EASTHAMPTON — Mayor Nicole LaChapelle has vowed greater transparency from her administration in the wake of a Gazette report last week that showed some local police departments have stalled in providing internal affairs records, including Easthampton and Holyoke.
Meanwhile, in Holyoke, Mayor Joshua Garcia declined to discuss the issue directly when contacted by a reporter Monday.
The Gazette filed public records requests during the past year to obtain internal affairs investigations from police departments in Amherst, Northampton, Holyoke and Easthampton, four of the largest in the area and some of which are working with local officials to reimagine community policing. In December 2020, the state Legislature passed a sweeping police reform bill that, among other measures, sought to make internal affairs records more transparent through a change to the state’s public records law
When the Gazette filed public records requests for those records, Northampton police quickly turned over all of the documents the department had, except for three. In Amherst, it took nearly a year and three appeals to the state supervisor of records, but police did turn over a decade of records.
The Holyoke and Easthampton police departments, however, were less forthcoming.
Since requesting the records more than six months ago, the Holyoke Police Department has provided 31 records out of the 156 internal affairs investigations it has conducted since 2010. Until Wednesday, department officials had not responded to the Gazette’s attempts to shrink the public records request in order to ease the burden on the department.
During that same time period, the Easthampton Police Department has said it won’t provide any of the records related to its 17 internal investigations conducted since 2013 until the Gazette pays a $344.25 fee for the department to review, redact and photocopy the documents. That’s after Easthampton initially attempted to charge $1,687.50 for all the records related to those cases.
Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia declined to comment on this article through his aide, John Dolan. In a phone interview Monday, Dolan said that Garcia, who has been in office for only a month, would speak to the police chief about the possibility of expediting the Gazette’s public records request.
But Dolan added that asking police to put more time into records requests instead of being on the streets “is a place we’re not in right now.”
“It’s really difficult for us to go to the chief of police and to try to make services better in the city, to get more boots out there in the streets to make the public feel safe … but also say, ‘Hey, can you get those guys to dedicate more time to fulfilling those records requests,” Dolan said.
In an email Wednesday, Lt. Manuel Reyes said that the Gazette’s request for Holyoke’s records was “the largest request of its kind that I can remember.” He said that beginning in January 2022, the department’s citizen complaints will be stored electronically. Currently, however, they are archived in “an antiquated filing system and not always where they are supposed to be,” he added.
Reyes said that he is the only officer with access to the files. He said he is also the department’s infection control officer during the pandemic, and is in charge of handling incoming complaints, disciplinary action notices, background investigations for new hires, drug testing, mental health and injuries, entry-level fitness exams, prisoner injuries, use of force reports, motor vehicle pursuits and other tasks.
“It has taken a lot longer than expected,” Reyes said, promising to soon turn over the records he said were still outstanding. He said the department is complying with the request, but that “it is simply a matter of personnel shortage to process this request.”
Of the 31 records Holyoke has provided, only one contains any allegations that the department “sustained” against an officer. All of the records the department has thus far provided to the Gazette resulted from civilian complaints. Those investigations span a range of alleged misconduct, from sexual harassment and excessive force to an on-duty officer flashing his lights at a drive-thru window to get an ice cream cone more quickly. Thus far, the department has not turned over any of its records from the many investigations that superior officers initiated against subordinates.
Mayor pledges change
In Easthampton, Mayor LaChapelle said Monday that she was aware of the Gazette’s year-long back-and-forth with the city’s police department trying to obtain its investigative files. When asked about the city’s continued request for steep fees to produce the records, LaChapelle said: “We are intending to change it.”
LaChapelle also announced that her administration is planning to hire a dedicated staffer in the city’s IT department to handle public records responses, working with department heads from a centralized operation in City Hall. She said that will ensure departments are consistent in their public records policies and practices across the city.
“Having one person for whom that is the mainstay of their job I think is really really important,” LaChapelle said in a phone interview Monday. “More important in the last three years than ever.”
LaChapelle said that the city has already received a $175,000 grant toward setting up a new software management system for the city’s public safety agencies. That system will manage all public safety records and reports, and will help make them more directly available to the public, she said.
“The bottom line is we haven’t done a good job, we’re not prepared to do a good job,” LaChapelle said. “Even before this particular request.”
As for the Gazette’s public records requests in Easthampton, LaChapelle said it had fallen down her priority list and that she “honestly forgot about” it.
Though the Easthampton Police Department hasn’t provided any of its investigative records, the Gazette was able to obtain from the department its “internal affairs ledger” — a spreadsheet that contains details about all 17 of the internal investigations the Police Department has conducted since 2013, such the name of the officer being investigated, the charges they faced and the outcome of the investigation. Those investigations included sustained charges against officers for incidents ranging from abuse of authority, trespassing and unlawful seizure of a motor vehicle to tardiness and untruthfulness.
In three of the 10 investigations Easthampton police conducted between 2017 and 2020, Easthampton officers resigned amid allegations of untruthfulness, dereliction of duty and violations of social media policy, the spreadsheet shows.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.