The genie can’t be put back in the bottle
A primer for the council’s DOJ report meeting Tuesday
Worcester lost one of its realest ones last night. Isaac Pineau is no longer with us. Frontman of the doom metal band Care Giver and a great tattoo artist and a dear friend to many. I’m fucked up about it. There will be a fundraiser for his funeral expenses. Will share when it’s up. Rest in peace, Isaac.
This music video from his old band Marrow still goes so hard.
When someone who was always here isn’t here anymore you fix your morning coffee. They’re not here and you empty the litter boxes. They’re not here and you get your post out like you would if they were but they’re not.
Lots to talk about but to my mind the most important is the fact the council is finally going to talk about the Department of Justice’s investigation into the police department on Tuesday. That’ll be the focus today.
Jim McGovern called for a general strike the other day. Anyone see that shit? “We need to start thinking about out-of-the-box ideas like a general strike,” he said to cheers at a packed town hall event in Greenfield.
Pretty cool. More of that please. Less of whatever Chuck Schumer is doing. My god. Anyway.
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Now for the newly customary...
Week-in-a-graf:
The city’s annual highest-paid-employees list hit the news. Like every year, more than 80 of the top 100 are cops. The city council heard a report on the dire need for more homeless shelter space amid increasing numbers across the board, but especially among seniors. Then they voted against even talking about an item filed by Councilor Etel Haxhiaj to create a city hall office to combat evictions and displacement. MassLive announced it will be relocating its headquarters from its current downtown location. A half dozen or so new people pulled papers for at-large city council. David Webb dropped out. A fake letter circling social media, from JFK Jr. calling Joe Biden a traitor (???) had a Worcester postmark. Hm. Deb Packard announced her retirement from Preservation Worcester. The Regional Environmental Council announced the purchase of an old firehouse on Beacon Street to turn into an urban gardening center. City Manager Eric Batista announced reforms to the city’s onerous live event permitting process. Trump cuts to education funding put as much as $50 million at stake for the WPS, the mayor said on Thursday. We’re already down $180,000 for school lunches. WPS and Quinsigamond Community College announced a partnership for automatic acceptance of students. The undergraduate worker strike at Clark University hit the week-long benchmark on Friday. The university shows no signs of budging, neither do the strikers. The Worcester Business Development Corporation announced plans to convert the former St. Gobain factory into a bio-tech campus. On Saturday, about 75 protesters gathered at the Tesla charging stations outside the Auburn Mall.
DOJ meeting primer—homelessness & highly paid cops—cool events coming up!—election update—odds and ends
A primer for the council’s DOJ report meeting Tuesday
On Tuesday, the city council will finally hold a full meeting on the Department of Justice’s investigation of the Worcester Police Department. (There’s also a Human Rights Commission meeting on Monday. First two items go over the undercover prostitution sting and use of force practices.)
We need as many people as we can muster out at this thing! We need to demand more than we’ve gotten so far: a set of half-hearted policy reforms from the police department and a vague promise of a civilian review board from the city manager. And we need to be operating with clear eyes about a DOJ that’s most likely to just... quietly dip out.
As I’ll explain in a bit, the federal government situation makes the path to meaningful reform an unusual one for such an investigation, but there is a path. The situation isn’t by any means hopeless, it just falls to us—the community that pays this police department—and not the federal government. It all falls to us and how we organize.
First, though, let’s get caught up to speed.
DOJ Timeline
Dec. 9 - The DOJ report was released, accompanied by 19 recommendations. A lawyer named Brian Kelly speaks for the entire city to call the report untrue.
Dec. 10 - Batista said he takes the report seriously, and put the civilian review board idea on the table.
Dec. 13 - Project Priceless made their five demands
Dec. 17 - The infamous council meeting wherein police union officials, some of them possibly allegedly directly implicated, called the investigation a sham to a room packed with off duty cops.
Dec. 18 - Hundreds attend a community meeting held by the DOJ at YWCA.
Jan. 6 - The state’s U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy left his post, Mary B. Murrane took over interim.
Jan. 20 - Leah Foley took over for Murrane, one of the first appointments of the Trump administration.
Jan. 22 - The Trump administration put a pause on consent decree settlements, per internal DOJ memos.
Jan. 24 - Leah Foley made a wishy-washy comment on the fate of the investigation.
