EASTHAMPTON — Four Massachusetts police departments, including Easthampton, won’t send additional personnel to provide relief in Puerto Rico after seven officers were sent home late last week after a trip to help people in the southern city of Ponce.
Police chiefs of Easthampton, Holyoke, Hampden and Chelsea said the mission to Ponce — where they helped people in need and checked in on family members along the way — was authorized, but there was a miscommunication with Puerto Rican officials and word never reached those in the upper level command structure in Puerto Rico.
Easthampton Police Officer Luis Rivera was one of the seven officers who were promptly flown back to the mainland the following day.
“I think they made a hasty decision without all the facts,” Holyoke Police Chief James Neiswanger said of Puerto Rican officials.
The four police chiefs sent a memo on Saturday to members of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association informing departments across the state of the situation in Puerto Rico and that the departments will not send any more officers down to the island. Five more officers would have been deployed to Puerto Rico from the Holyoke Police Department.
“Had this been a real emergency where lives were at risk, it is extremely concerning that there appears to be an apparent breakdown in this critical communication network,” the memo states.
“It makes me wonder,” Neiswanger said. “What if something serious happened?”
The police chiefs said they are still awaiting more information from Puerto Rican authorities to understand more about how the events unfolded. At this time, the officers who were deployed are not authorized to speak to the media.
“While we wholeheartedly believe that this is an extremely important humanitarian effort for those in Puerto Rico who desperately need our assistance, we are incredibly disappointed in how this situation was handled by those who made this erroneous decision without having all the relevant facts and circumstances at their disposal,” the memo states.
The seven officers were among 24 officers from Massachusetts who were sent to Puerto Rico on Oct. 7 for a two-week deployment to aid in the wake of Hurricane Maria. The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency organized a team of 69 law enforcement officers to be deployed in three rotations for a total of six weeks. The next rotation of 24 officers is scheduled to deploy on Wednesday and the final rotation will deploy Nov. 1.
Meanwhile, the Baker-Politio administration announced this week that the state is sending more help to Puerto Rico.
“As we continue to monitor requests for assistance and offer aid to disaster survivors traveling to Massachusetts, these experienced emergency managers will provide critical on-the-ground support for teams coordinating relief operations on the island,” Gov. Charlie Baker said in a statement.
Officers deployed to the island were assigned to work alongside Puerto Rican authorities in the city of San Juan, primarily on patrol duty for 12-hour shifts. They were stationed on a large docked ship with sleeping quarters, according to the memo.
Easthampton Police Chief Robert Alberti said the officers learned from a Ponce officer that the area was in need of food, water and medicine and had few emergency services. The officers got permission from a Puerto Rico officer in the high command, according to Alberti.
On Oct. 11, the chiefs said, the officers rented two SUVs with their own money, packed vehicles with supplies and set off to Ponce, which is about 77 miles from San Juan.
When the officers arrived at a shelter and school in Ponce with supplies, “people thought they were FEMA,” Alberti said.
While in Ponce, the officers responded to local police headquarters and met with other state police personnel, according to the memo.
Holyoke Lt. Isaias Cruz posted videos last week from Ponce — one of him reuniting with family — and others of officers helping out others.
“Every time we stop, we find out there’s more people that have no food or water,” Cruz said in a video he posted on Facebook on Oct. 11. Officers were unloading water and boxes of military field rations, known as MRE or “meals ready to eat,” to give to people sheltered at a school.
Neiswanger said while officers were in Ponce, they saw a need for water and medicine, such as insulin, and planned to ask permission for a truck to load more supplies to distribute the following day.
Word of the trip to Ponce did not reach officials in Puerto Rico higher up the chain of command. On Thursday, the following day, Puerto Rico State Police decided to fly the officers back to the United States.
Alberti said Rivera had a window of just a few hours on Thursday to drive out to see his grandmother, who lives in Barceloneta, which is about 36 miles from San Juan. Rivera’s grandmother was without water and power, according to Alberti, and Rivera gave her water and some cash.
The chiefs expressed disappointment with how the officers were removed from the island.
“Our officers were quickly removed from the ship where they had been lodging for five nights, and then were escorted onto a military plane and flown off the island only to be left in Georgia with no place to lodge and no connecting flight available,” the chiefs wrote in the memo.
Alberti said he worked to make arrangements for a hotel room for the officers, and Hampden Police Chief Jeff Farnsworth knew someone who could fly a private plane to pick up the officers.
When the decision was made to send home the seven officers, MEMA spoke several times with its counterparts in Puerto Rico, MEMA spokesman Christopher Besse said in a statement.
“However, we were not able to speak that day to the senior official who ultimately made the decision to rotate out the officers,” Besse said.
Once the officers are deployed to Puerto Rico, MEMA does not have operational control over them, according to Besse.
The police chiefs say they still want to get the other side of the story.
Alberti said the officers saw an area that needed help and they went out. Alberti said he’s “extremely proud” and the officers are “truly heroes.”
“The way this mission ended is not going to define this mission,” Alberti said.
Caitlin Ashworth can be reached at cashworth@gazettenet.com.
Editor’s note: This story was changed at 8 a.m. on Oct. 18 to clarify that the officers were flown back to the mainland.