WILLIAMSTOWN â The Williamstown sergeant whose claims of harassment and bias within his department spurred doubts about local policing, and led the police chief and town manager to resign, is now himself under scrutiny.
Sgt. Scott E. McGowan was removed from active duty this week after he was named in an employee complaint. âI can confirm that Sgt. McGowan has been placed on paid administrative leave pending review of a personnel matter,â said Town Manager Jason Hoch.
Hoch said he directed Acting Chief Michael Ziemba on Monday to put McGowan on leave. Hoch declined further comment.
Separately, an investigation by The Eagle finds that McGowan had run-ins with area police departments, including being charged in a domestic assault and battery case in North Adams, on dates that overlapped with some of the incidents he flagged in the U.S. District Court lawsuit he filed last summer against two top Williamstown officials.
Town Manager Jason Hoch confirmed on Saturday that Sgt. Scott McGowan was placed on paid administrative leave this week. The leave was first reported Friday by The Berkshire Eagle, which also revealed several run-ins McGowan had with the law 20 years or more ago. McGowan, a full-time police officer in the town since 2002, last year named then Chief Kyle Johnson, Hoch and the town as defendants in a suit alleging discrimination and retaliation against a whistle-blower in federal court last year. He alleged that officials named in the suit had allowed or covered up incidents of racism and harassment in the Police Department and then had discriminated against him for reporting them.
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts professor of social work Kerri Nicoll suggested that the board could benefit from training in light of the twin strains of a controversy that has engulfed the town over the last year and a pandemic that has forced a new mode of conducting meetings in a virtual environment. I would be willing to work to plan and facilitate a training/retreat of some kind that would give you all an opportunity to collectively think about your roles as Select Board members, particularly in light of new levels of civic participation, Nicoll said. This is acknowledging the fact that this is not unique to Williamstown. I think a lot of elected bodies and public officials are rethinking how they interact with the public because the public is more engaged at every moment, in part because it is wonderfully more convenient for people to engage from their own home.
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The national reckoning with racial justice and police brutality has led to a conversation about the role of law enforcement in New England communities.
The May 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody sparked protests across the nation, including in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where residents worked to bring that conversation home.
Residents formed the Racial Justice Police Reform Group in July. They also pushed the town to establish the Advisory Committee for Diversity, Inclusion and Racial Equity, or DIRE, that same month to lead discussion in the town of 7,500.
One of their first tasks was to cut the police budget, a move that then-police chief Kyle Johnson resisted.
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