“As the United States Attorney I am responsible for supporting the mission of the Department of Justice which includes implementing policy consistent with federal law,” Foley said. “We are reviewing the order and will comply with its directive. Additionally, we do not discuss the status of cases or internal deliberations publicly.”
Jan. 25 - We learned that the city’s spent $250,000 on the lawyer hired to discredit the report in that bombastic initial statement.
Feb. 4 - Pam Bondi confirmed as Attorney General.
Feb. 9 - WPD spokesman Sean Murtha told the Globe the department is “still meeting with the DOJ at this time.” The DOJ’s press office in Washington D.C. declined to comment.
March 4 - Police Chief Paul Saucier released a 19-page response report. Mayor Joe Petty held up discussion for a special meeting on the topic, which is happening Tuesday.
What’s in the report?
Some highlights:
“The department has found itself limited by its existing records management system (RMS) and is in the process of moving to a new software system that is targeted to be online in the next 12 to 18 months.” “WPD currently expects that the new Hexagon RMS system will be online in the next 12-18 months. As part of this process, WPD is exploring the possibility of creating a dashboard where traffic stop data would be accessible to the public through the City’s website.”
“As these improvements come to fruition, the WPD has proactively engaged retired FBI Civil Rights Unit Chief Ron Reed to provide independent, additional training on Constitutional Law for all 400 of the Department’s officers, beginning April 2025.”
“Following discussions with the Worcester Regional Research Bureau (WRRB), the WRRB has informed my Administration that it will take the lead on performing an independent review and compiling a research report on Civilian Review Boards. I look forward to their objective analysis.”
“The K-9 Guidelines Policy (Policy 401) has been revised to prohibit the deployment of canines at mass gatherings or riot scenes.”
“A new Use of Force Committee consisting of Training Division experts in each discipline has recently been established, and includes a WPD MPTC certified Use of Force instructor, taser instructor, and firearms instructor.”
“All training academies have been extended to incorporate 40 hours of additional CIT training, starting with the January 2025 academy. In-service training will also be extended to include an abbreviated refresher training.”
“With respect to prostitution stings, officers will only be permitted to use the common nightwalker statute (M.G.L. Ch. 272, Sec. 53), which allows enforcement without having the subject enter the vehicle. This policy has been sent to HRC for review and comment.”
“WPD has worked with the municipality’s Executive Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (EODEI) to develop a new Community Policing and DEI-Focused Curriculum for new student officers. The new curriculum was approved by the MPTC and has been integrated into the most recent Academy that began in January 2025.”
“WPD has developed a policy that will govern the selection of officers into specialized units. Pursuant to this new policy, all selections will be made by the Chief upon referral from a commanding officer and review of the candidate’s resume and history of complaints and sick time. This policy has been sent to HRC for review.”
“The Department will continue to provide updates as more enhancements are developed and implemented through various formats, such as a public web page that details the WPD’s progress in relation to the individual recommendations made in the CNA Racial Equity Audit and DOJ report.”
What happens now?
Well, that’s the hard-to-know part. And I wouldn’t expect anyone on Tuesday to make it more clear. The Marshall Project put together a great rundown of the 12 active DOJ police reform cases around the country. The picture is not a rosy one.
For places where civil rights investigations were still open — the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office near Jackson, Mississippi, and the New York Police Department’s Special Victims’ Unit — the federal government will likely choose to take no further action. New leadership at the Justice Department has already ordered a halt to all open civil rights investigations as they reevaluate how many, if any, they still want to pursue.
The prospects are almost as dim for the eight agencies where investigators found civil rights violations but had not entered into consent decrees — the court-monitored processes that mandate police reforms. Those include police departments in cities like Memphis, Phoenix, Trenton, New Jersey and Mount Vernon, New York, where it’s unclear whether the Justice Department would even informally work with leaders to push the changes their investigations urged.
Worcester falls into that latter category. It seems the legal route—going through the courts to get a formal consent decree—is off the table. But we still have the report, and we have the list of recommendations, and we have a police department whose brass desperately wants to clear its name.
The worst thing we can allow to happen is for the crank contingent to say “welp, looks like we did it.” They tell the chief good job on all these reforms and the civilian review board idea fades into a distant memory. That is also one of the more likely scenarios I can envision.
