Police audit presented to Holyoke Public Safety Committee

Date: 3/15/2023

HOLYOKE — The Public Safety Committee’s March 6 meeting saw a presentation and discussion related to the recent audit of the city’s Police Department.

The report detailed strengths, weaknesses, risks and opportunities for the Holyoke Police Department through an extensive review and interviews of the department and department staff.

Municipal Resources Inc., or MRI, has conducted the audit over the past year and presented the audit’s findings before Mayor Joshua Garcia, the Public Safety Committee and other city councilors in attendance at the meeting. The three consultants from the firm all previously worked as police chiefs in New England.

“For the first time in a long time, a path has been created to get us here, into this very space, to start these discussions on what the landscape is like in the department, identify what it is that we do well, and where are we falling short,” said Garcia at the meeting. “My goal for as long as I’m the mayor is to continue to assess services whether in the police or any other department, listen to community priorities, offer solutions so that we can move forward and discuss them and move forward together.

Garcia added the only way the city can actually make any type of meaningful progress on any structural change they want to see within the city is if they understand and work together with any said department, in this instance the Police Department. He added it was important to always consider the diversity of perspectives through this process.

The council requested the audit more than a year ago to see where the Police Department could improve and get an overall review of where things stand. A common theme in the report’s findings were lack of training and management.

The report also found several “high risk” areas within the department and in the city. The audit found areas of high risk to the police force and the city itself according to the authors of the report at the meeting. Some findings from the audit show Holyoke police officers fresh out of the academy do not receive formalized field training, the use of force policy is not up to date, and a taser instructor within the department with an expired certification was found to still be training officers.

According to the report, in a survey of police officers, 69 percent of employees do not believe the department is well managed and 66 percent said they feel under-trained. 70 percent of the department did not keep up with technology and 58 percent said they would leave given a similar opportunity elsewhere.

The total report is 137 pages and describes a Police Department with staffing issues leading to overworked and tired officers from overtime hours, an undertrained staff and outdated polices that open the city to legal risks. Garcia noted that the city is in the process of attempting to tackle the issues that have built up for decades that “have not allowed us to progress to the extent that I know this city is capable of.”

Police Chief David Pratt, who has been police chief since 2021, called the audit a baseline for the department to work from and said most of the issues that came out of the report revolve around deficiencies in staffing. Pratt noted that the city was already in the process of hiring new officers that will put staffing levels within the department at levels not seen in over a decade.

Some other issues named in the report centered around technology are currentlly being addressed or have already been addressed, such as faulty cameras and a keypad system with issues have been fixed, according to Pratt.

“I haven’t been sitting around waiting for the audit to come out. I think the public should know we have addressed some things already and we’re going to look at everything in this report and do our best to fill whatever we can. All I ask from the council is to just work with us obviously and be patient cause Rome wasn’t built in a day and we’re not going to fix this overnight, but we are making strides and we’re heading in the right direction,” Pratt said.

Pratt noted he has already assembled what he is calling his “renovation team” to look at many of the things they can improve on from the audit.

The audit showed the Police Department is made up of 122 full-time officers funded at $12.5 million for the 2023 fiscal year. Last year, each officer responded to an average of 348 calls for service, according to the audit. With the city’s population at nearly 40,000, there are three police officers for every 1,000 people in Holyoke.

One of the authors of the report, David Kurz, said his personal takeaway was the department was “tired” and many of the issues identified can assist in resolving this issue.

“These people are exhausted. They’re going to make mistakes, they’re going to get hurt, they’re going to get tired, they’re going to fall asleep at the wheel. There’s a whole myriad of things that could go on here. It’s not good,” said Kurz.

Councilors agreed more staffing was needed and it was also important to begin figuring out how to better retain officers in the city.

When looking at where the department can go from these findings, MRI listed recommendations such as more training, improving evidence storage practices, strengthening communication and managing overtime. The audit also recommended hiring 17 to 30 patrol officers, a review of all departmental positions to find which can be tuned into civilian roles and renegotiating the collective bargaining agreement to reduce vacation time for new hires.

Auditors from MRI also repeatedly noted the importance of getting the Police Department accreditation which would include implementing an accredited training program. The audit found that the Police Department had an “aged” use of force policy that did not reflect the current best practices, according to Kurz.

For example, the department lacks a clear policy about the use of Tasers. Even though auditors saw that officers were wearing Tasers, they could not find a department policy about officers’ use of force for them. This was discovered with the same information that the department’s instructor was still teaching training with an expired certification.

