Unwittingly, voraciously, disgustingly…
The withering death of the DOJ investigation
White rabbit white rabbit white rabbit and happy May Day!
Hard to describe just how deflating an experience it was to watch the council meeting Tuesday. That's where I'll be spending most of today's post. It was like watching in real time the municipality, as a democratic institution, wither in the hot sun of the police state. A 4.5 hour time-lapse video of a decades-long disintegration process, the plant losing the last of its supporting fiber, falling to the ground in a withering heap. But we'll get there.
It's been a week and a half since my last proper OG Worcester Sucks post—apologies for that. But we've been busy!
The most recent Outdoor Cats, up at my traditional Sunday posting time, is some of the finest work we've done with that thing so far. It's on charter cities and the very real threat the concept poses to local democracy. "Episode 22: Whitey should stick to the moon" Listen if you haven't yet! We put about two to three times the amount of normal Outdoor Cats work in for that one.
And then this time last week there was my and Greg Opperman's (mostly Greg's) piece on so-called eco-terrorism, "The Red Scare never went away, it just briefly turned green" which did fantastic as far as metrics go, and people seemed to really like it, which is the better metric.
Then WPS In Brief, the April post and an agenda preview... we've been hustling! I've found myself in more of an editor role than a writer role of late which is cool. I'm sure at least a few of you are tired of my writing by now! Haha. (Don't you dare say so if that's the case. I will cry.)
I need a day off like you wouldn't believe. Losing it over here. Also: Big thank you to everyone who wrote in to say how much my last piece, "Words written on water" affected them. Means so so so much. One person said it made 'em cry. When local journalism does that you know you're cooking a little bit. My dad on the other hand goes "this post is dark. You okay?" I was like "yeah of course" in the I'm-not-a-fuckin-***** affect I've been socialized to reflexively adopt whenever someone tries to get near my inner world.
Paid subscribers are responsible for all of this by the way. If you're a paid subscriber you are personally to blame for the fact we have very nearly succeeded in our guiding objective: build an alt-weekly for Worcester that the Internet Economy can support. The process of coming into that is, however, never ending. The Never Ending Happening as Bill Fay would say and I for one can vouch that just to be a part of it is astonishing to me.
Here's a little deal for astonishment's sake...
Merch Store / Venmo a tip / Paypal a Tip
For some it's like tight-rope walking
Blindfolded and shaking
On either side fear and pain
For some it's like tight rope walking
God that song riiiiips. Listen to it, and more, on my Deadline Day Playlist:
A new Worcester Sucks feature! At least for this post... we'll see. The vibe on my stereo as I'm getting the thing over the finish line. Smash the save button that way you’ll have it ummmm saved.
Week(and a half)ly Index
Joe Petty announced his campaign in front Burncoat High School, which is illegal? Ah well. What is "legal." The American Antiquarian Society and New England Botanic Garden hit with federal funding cuts. Jim McGovern among several Massachusetts lawmakers to visit the Louisiana detention center holding Mahmoud Khalil. Two WPI students were part of a lawsuit over visa revocations. A rally was held outside city hall. The Trump administration walked the visa revocations back, students still unsure of where they stand. Stray cats and dogs on the rise as Worcester Animal Rescue League faces shortages. O'Connor's halted public dining, taking only private events, due to staffing shortages. The WRTA renewed for another year of fare-free busing. Museum of Worcester executive director William Wallace (Freedom!!) to retire. The apparently crumbling I-290 bridge over East Central Street will be replaced in 2027. Congressman Jim McGovern's daughter Molly died at the age of 23, from causes unrelated to previous cancer battle, while overseas. Funeral tomorrow in Worcester. Sean Rose dropped out of the at-large city council race. Gary Rosen is in, though (have I mentioned that yet?). City Manager Eric Batista sets a May 21 date for his state of the city address. Yippee. The Human Rights Commission met on Monday to try to do police reform. On Tuesday the city council met with the chief and mostly washed their hands of the prospect of reform. Civilian review board and other reforms still on the table, but appetite on the council is low. Otherwise, they debated the morality of looking in trash bags for trash data. Dozens (literally dozens people!) of public trash bins were rolled out to great fanfare. Seventy-year-old Rutland activist Ruth Mufute was detained at Logan Airport after a return trip from Zimbabwe for most of the day Wednesday as immigration court worked out a Customs and Border Patrol case against her. A rally was held. She was released in the afternoon. UMass Medical School's loss of federal research grants totals more than a million, per Globe analysis. Central Mass Health Alliance is disbanding. Burncoat High School replacement advances to the "feasibility study" phase. Judge in Karen Read trial considering revoking Aidan Kearney's bail. May Day demonstration held behind City Hall this afternoon. WPS CFO Brian Allen handed a three-year contract to replace Rachel Monárrez as the district superintendent by an 8-1 vote tonight.
