducted since 1994. The investigations usually result in binding court agreements, called consent decrees, aimed at forcing reforms.
However, the efficacy of such decrees – which cost cities millions and can require a decade or more of federal oversight – has been increasingly scrutinized and were largely abandoned during Donald J. Trump’s first term as president.
With Trump set to return to office in January, the DOJ has reportedly been working to release several outstanding reports across the country. In the last three weeks, it has released similar pattern or practice findings in Trenton, New Jersey, and Memphis, Tennessee.
The department has so far released about half of the 12 investigations undertaken under President Joe Biden; none have resulted in consent decrees.
It was not immediately clear in the DOJ’s statement whether it would seek a consent decree from Worcester.
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