By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The police department in Worcester, Massachusetts, routinely violates individuals’ constitutional rights by using excessive force and allowing undercover officers to engage in sexual contact with women in the commercial sex trade, the U.S. Justice Department said on Monday.
The findings by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division come after a two-year investigation of whether the Worcester Police systematically engage in a pattern or practice of discrimination against city residents.
It represents one of 12 such civil rights investigations into police abuses opened by the department during President Joe Biden’s tenure, after similar work largely ground to a halt during Republican former President Donald Trump’s preceding four-year term.
The Justice Department said in its report that local advocates have been raising concerns about the Worcester police department since at least 2019 related to how undercover officers interact with women who are suspected of being sex workers.
In a survey conducted by one advocacy group in 2019, more than half of the women who participated reported being tricked or misled by police into providing sex acts, the Justice Department report says.
In 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by white police officers in Minneapolis, Worcester residents who came out to protest against police brutality were confronted by officers wearing riot gear.
In a statement, Worcester’s outside counsel Brian Kelly said that even though the city has cooperated with the probe, the Justice Department issued “an unfair, inaccurate and biased report which unfairly smears the entire Worcester police force.
“Anyone reviewing this report should ask themselves: if the allegations in this report are true, why hasn’t DOJ prosecuted a single officer and instead simply drafted a report by DOJ’s Civil Rights Division?” Kelly said.
The Justice Department said that while the city, which is located about 50 miles west of Boston and has a population of about 200,000, and the police department have since implemented some reforms, such as the creation of a policy review committee and the department-wide adoption of body-worn cameras, more needs to be done.
“It will take more for WPD to repair its relationship with the community and to address the problems uncovered in this investigation,” the department wrote in its report.
The Justice Department said it will solicit feedback from Worcester residents about possible remedies to address the constitutional concerns outlined in the report.
To date, the Biden Justice Department has not signed formal consent decrees with any of the cities whose police departments were found to have engaged in systemic policing abuses.
Legal experts have said the lack of any court-approved settlements could make it challenging for the Justice Department to secure reforms.
Once Trump, a Republican, takes office in January for his second term in the White House, it is widely expected that the new Justice Department leadership will no longer prioritize investigations into civil rights abuses by police departments.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington; additional reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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