And here's a little poem I made out of statewide news:
Greater Boston housing production lags to historic lows. Martha’s vineyard hospital building worker housing to avoid closure. Herald lead story: too much money spent on shelters. Juvenile detention rates reach highest level since 2018, despite stated diversion efforts. All is apparently well for the ultra wealthy, who are not fleeing the state due to the Fair Share Amendment, as threatened. Maura Healey enjoys a "garden brunch" with Amy Klobuchar to celebrate White House Correspondents' Weekend.
Bit of housekeeping: We'll use this opportunity of a temporary mix up to make a permanent shift the publishing schedule (learned this move from The Shock Doctrine). My post in the Wednesday-Thursday-Friday range, Outdoor Cats in the Saturday-Sunday area. A classic fliparooni. Everything else as it comes in. If that's a deal breaker for you, speak now or forever hold your peace.
No time like the present then, I suppose. Time to Do The News.
Stuff to watch—Death of the DOJ report—Hexagon and surveillance capitalism—odds and ends
For your radar:
— Project Priceless has launched a capital campaign for a new shelter space.
This shelter will be a permanent, women-only space—run by and for women escaping male violence, exiting the sex trade, and surviving street economies under patriarchal capitalism. We are calling it A Home of Our Own. There is no shelter for single women in the entire city!
Donate on their GiveButter page.
— Lots of bike-related events upcoming in the city as Bay State Bike Month gets underway.
— Library to host an "anti-prom" for students who'd rather not go to the real prom, some of whom may look back on high school as the darkest period of their otherwise richly fulfilling lives. For whom it might be nice to hear right now while they're in that dark period that it's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
— Lastly, something to ponder:
Also I want to keep using these custom dividers I made a few weeks ago but they look like crap in dark mode.
Any advice on how to make this work in the light and the dark would be appreciated. Some sort of cool fade out from white around the smiley to transparent around the edges perhaps. Until resolved we'll stick with the classic line:
The withering death of the DOJ investigation
Basically Tuesday night we saw that police reform, beyond what the police themselves are willing to do, is just flatly never ever going to happen here. Chris Robarge put it perfectly when I texted him last night in despair, working on this material, trying to find a way to shape it into something coherent, provide some hopeful takeaway...
It was mostly a repeat of the public safety subcommittee discussion several weeks ago, which we covered in great detail in "Episode 21: Evidence Dot Com." Police Chief Paul Saucier submitted a report to the council mostly reiterating a 4,000 word statement he'd released to the public last week. The response from the majority of the council was more or less the same as Toomey and Bergman's deferential display at subcommittee.
To illustrate the point, here are a few choice moments from the hour and a half discussion…
Saucier indignantly and begrudgingly acknowledged the DOJ was right about some things, in the context of blaming the media of course. "Leadership should also exercise appropriate oversight over supervisors and hold them accountable for finding and addressing problems within the WPD ranks. We have always agreed with that. It's just that wasn't the thing that people wanted to hear. They wanted to hear that we discounted everything. That's not true. We take this very seriously." What is ~the media~ to do with the "total disgrace" rhetoric spouted by everyone else in the department, chief? And, follow-up, who is the "we" taking this seriously?
