Nearly 60 officers denied recertification by Mass. police licensing agency

Nearly 60 law enforcement personnel in Massachusetts were denied recertification through a police licensing commission, according to data presented Thursday morning at a Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission meeting.

The names of 57 officers who have been denied recertification have not been released publicly, and the commission has previously declined to provide identifying information to MassLive. Discussions are underway at POST regarding creating public databases that could contain information on any future decertified officers, though a timeline for when that will go live is unclear.

Over the summer, the POST Commission moved to recertify thousands of officers whose last names started with letters A through H ahead of a July 1 deadline. Nearly 9,000 officers were processed in the cohort, and just over 8,100 had been successfully recertified as of Wednesday.

Commission Executive Director Enrique Zuniga said 57 officers have now been denied recertification, a number that represents less than a 1% of the total number of officers in the cohort. But the number of officers denied recertification is an increase from data presented last month that showed 15 had not received recertification as of Aug. 31.

Zuniga said most of the 57 law enforcement personnel did not complete certain aspects of the Municipal Police Training Committees Bridge Academy, a 200-hour program an officer can sign up for to meet state certification requirements if they did not attend a full-time, 800-hour police academy.

Police officers need to complete basic training in order to renew their license through the POST Commission. An officer could either have graduated from a full-time academy or enrolled and completed the MPTCs Bridge Academy.

I would say a majority of them have to do with training, training that was not completed as part of the Bridge Academy, he said. But theres a number of individuals that fall in this category, for example, that were either terminated since or have been terminated recently, and we have also put them in the not certified category.Read more: Greenfield police chief downgraded to conditionally recertified by state

Another 603 officers are conditionally certified, according to the data, and 37 are pending further review. An officer is conditionally certified when they have met only some recertification requirements, according to the commission.

Among those conditionally certified is Greenfield Police Chief Robert Haigh, who a jury found discriminated against a Black officer. Haigh was placed on administrative leave in May following the verdict and restored to his position by Greenfield Mayor Roxann Wedegartner in September.

Haigh received a letter on Oct. 4, informing him that new information had caused the POST Commission to alter his status from certified to conditionally certified.

An officer who is denied recertification can seek a review of the decision within 21 days of receiving an official notice from the commission.

Until the conclusion of any review, hearing, or when time runs out to ask for a review or a hearing, the officers recertification application will not be deemed finally determined, and the officer will receive a temporary, conditional certification.

If, at the conclusion of that period, the certification is not maintained, the statute will preclude all Massachusetts law enforcement agencies from appointing or employing that person as a law enforcement officer unless the person is certified anew in the future, the POST Commission says on their website.Read more: There really is no tension: Massachusetts police commission weighs clarity of force regulations, focuses on mental health crisis situations

A commission spokesperson told MassLive that POST has not decertified any officers as of Thursday. The commission can decline to renew an officers recertification without decertifying the officer, where certain requirements for certification have not been satisfied, the spokesperson said.

The numbers that have been reported by the commission are individuals in the not recertified category, the spokesperson said. We are reviewing the certification status of such officers and will not comment until the review is concluded.

Stoughton Police Chief Donna McNamara reportedly asked the commission to decertify three former officers after an internal affairs report found the officers had an inappropriate relationship with a woman which allegedly began when she was a minor.

After Zuniga presented the updated numbers Thursday, Commissioner Hanya Bluestone asked him to explain how officers are being categorized as not certified and who is making that determination.

I think that theres a group that is not certified due to training issues, and then you refer to some other individuals, and Im just wondering how that determination is being made? Bluestone said.Read more: Heres how many police officers were denied recertification in Massachusetts through the states law enforcement licensing commission

Zuniga said the decision is initially made by the commissions Division of Certification in consultation with the Division of Standards, as per regulations, which is something that we are implementing as we speak.

Officers who want a review have two levels, Zuniga said. They can ask the commissions executive director to review the decision, and if they are still unsatisfied with the outcome, they can petition commissioners to review their certification status.

That process will merit very detailed procedures, notification procedures for hearings, for example, Zuniga said. We are finalizing those procedures to bring before you so that we can deal with those cases, what we anticipate to be a first or, in some cases, a two-level review process.

Bluestone said she sees both from the community side and also from the law enforcement side, a tremendous amount of anxiety about when those determinations will be made.

Do you have a sense of the timeline on that? she asked Zuniga.

Zuniga said he understands there is a lot of anxiety.

We are proceeding as fast as we can that allows us to have a good, robust due process, he said. As I mentioned, working on what we believe will be a solid plan that we can put in front of you at the next commission meeting, which will continue to make the incremental progress that we need.Read more: Judge says asking Mass. police officers to disclose biased social media posts as part of certification process is impossible to answer

More than 880 officers records were pending submission at the end of August because the Boston Police Department had not yet turned them in. But Zuniga said Thursday the commission has now accepted the records from the City of Boston.

Weve accepted almost 900 records from the City of Boston that were pending at the time, and we have now received them and processed a great deal of them, or frankly, the majority of them, he said.

The commission also unanimously voted to advance regulations covering POST Commission databases and the dissemination of information to the public through methods like public records requests.

An updated version of the regulations was not immediately available from the commission.Read more: Police officer recertifications start to flow into the POST Commission as a race against the clock and deadline continues

POST Commission General Counsel Randall Ravitz walked commissioners through a handful of edits to the regulations, including requirements that a reversal, vacation, or exoneration be included in a certain database.

Larry Calderone, a commissioner and president of the Boston Police Patrolmens Association, said he is very thankful that the regulations kept the language regarding exonerations.

And also being able to create a method of objection when the data within departments are not kept concurrently with that of the POST, he said. It seems to be a sticking problem here in Boston. So just wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you for the work that was done, to everybody involved.