Worcester city leaders abet police misconduct through inaction.
I can’t decide which is more of a farce–President Trump giving a unity speech or former Worcester Major Ray Mariano giving us policing reform advice, which the latter did in a recent Telegram & Gazette column.
Ray’s suggestions—implementing body cameras, having a more diverse police force, providing racial bias and de-escalation training, and having a public review of ‘use of force’ policies—are progressive ideas, even if they are steps behind where the Black Lives Matter movement is now.
Defunding the police’s deadly influence over black and brown lives is the radical, structural change now being pursued by black lives activists.
Still Ray’s proposals are more than what our current, stand-pat, city leaders are offering. My consternation with Ray and his seemingly come-to-Jesus moment on police misconduct is this: Why now?
He was major for eight years. He could have implemented some of the reforms he is suggesting now. He didn’t. He was first elected mayor in 1993, the year Worcester Resident Cristino Hernandez died in a manner eerily similar to George Floyd’s murder.
Hernandez was a 5—foot-4, 145 pounds Salvadorian immigrant who died after being arrested by Worcester police in July 1993.
A 4 ½ minute video of the incident showed two officers–one, 6-foot—2 and 225 pounds–handcuffing Hernandez and sitting on his legs and back.
Sometime during the video, Hernandez stopped moving. Paramedics couldn’t find a pulse when they arrived on the scene, and Hernandez died without regaining consciousness 10 days later.
The state medical examiner’s office said Hernandez died from a brain tumor brought on by a loss of oxygen, but an internal police investigation found the two officers blameless.
The community cried out for a civilian review board, but their cries fell on deaf ears.
Ray didn’t back a civilian review board during his tenure as mayor or during his previous 10 years as a city councilor.
And he didn’t push for one after he left office in 2002 to run the Worcester Housing Authority.
There, according to the complaints of many Great Brook Valley residents, Ray used the Worcester police to carry out no-knock warrants to enter their homes on the guise that he was rousing drug dealers and non-tenants.
Not surprisingly, Ray won fame and recognition for “cleaning up public housing.” Politicians often get rewarded for upholding the country’s 400-years practice of squashing the civil rights of black and brown people to protect white privilege.
The fact is, one doesn’t become and remain a Worcester city manager, mayor and city councilor by pushing police reforms.
City leaders may frame it any way they want, but the reality remains that the city uses its police force primarily to protect and serve white privilege, both in the community and in our schools.
That’s why in the wake of Hernandez’ death in 1993, city leaders rebuffed calls for a civilian overview board.
That’s why police presence is increasing in our schools.
That’s why the city council pushed back against local Black Lives Matter activists in 2015 by passing a resolution supporting the police.
That’s why that same year, City Manager Ed Augustus pushed the prosecution of four Black Lives Matter members after they refused to bow to conditions that would have deprived them of their rights to peacefully protest and assembly.
That is why at Tuesday’s council meeting, members not only dismissed calls to defund the police department but voted unanimously to increase its funding by $254,320 at a time when the School Department is laying off over 100 teachers.
Yes, city leaders swore Tuesday night that they believe black lives matter, but I’m unconvinced.
Gary Rosen shouted his support of “our seniors, who built this city, who live here, who love the city, who pay taxes…”
“There isn’t one (of them) who would say defund the police,” he said.
“They count too.”
Yes, they do. But this moment is not about seniors. It is about black and brown people systematically being killed by the police.
Bringing up seniors Tuesday night was another way of saying black lives don’t matter.
City Councilor Moe Bergman said he didn’t believe in punishing Worcester police for things police have done elsewhere. He said the WPD fields few complaints.
Moe may have missed the flood of police complaints that ran through the race dialogues the city and the Department of Justice held in 2015.
He must not be aware of the millions of dollars the city has spent over the years to settle police brutality cases.
In her statements, Councilor Candy Mero-Carlson seems to equate equal rights and justice for black people with fighting crime and school violence.
She seems to view a decrease in the city’s murder rate and school violence over the last five years as proof that the police values black lives.
Why else would she bring up such statistics in a conversation about police killing black people?
Councilor Khrystian King spoke at length about how black lives matter but opted to put off all talk about the police for another day, and I thought, “wow. If not today, when?”
City Councilors Sarai Rivera and Sean Rose both spoke passionately about their own experiences being targets of racism, but made it clear they didn’t believe in defunding the police.
I don’t need to bring up the statements of Councilor-in-Charge of safeguarding police from accountability, Kate Toomey, or of any other city councilor to make my case.
Yes, they all say black lives matter, but how can that be when Worcester doesn’t have a civilian review board or a body camera program.
How can they say black lives matter, when they allow SWAT teams to serve no-knock drug warrants in black and brown neighborhoods, when they pay off victims of police brutality without accepting responsibility for the officers’ misconduct and when they continue to fund the WPD at the expense of black and brown residents?
I began this piece by picking on Ray Mariano, but he is not exceptional.
Ray is every Worcester Democrat who, when in power, moonlights as a Republican whenever the issue of police reform comes up.