Moe Bergman, one of three members of the public safety subcommittee designed to oversee the police department, said local government has no right to oversee the police department. "I personally can't comprehend how any body that could be chosen could put themselves at a scene rather than looking at hindsight 20-20. Therefore, I don't believe, and it wouldn't be fair in judging any police department by any oversight committee at the local level because they're not at the scene and they don't have the ability to look back with 20-20 hindsight."
The department refused to budge on the obvious deterrent of running a criminal background check on anyone who comes to them to file a complaint. Brought to the mic by Khrystian King, Deputy Chief Ken Davenport explained the policy is in place because... "We have to make sure that there are no other issues ... regarding the veracity of what the individual's trying to say. Are they looking to cause problems with the police officer? Are there issues regarding them trying to have a lawsuit entailed?"
Woof!
The conversation wasn't all grim, though. King and Etel Haxhiaj did their damnedest. There are some very good ideas going now, as suggestions, to the city manager. Etel's: releasing in one bundle all the public records tied to police misconduct lawsuits. King: a report on background checks for complainants—the effects of that policy here and whether other cities do it. And another to examine why the "co-response" pilot program, in which social workers respond to certain calls with officers, got sidelined.
The manager may or may not provide any of that and the safe bet is "may not." And, like always, they were on an island, every other councilor showing the expected Total Deference—serfs to their liege. Russell, for instance, "This has been an ongoing display of leadership from the chief and from the manager on this topic. And I just want to say I, for one, am very happy." Gee that's great, George.
The majority of the council, clearly unable and unwilling to carry out the project of reform, is basically allowed to get away with it. The withering death of this push, which once carried so much promise. The issues instead flippantly explained away. Others, the chief promised a quick solution to when the city carries out its new contract with Hexagon for a new police data reporting system which will allow for better recording of demographic data. The idea is, that system will help us look at the trends and root out the bias. Across the board, everyone involved in the discussion seemed to take it for a fact: better data will lead to better outcomes. It is an intuitive idea and yet, it's sat heavy with me. There was something off about the premise—racial disparities solved by data aggregation.
It's a thought I've struggled for a while to articulate—but an 'aha! moment' came this morning came as I cracked open Shoshana Zuboff’s massive 2019 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: Many if not all (?) of the measures available to us in the general lexicon of left-liberal and/or progressive police reform are contingent on entangling the municipality in the extractive mesh of surveillance capitalism. Body cameras, brought to us by Axon. More sophisticated data collection brought to us by Hexagon. The core idea, flawed to begin with, is that better documentation and data collection will curb police abuses.
This is an exercise in what Zuboff calls "hunting the puppet," when we should be going after the puppet master. The "puppet" here is how abuse of power manifests in the aggregate: racial disparities in traffic stops, use of force incidents and levels, most hilariously the "dog bite ratio," which the mayor and police chief have deemed acceptable, if even a little low.
The "puppet master," unhunted, is the bloated bureaucracy of criminal justice that, for its own survival, requires the production of a criminal class. I made this case at length last year in "A streamlining solution for crime manufacturers," focusing on Shotspottter, a smaller, weaker company than Hexagon.
If you look at the containment zones as a sort of mine, and the cops as a mining company, and “crime” as the ore, Shotspotter’s true value is its ability to discover new veins. More reason to send more miners down the shaft. More raw crime material for the manufacturing plant.
What we’re left with here is more streamlining, at a greater expense to the municipality. Paying the puppet master a premium for the optics of reform achieved, eventually, in aggregate data analysis. In other words, a gentler-seeming puppet. Reform or no reform, the criminal justice bureaucracy grows. The puppet master is happy either way.
Something to consider: the chief let on that all training, up to 2023, was funded by civil asset forfeiture.
"We would love as much training as possible and matter of fact, prior to '23, all our training monies came from forfeitures during drug raids. When we eliminated the mounted unit, that money from the mounted unit I put into a training budget so we can do these kind of things. But it's limited."