It becomes the public’s job to say this is not over actually—court order or no, you have to do better. At a minimum, we need to see the civilian review board, and we need the city manager to stop deliberately sabotaging the oversight work of the Human Rights Commission.
Back to The Marshall Project, who reached out to attorneys Joseph Hennessy and Hector Pineiro for their takes. The pair are the only meaningful police accountability we have in this city at the moment.
Attorneys who have sued Worcester police over misconduct are still skeptical that the department will make significant changes without federal pressure. “I haven’t seen any changes,” attorney Joseph Hennessey said in early March. “And with this new Trump administration order, I don’t anticipate any.”
Others say the Justice Department findings may help bring a cultural change in the city, and open the eyes of judges and juries.
“I think it has an impact because for the first time the genie is out of the bottle,” said attorney Hector Piñeiro, who has litigated police misconduct cases in Worcester since 1993. “It’s caused a tremendous amount of outrage with the public here. It’s important for the court system to understand that these are systemic issues and not just isolated events."
There’s power in that public outrage. The job on Tuesday is to show the mayor, the manager, and the chief that the outrage isn’t going anywhere... and the genie can’t be put back in the bottle.
“A symptom of decades of policies”
Two recent city reports, one on highest paid city employees and the other on homelessness, illustrate the absurdity of our current circumstances.
In the first report, we see that cops continue to dominate the “top 100” list; 83 this year, down one from last year’s 84. What’s not down is the pay. That never goes down.
This year, three police captains made more money than the superintendent, for instance. Ranking second through fourth are Matthew D’Andrea, Aaron Theodoss, and Christopher Curtis. As is the case every year, detail pay and overtime account for most of the bloat. For instance: D’Andrea’s $62,609 in overtime; Curtis’ $97,760 in detail work.
Besides the city manager and the superintendent, the top 18 spots are all police officers. The fire chief is 19th. Then it’s cop cop cop cop cop cop cop cop cop until you get to 32, the assistant superintendent. You have to scroll down a few pages, top 164, before you hit the first teacher on the list. And then down to 412 to find the second-highest paid teacher.
We talk about “police states” as if they exist elsewhere... as if we don’t live in the world’s premiere shining pristine example.
A big part of the job over at WPD is making sure unhoused people don’t forget that their mere existence is de facto illegal. The police are very good at shuffling these people around the city and the court system but not good—or concerned—with getting people into housing. That’s someone else’s job. But ahhh shit we ran out of money for the “someone else” because all the cops make vice president money.
City workers that help the unhoused are few and far between, and they get paid like shit. But there’s an abundance of cops who are highly paid and as a rule inflict punishment on the unhoused. So are we surprised, then, that the number of unhoused people continues to outpace our capacity to even offer them a place to sleep for a night?
Here are some highlights from a recent homelessness report put together by Health & Human Services Director Mattie Castiel.
You’ll notice the number of unhoused seniors has more than doubled since 2020. It’s the most dramatic increase but across the board it’s no bueno. The total number jumped from 1,277 to 1,927 from 2022 to 2024.
The rental market is, of course, a key driver. The rental vacancy rate stays at just two percent, among the lowest in the country, and rents for a two bedroom now average north of $2,000 a month.
Such a rental market produces ghastly eviction rates. And once in housing court, you’re basically thrown to the wolves. From the report:
The number of nonpayment evictions in Worcester surged dramatically from 263 to 471 cases between 2022 and 2023, underscoring the urgency of this issue. According to CMHA, only 2% of eviction cases receive representation, while the remaining 98% are resolved in mediation with unfavorable outcomes. Additionally, tenancy failures in permanent supportive housing units can lead individuals and families to homelessness.
Then, once you lose your home, there’s nowhere to go.
There are just 180 shelter beds year round, and 260 in the winter months, but an average shelter attendance on a given day is 251.”This suggests that city shelters routinely operate above capacity,” Castiel writes.
This is an obvious crisis. So what sort of resources is the city throwing at it?
Let’s turn to a moment from the last city council meeting. Discussing the report, Councilor Khrystian King asked Castiel, “What is the staffing currently of folks working on the homeless issue in your department?”
Castiel: “We have one recovery coach. We have one outreach worker, one social worker, and we have one 20-hour position that we need to fill.”
Oh.