The audit also found the department to be lacking an accredited field training program which would involve a third-party validating that the department is qualified on using best practices.

“Accredited police departments are able to demonstrate to their communities and put that trust in the bank that they are doing things right,” Sean Kelly, another auditor said. “We recommend that the Holyoke Police Department pursue accreditation.”

Pratt, while appreciative for the report and recommendation, suggested that was something for further down the line in this process.

“Let’s not leap off the ledge and jump to accreditation…It’s like we’re at the base camp of Mount Everest and we got to climb that mountain. We’re not going to run out there in our shorts and our T-shirt because we’re not going to make it very far,” Pratt said. “We need a good team and all the equipment to do it and then we’ll start tackling that mountain.”

Pratt again expressed the importance of maintaining proper staffing levels, which he again noted was a main reason behind departmental issues.

Kurz compared other institutions that must attain accreditation to be considered legitimate.

“Would you send your child and your money to a non-accredited university? Would you have heart surgery done in a non-accredited hospital?” Kurz asked. “But yeah, you can give power and authority to take away freedoms and liberties – and in certain confined circumstances to utilize deadly force – but you are not requiring them to be accredited.”

Getting accredited by a third party would allow for the department to root out any officers using too much sick leave, consistently gathering complaints and more according to Kurz.

One section of the report that generated discussion from councilors on the Public Safety Committee was the section for patrol detectives that listed “threats.” The section noted that At-Large City Councilor Israel Rivera is a convicted felon and is the chair of the Public Safety Committee. It also noted that Ward 2 Councilor Wilmer Puello-Mota is on bail release from Rhode Island on child pornography charges.

This section of the audit also noted that At-Large Councilor Jose Maldonado-Velez due to his comments last year when he referred to the Police Department as a “gang.” Maldonado-Velez previously had raised concerns about the city acquiring ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection service, during a meeting last year. He criticized the department’s use of force during that discussion.

In response to Maldonado-Velez’s comments, the city’s police union hosted a press conference where members condemned the comments and called the gang reference “derogatory.”

Maldonado-Velez noted at the meeting he was listed as one of the threats due to his comments and said the audit added to some of his concerns about how much training police have to respond to gun-related incidents. He added the City Council has approved all funding requests from the mayor and that the council is trying to improve all departments.

Maldonado-Velez said his comments were coming from a place to try and provide “a lens that’s not usually seen in these spaces” in relation to the discussion on ShotSpotter. He criticized the response to his comment and said there was “intimidation” from people who are meant to protect and serve and asking an elected official to be “silenced.” During this ongoing saga last year, Pratt called for Maldonado-Velez to retract his statement and apologize or recuse himself from future votes tied to the Police Department.

“I hope that the Police Department is realizing we are trying to make things better for Holyoke…to be named a threat is really frustrating. I understand that comment didn’t land very well with certain people but again it was a lens, a reality of how the police can be perceived,” Maldonado-Velez said. “We’re not even training people and we send them into the field. There’s no actual field training [the audit found for officers fresh out of academy]. What do you think the perception is going to be of the Police Department?”

Rivera shared similar frustrations with the threat label and felt being singled out for his criminal record when it was something that happened over a decade ago and he said was not a fair representation of who he is today. He added, “I am harmless.”

“The only thing I’ve done since I got out of prison 10 years ago is good. So, I guess that’s why I am considered a threat, right? Someone with a criminal record and succeeding and continuing to do things positive in a positive way,” Rivera said.

At-Large Councilor Tessa Murphy-Romboletti added she was disappointed that auditors did not interview a broader array of councilors, especially after the comments about City Councilors being perceived as threats.

“If you’re trying to hold someone accountable, that doesn’t mean you don’t respect the police. It doesn’t mean you don’t respect the work that they’re doing. It’s just we have to ask these questions and we have to ask tough questions,” Murphy-Romboletti said. “I was just expecting a lot different of an audit. It is just now being labeled as ‘risk review.’ It doesn’t really feel like the audit we were told we were going to get.”

Other threats listed in this section included parking for personal vehicles, the number of guns in the community, future funding (a common area of concern in the report), ransomware attacks on the agency technology, inconsistent quality of equipment, morale of officers and more.

Auditors described their report as a “30,000-foot view” of the department and assessed its operations in terms of risks to the community. Parts of the audit involved interviews with officers, city employees and some volunteers.

The members of the council in attendance were all appreciative for the work done in conducting the audit.