That means money taken from the manufactured criminal class—overwhelmingly from people hung up on drug charges—goes directly back to the manufacturer in the form of a third party consultant, handsomely paid, as a rule a member of the “law enforcement community.” A stock buyback if you will. In this case, Ron Reed, who took home about $30,000 for one training session the WPD contracted following the DOJ report's release. Reed is a longtime member of the law enforcement community, of course.
In return, the reformer gets the vague promise that a $30,000 program on the fine points of “de-escalation” or what have you will change the behavior of the ~400 police officers who take it. That vague promise can only ever vaguely be fulfilled, and only manifests in the data if you squint, if you really try to see it. What isn’t vague is the money. The war on drugs produces civil asset forfeiture funds which are then invested directly back in the bureaucracy with a fiduciary responsibility to ensure the war goes on forever.
When push comes to shove the puppet master is happy to change out the puppets in the show, knowing full well he is merely placating and placating pays the bills.
If you’re saying, at this point, okay sure but what else can we do? First of all, join the club, second we’re finally asking a good question.
What can you do when this happens:
It was 2015. B was 19, homeless. She spent nights turning tricks with her friend. Money for sex. It was somewhere in Worcester. One of the ad-hoc reservations, where the practice of street prostitution isn’t quite allowed, but isn’t so swiftly cracked down upon as it would in the “nice” parts, where no one is naive enough to try.
It was on one of those nights in one of those places B met Officer 1. She was on the street with her friend when he rolled down the window of his patrol car and asked B if she was a “good girl” or a “bad girl.” He drove off. Another night, he came back. A few weeks of this. The squad car rolling up. The window rolling down. A taunting routine.
Then one night it was more. Officer 1 called B over to his car. It was an unmarked car this time. Not the usual patrol car. B told her friend she didn’t want to go over to him. She thought it was a sting, that she would get arrested. Her friend said she should, if she knows what’s good for her. So B did. She got in the car.
Officer 1 took B for a ride. He told her he knew she had a clean record. “It could stay that way.” He told her that if she did not have sex with him, he would make her life difficult. As an officer of the law, he laid a better claim to this than most men. The threat was not idle or impractical. B submitted to it. He drove his unmarked car to a nearby cemetery.
(The top of a narrative I constructed from a very specific account in the the DOJ report that no one has talked about publicly. You can read the rest here.)
And then the police chief explains it away with a conspiracy theory. From the report he filed with City Council (he also told the public safety subcommittee the same thing out loud):
Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for members of the public to impersonate police officers during interactions with women engaged in the commercial sex trade in order to avoid paying for their services. For example, less than a month ago, officers arrested an individual driving a de- commissioned unmarked police vehicle ( or a vehicle modified to resemble unmarked police vehicle). The vehicle had a state police sticker and charity plate, as well as a police- style antenna on the back. The individual was also found to be carrying a wallet that said, " Mass State Police," as well as a police badge. This particular individual had a prior arrest for sex for a fee and a past reported sexual assault allegation.
And the municipality of course trips over itself to rationalize the systemic rape allegations out of existence—who’s to say, really? Toomey, for instance, at the public safety meeting: "These terrible accusations, especially with the sexual assault issues, impacted the entire department. And I appreciate you saying that not one officer here would be willing to allow that to happen." Then, a beat later: "Harm was done to the members of our department, their families, by some of this." Toomey out front per usual as the most garish toady but it's merely an exaggerated version of the state of mind most of our municipal leaders find themselves in. They're thrilled to seize on a questioning of the veracity of the DOJ report because they’re terrified of the reality it presents. Most worrying is it getting out they have zero control over that reality. It’s terrifying to consider the public might come to a general understanding that, while the police get our tax dollars, they don’t actually answer to the democracy that administers them. That local government role in police matters is nothing more than a bit of theater. That they don’t actually have the powers that the city charter ascribes. Democracy on paper, but in practice... well. We have a whole vocabulary for that sort of situation when it arises in the third world.