We have 83 cops on the top 100 list and one outreach worker? One social worker? One recovery coach? And where are those jobs on the pay ranking? 4,849, 4,678, and 7,413 respectively.
Haxhiaj put it nicely at the council meeting:
“It really is very critical for the public to understand that when we see unhoused folks out in the street, we tend to blame them a lot for their life circumstances. And this is a symptom of decades of policies that have neglected both deeply affordable housing, but also investing in folks who are unhoused.”
She requested the city declare the situation a public health emergency, as we did with pedestrian deaths over the summer. No one responded in the affirmative. No one said anything.
And, you’ll remember from the top of this post, Haxhaij tried to take an item off the table to request the manager make a city office dedicated to preventing people from falling into homelessness, via evictions or other means. The council voted that down. After hearing Castiel speak on the above report and, ostensibly, reading it.
Six councilors voted against. The names will sound familiar: Petty, Mero-Carlson, Toomey, Bergman, Colorio, Russell.
The same names as always. The principal agents of regression in this regressive city.
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Cool events coming up!
Just some “& I Love It” stuff to put on your radar! This upcoming weekend is a packed one for me.
Friday: I’ll be slapping the bass in the house band for Shaun’s Sort of Late Show. The main guest is Pat Flynn of Have Heart and Fiddlehead. Gunna be fun as hell. Tickets here.
Saturday: The Punk Rock Flea Market at the Hotel Vernon! Me and Katie are splitting a table. She’s bringing a bunch of cool glass pieces and paintings. I’ll have a brand new t-shirt design special for the market. Very very stoked. Some of you know what I’m talking about ;-)
And then on April 11 there’s a suuuuper sick show at Ralph’s that my good friend Dan Anderson is putting on. We got Sabertooth Zombie coming in from California. This is the first time these Bay Area legends will be on the east coast in over a decade. The way Dan describes them: “If Poison Idea and Electric Wizard had a love child who smoked a lot of PCP, Sabertooth Zombie would be that little bastard.” Lmao. Hell yeah. And this show will be a reunion of sorts for Worcester’s finest glam rockers FACEPAINT. One of my favorite bands of all time. Not one to miss! Tickets here.
Oh if you haven’t seen it yet here’s the tape from the Roast of Worcester at the White Room last week. It was a good time! Thank you to everyone who came.
Election update
The only real change since my update last week is in the at-large race. Four new paper-pullers: Maria Montano, Edson Montero (who ran last time for District 5), Danielle Spring, and Michael Theroux. Don’t know much about any of them. Also, David Webb announced he’s pulling out of the race.
So +4, -1 leaves us with 16 potential candidates for the six seats. Remember, none of these people are for sure running until they bring their papers back with the 3,000(-ish?) signatures they need to get on the ballot. If they all return, that means we’ll have quite a lively primary!
In the district races, two updates: Kwesi Foster throws a third hat in the ring for District 4, and a third as well for District 5 in Elizabeth Marie Monahan.
No change on the school committee side, so allow me to beg again that people check whether they live in School Committee District D and pull papers to run against Alex Guardiola, currently unopposed.
Odds and ends
One more humble ask for a bit of money in my outstretched “support local journalism” cap.
We did a lot this week! Including my first ever attempt at a radio story, covering the Clark strike. The response to that has been great. Thank you.
Tips and merch orders are also greatly appreciated.
Venmo a tip / Paypal a Tip / Send a tip on Ko-Fi / Merch Store
Make sure to exercise your civic rights and cast a vote for the name of the Worcester Public Library’s new cat mascot. My vote: Tabbie Hoffman. The obvious choice.
For the “good essay” heads I highly suggest “Going Soft: Future-proofing the American worker” by Lily Scherlis in the latest Harpers. This line made me audibly gasp.
What do we have that robots don’t? Feelings—at least for now. In Tokyo, a team of scientists is teaching pink robotic gel made of human skin tissue to flash a very disturbing smile.
And another one that Chris recommended I read when we were talking future Outdoor Cats episodes: “The First Responders” in Atavist Magazine. It’s about the Freedom House Paramedics in Pittsburg, a group of Black first responders who took matters into their own hands when the city and police abandoned their neighborhood.
Of all the things to get upset about... school buses honking too much?
Cool satanic themed local hiking challenge alert!!!
Ok that’s all for now!
Tabbie Hoffman is A++