Worcester Magazine
COP TALK: I wonder if anyone in authority in Worcester has ever regretted saying something more than Worcester Police Chief Steven M. Sargent probably regrets saying, “In my 35 years I have not observed racism in the department. We would not allow it." It has been practically a sport for armchair investigators, bloggers and journalists to turn up incidents and allegations of police brutality and institutional racism with the department, much of which has been chronicled in this column. So it probably shouldn't be surprising that the biggest social media buzz of the past few days has been Brad Petrishen's article for the Telegram & Gazette, “Despite chief's claim, Worcester investigated racist police incidents,” which highlights six investigations of racial complaints in the past decade, as detailed in documents provided after a public records request by the newspaper. As has been the hallmark of the ongoing public dialog between the Worcester Police Department and the community in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, the revelations have kicked up even more past incidents and recollections, including a renewed interest in a Worcester Magazine collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, where freelancer Seth Kershner investigated “Children and Swat Raids: An Unintended Consequence.” The article was written in the wake of a police siege on a Hillside Street apartment, and while the suspect the SWAT team was seeking no longer lived there, Marianne Diaz, her fiancée, Bryant Alequin, and their two young children did. The whole fiasco was one of the most horrific debacles in WPD history, and it's only by the grace of God that it didn't wind up as fatal as the much-publicized wrongful slaying of Breonna Taylor nearly a year ago. While talking to area law enforcement officials about what happens when children and SWAT raids collide, Kershner quotes Bridgewater Police Chief Christopher Delmonte, president of the Southeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, as saying “When you encounter children during a SWAT operation, they’ve probably endured much more through the course of their lifetime, and it may in some cases mark a road to some kind of recovery or maybe even Department of Children and Family supervision for them.” That sort of pat justification is pretty standard for law enforcement, but seeing the story referred to today stirred recollection of a more recent story, in Rochester New York, where officers are taking heat for the pepper-spraying and handcuffing of a 9-year-old child. History may not repeat, as the saying goes, but it does rhyme. We can't talk about the WPD in isolation, because we've seen similar behaviors have even more horrific effects elsewhere. If these conversations between the police and the community aren't held everywhere, it's only a matter of time until we see another family traumatized, or worse.