The only question worth asking at this point is whether we’re using the right vocabulary. Another idea cribbed from Zuboff, who says surveillance capital can't be understood with outdated terms like "monopoly" and "privacy" because, while valid concerns, they fall short of contesting the "most crucial and unprecedented facts of this new regime." So, I'd ask, what, in our current Worcester context, does “reform” mean? And are these products from Axon and Hexagon achieving "reform"? And if so, define the word. I'd love to hear it.
The reform we’re pursuing at the moment will only ever lead to future misdirections and rationalizations like the one illustrated above because they target the puppet of inequities and disparities in the aggregate data and not the puppet master: the bureaucracy that feeds on crime data like the parents in Spirited Away. Unwittingly, voraciously, disgustingly…
While we’ve extensively covered other entanglements with the surveillance capitalists, via body cameras and Shotspotter, this new data system set to come online in 12-18 months is a sleeper candidate for The Worst One. Hexagon, baby. *Trump voice* HEX-AGAHN. When you start to look at what Hexagon is, it takes a lot of suspended disbelief to think this is our way out of racial inequity and police brutality.
In 2021 New Orleans abruptly canceled a contract with the company citing "no workable plan to provide for data access by existing NOPD and City systems." From the local news site NOLA:
Hexagon's system ... prevented NOPD from accessing its own data, preventing it from producing critical, real time reports for publishing crime statistics, media requests and other operations, according to LaGrue. Additionally, Hexagon failed to configure some important system components, including one for tracking evidence.
Nevertheless.... here's how the speculators of tech futures are thinking about it, per some stock market newswire release from December:
The article goes on to wax poetic about the speculative Compound Annual Growth Rate in this industry—10.5 percent return over eight years! And, as if to prove my point...
With evolving crime types and tactics, the need for new and sophisticated software solutions to address them also grows.
The main product, which Worcester is buying for some $6 million, is called HxGN OnCall Planning and Response. In Police Chief Magazine, which we can imagine sitting on Saucier's desk, there's a recent glowing (paid-for?) profile:
In the last five years, the OnCall portfolio has been augmented with Hexagon’s patented assistive artificial intelligence platform, Smart Advisor, which helps public safety personnel find trends and anomalies in the ever-rising volume of data.
Oh another AI streamlining solution for the cops I see. Trojan horse style, this time. Remember when former City Manager Ed Augustus promised that any surveillance tech adopted by the police department would go through a council vote? Lol.
Hexagon, a Swedish company, has subsidiaries working for the federal government and the Navy. The Navy subsidiary advertises itself as "the world's leader in high precision positioning products for unmanned applications." Hmmm what could that possibly mean vis-a-vis the US Navy?
Ah, well... the "defense" subpage is a fantastic read. I mean c'mon dude look at this…
When all's said and done we'll have accomplished nothing but forking $6 million over to the surveillance capitalists making drones more effective and supplying our cops with AI spreadsheet tabulation on the side. Just like body cameras are not at all about accountability, increasing our data gathering capacity is not "reform" by any definition you or I would hold.
Back to Zuboff, she explains these products like Hexagon's "on call" derive their value in a new and unprecedented way, as opposed to more traditional industry. "They do not establish constructive producer-consumer reciprocities. Instead, they are the "hooks" that lure users into their extractive operations," she writes. We're not the customer, nor are we even the product. "Surveillance capitalism's actual customers are the enterprises that trade in its markets for future behavior."
Hexagon invests the profit it makes off of the war machine and police state into other speculative ventures in surveillance tech. BlackRock is a frequent partner in these venture capital pursuits. It's this future speculation where the real money is made, after all. A long, bloody, corrosive Ponzi scheme.
So in that light it's worth looking at the statement put out this week by the Trump administration entitled "Strengthening and Unleashing America's Law Enforcement To Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocents". Section 4 in particular:
Sec. 4. Using National Security Assets for Law and Order. (a) Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security and the heads of agencies as appropriate, shall increase the provision of excess military and national security assets in local jurisdictions to assist State and local law enforcement.
