Telegram & Gazette
WORCESTER A city police officer drowned Friday while attempting to rescue three teens who were struggling to stay above water at Green Hill Pond. A 14-year-old boy, whom officers tried to save, also lost his life.
Enmanuel Familia, 38, a member of the Worcester Police Department for five years, was pulled from the pond by divers from the city Fire Department.
Manny, as his colleagues called him, leaves a wife and two children.
One of the teens and the officer were rushed to the hospital, where they were pronounced dead. The teen has not been identified. The Worcester Police Department has lost a brother, a friend and a partner, said Police Chief Steven M. Sargent at an evening news conference in front of headquarters. The city of Worcester has lost a hero.
WORCESTER The city Friday said it intends to implement a police body camera program by 2022 at the latest, and will start scheduling meetings to get community input shortly.
“The city is committed to a body camera program, and will soon be engaging in community conversations on what that would look like,” spokesman Walter Bird wrote in an email to the Telegram & Gazette on Friday.
“I’m grateful for the announcement from the city today,” James P. McGovern, the city’s longtime Democratic Congressman, said in a telephone interview, adding that federal COVID-19 relief funds should ease the program’s cost.
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WORCESTER Three years ago Monday, the lawyer who handles appeals for Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. reached out to a colleague in Boston to ask about that office’s long-running conviction integrity unit.
“We have to get something going here,” the Worcester prosecutor, Jane A. Sullivan, wrote in an email just before 1 p.m. on April 19, 2018.
Pineiro alleged that police in those units routinely use excessive force, lie in reports, exhibit racial animus and fabricate evidence, and that Early was violating defendants’ rights by failing to inform them of officers whose credibility was suspect.
Records obtained by the Telegram & Gazette show that Early would, within a month of receiving Pineiro’s complaint, assign a prosecutor to look into its claims and add a section to his website referencing a “Litigation Integrity Division.”