Watertown Police Chief Michael Lawn has a problem on his hands.
When Watertown posted a call for new recruit applicants on Facebook this past year, only six people attended. And only 24 people responded to take the civil service test in June. That is among the lowest number in the department’s history.
“This job has changed,” Lawn told GBH News. “Nobody wants this job anymore.”
Since George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis a year ago, police forces across the state and the nation have been forced to reckon with how bias and even outright racism within their ranks affects the communities they serve. As activists push to reform the criminal justice system — and specifically hold police departments accountable for the disproportionate use of deadly force against minority communities — police departments are grappling with the calls for change. Local officials have considered proposals ranging from new anti-bias training requirements to complete defunding of the police force, though no town in the state has gone that far.
The state legislature also approved a sweeping police reform bill that will for the first time require officers to be certified every three years.
“In my 32-years of police work this has been the most challenging and difficult year, and I understand that,” Lawn said.
Watertown police Detective Kerilyn Amedio agreed.
She’s one of 16 women officers, and together they make up 26 percent of the Watertown force. She is proud of the force: She comes from a family of officers, and she wears her late grandfather’s badge number.
But this past year, she said, with all the scrutiny directed toward police, it’s more stressful than ever. “I think in this town, it's now you can't be pro police and you can't be Black Lives Matter. They're saying you have to pick a side. And that's absolutely, it's polarizing.”
Amedio said it is possible to support both sides.
“I hope that there is going to be some kind of even ground that people can agree on,” Amedio said, “and we can move forward as one cohesive group. But it has been very difficult and very taxing.”
Community activists in Watertown have challenged the police, publicizing statistics that show Black residents are arrested at a rate five to six times higher than white residents.
Sarah Pardo of the group Uplift Watertown argued at a town meeting earlier this year that police funding could be put to better use.
"If Watertown reduced police funding to match the average police budget of towns of a similar size, we would free up about two million dollars for community investment and life affirming resources like health care, housing, food access and social support," she said.
Lawn said that could mean the loss of 20 police officers; the entire patrol division is made up of 32 officers.
Lawn disputes allegations that his officers are biased. He said his officers do not arrest suspects based on color.
“And we broke down every arrest. Right. A lot of those were situations that we had to arrest,” Lawn said. “The domestic violence laws changed in 1994, and it mandates us to arrest. If someone has a warrant, we’re mandated to arrest.”
About 40 miles north of Watertown, the city of Lawrence has a police department more than twice the size of Watertown with 157 officers. A lot of the issues other departments are beginning to focus on now, Lawrence has been working on for years, said Police Chief Roy Vasque.
Lawrence is a majority minority police force that reflects the population of the community, Vasque said, and that is a specific theme of the department’s recruitment effort. Vasque said the police created a recruitment video featuring officers of color “to send that message to community members considering a job in law enforcement, ‘Oh, I can, you know, I can do that. Look at that individual. And they're from Lawrence and I'm from Lawrence. I can do that as well.’”
For years, Vasque said, Lawrence has had a “no-choke policy.” Officers already have a duty to intervene if someone is being mistreated. And training focused on implicit bias, diversity and procedural justice are ongoing.
“So as far as Massachusetts goes, as far as Lawrence Police Department goes, I think we're ahead of the curve in those things,” Vasque said. “And I think some of the things that the world is asking for in their policing, we've been doing for quite a long time.”
Lawrence Police Lieutenant Jay Cerullo has been on the force for 21 years in the community police division. He said ongoing training helps officers treat people with more compassion.
“Nowadays we're really putting the time in and not only here, but at the academies to have better officers who are better prepared to counter, certainly, the complex world that we're living in today,” Cerullo said.
Joshua Stokel, spokesperson for the Police Academy at Northern Essex Community College, said new police training is coming soon state-wide as part of the new police reform bill passed in December 2020.
One new training program is called ABLE. “It stands for active bystandership for law enforcement,” he said. “So, it's a program that focuses on police misconduct, police mistakes, and it focuses on the health and wellness of law enforcement officers.”
Stokel said the course will teach officers response skills that don’t have a bad outcome and how to get in front of any given situation with the hope of avoiding escalation to violence.
Training is important, but training alone is not sufficient, said Nancy LaVigne of the non-partisan organization Council on Criminal Justice. Efforts that increase police accountability and rebuild trust between law enforcement and community members requires work on department policies, too, she said.
“Where individual officers are misapplying force and even end up killing members of the public, it’s important to look at duty-to-intervene policies,” she said. “And these are policies that require that officers who witness others engage in excessive force or other misconduct have to intervene in the moment.”
Massachusetts is rolling out the 2020 legislation this summer. It includes the creation of the new Police Officer Standards and Training Commission that will develop a mandatory certification process for police officers and a process for decertification, suspension and reprimand in the event of misconduct.
Watertown Detective Amedio said she supports new training and other efforts that help cops do a better job. But calls for budget cuts have her worried about herself and her community.
What really bothers her, Amedio said, is the acronym she’s been seeing more and more — ACAB, whihc stands for All Cops Are B*****ds.
It’s not true, she said. Good policing is about mutual respect.
“Whether you're a police officer and a civilian or just a civilian to a civilian,” she said. “It's just that mutual respect needs to kind of be brought back to the surface.”