Hmmm what does "national security assets" mean if not the products offered by Hexagon and Palantir and all the other speculators that comprise the surveillance capitalist class?
Pure evil. And, at the same time, a good time to buy. I say this with no irony and do not see a contradiction.
Lastly a word on the civilian review board.
As it has been for decades now, the number one thing community members are after, in the name of reform is a CRB. During the meeting Batista promised a report from the Worcester Regional Research Bureau on the topic in the coming months. But, as illustrated above, Moe Bergman is a hard “no” as is Kate Toomey, based on vague comments she’s made opposed to “another layer of bureaucracy.” That’s two of the three votes on the public safety subcommittee right there, and such a proposal would likely have to go through that bureacratic bottleneck at some point. Like bandits manning a highway blockade. You give them what they want or you get a gun fight. Toomey especially but Bergman as well are puppets in their own way of the police unions—the real rabid dog in this whole enterprise. That the police unions control, via two city councilors, this absolutely critical bottleneck, is a question we need to resolve before any civilian review board proposal worth the paper.
On Tuesday, while Saucier was blaming the media for the false impression that the police are uninterested in reform and in total disagreement with the DOJ report, Rick Cipro, president of one of the three police unions, was in the comments of the city Facebook feed.
Saucier said, "We take this very seriously." Cipro said, "Read the report, our oath stands up, especially mine!!" Anthony Petrone, the president of one of the others, said in the same comment thread, "King said he supports the police must have banged his head. Hope he regains his memory of all the BS he and his little group has stated over the past 5 yrs against the police.”
Sure, chief. Very serious. And it was definitely the media that gave the public any other impression.
For further reading I highly suggest checking out Tom Marino's first in a 12-part series on all this in This Week In Worcester.
Despite those personal feelings, I accepted a responsibility to the people of this city to bring them the truth to the best of my ability. When faced with “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object,” silence is betrayal.
Since the release of the Department of Justice report of its investigation of the Worcester Police Department and the City of Worcester, those in power in the administration, the majority of the city council, and the law enforcement community in the city have engaged in a campaign best described as gaslighting.
And also watch Keith Linhare's comments from Tuesday. Then give him some dough.
Odds and ends
I like this pitch from Hell Gate or as I like to call it NYC Sucks.
Subscriber-backed, worker-owned independent journalism is the future of news—but it only works if people pay for what they value. You can be a part of making Hell Gate possible right now.
It's on a post about cops in subway stations looking at their phones which is pretty good and made me take out a subscription to them so... tip karma is real people. Pay it forward.
Merch Store / Venmo a tip / Paypal a Tip
Oh here's how I wrote most of this post by the way.
Drastic burnout calls for drastic measures. But hey... you're reading it so I finished it right?
Watching Andor. God damn. First scene of the second season, the main character is talking to this totally irrelevant side character that just compromised their position professionally to help out the resistance. She tells him she's scared. He says what you're feeling right now is you "coming home to yourself." A sense of self-respect and pride that you've never felt before because you've never taken a stand like this before. The spiritual awakening of what happens when you don't just roll over and acquiesce to a social order that you feel is fundamentally wrong. Great writing.
After I jotted that thought down come to find Sean T Collins had the same one in Welcome to Hell World. Great minds, etc. And now I need to see Sinners badly.
Other TV news: The Walking Dead shot in Worcester airs in a few days... May 4. Should be fun.
Cool and weird profile on the Greendale Mall right here. And a great one from Mike Benedetti on the city seal and its history.
A good clip from Worcester's own Sam Seder about nothing in particular.
Guantanamo torture coming back, this time to migrants, writes Spencer Ackerman.
Great: "It’s not your imagination, air quality in Boston is getting worse"
“The Boston–Worcester–Providence metro area was ranked the 61st worst for high ozone days out of 228 metropolitan areas"
Fantastic song from Righteous Gemstones end credits, damn.
Ok day off starts now—bye bye!
Cooking most def
Good piece 👏