Commonwealth Conversations: Public Safety

Don't Hate!

Nurys Camargo, Senior Policy Advisor, Executive Office of Public Safety and Security

We recently heard about the two young ladies in Minnesota who hung themselves after being bullied for not fitting in and being overweight. That’s ridiculous that our children have to commit suicide due to another’s person’s bias and hatred.

A hate crime is any criminal act motivated by bigotry and bias.  That bias can be based on racial, religious, ethnic, handicap, gender or sexual orientation prejudice. Through harassment, intimidation, or violence, hate crimes are an assault on our constitutional rights and our physical wellbeing. And they cannot be tolerated.

Crimes motivated by hatred and bias are among the most serious challenges to public safety our Commonwealth faces. The Patrick-Murray administration is committed to preventing, responding to and supporting the victims of hate crimes in every community.

Since 1991, Massachusetts has been aggregating data from local police departments on the number and nature of hate crimes reported in every one of the Commonwealth’s communities. For more information on these reports visit www.mass.gov/eops.

Ending hate crimes in our communities requires each of us to do our part. Raising awareness about hate crimes and the promotion of non-violent, tolerant attitudes are the most important tools we have to improve the safety of all Massachusetts citizens.

Well Deserved Thank You

Secretary Mary Elizabeth Heffernan
Secretary, Executive Office of Public Safety and Security
Secretary Heffernan's bio

I had the privilege for the second year in a row to attend and participate in the annual State     9-1-1 Awards Ceremony at the beautifully restored Mechanics Hall building in downtown Worcester. It was a grand affair and I was honored to have been the event keynote speaker.

But this ceremony wasn’t to highlight any accomplishment of mine, rather the men and women in the Commonwealth I very often refer to as the true “first responders” to the emergencies faced by the residents of this great state each and every day and the vitally important role they play in the delivery of public safety.  9-1-1 Telecommunicators in Massachusetts answered close to 4 million calls from citizens needing help last year.

9 Telecommunicators were honored this year for their outstanding performance and the extraordinary measures taken during emergency situations that led to a positive outcome of a 9-1-1 emergency call. While their recognition is well deserved, I believe all emergency Telecommunicators in Massachusetts deserve recognition for the work they do.  How they react can determine the outcome of a serious situation. They’re nothing short of heroes. So to those honored at the 4th annual ceremony and to all others, from the people of Massachusetts I say thank you. 
 

For the Record...

Saundra Edwards, Chair, Sex Offender Registry Board

As Chair of the Sex Offender Registry Board (SORB), I often have the opportunity to travel around the Commonwealth.  In the course of my travels, I frequently hear from members of the public, including concerned parents, the victim community, and public officials, as well as various partnering criminal justice agencies, and am reminded of how very public our role is in keeping families safe. 

SORB is one tool with a distinct, but important role in the criminal justice toolbox to help protect the public. In essence, SORB provides to you, the public, an important piece of information – the level of risk and danger a sex offender poses to the community and information about that offender.

Until the SORB law passed, it wasn’t easy to get this information, but the Legislature and Courts decided that the law was a way for the public to protect itself by making them aware of this class of criminals.  The law requires sex offenders to register and we consolidate their information into a large database available to law enforcement. We then classify offenders by level, and then disseminate that information to police. You can look up Level 3 offenders by name, county, city or town, zip code and incarcerated status on our public website www.mass.gov/sorb. Level 2 offender information is also available by going to your local police department and completing a request form.

Because of our name, many people incorrectly, but understandably assume that we also supervise and manage sex offenders, but we do not perform that function.  Under the law there are other agencies such as the Probation Department, and the Parole Board, who on a case by case basis, may supervise individual sex offenders once sentenced or released from incarceration. 

Many people also question why, if a sex offender is a high risk, he or she can be on the street, or live near a school, park or playground.  The answer is that here in the Commonwealth, a Court decides whether an offender will serve a sentence for their sex offense, how long they must be incarcerated and whether any supervision and conditions should be imposed.  The reality is that sex offenders live in our communities so go to our website and check it often.

Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover!

Nurys Camargo, Senior Policy Advisor, Executive Office of Public Safety and Security

Have you thought about your personal perceptions towards people and how it affects the way we treat them at times?  How we grew up, what are parents said around the house and what we watch on TV often play huge factors when it comes to racial profiling.  Thanks to a grant from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, on Tuesday, March 15, 2010, the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, together with the Highway Safety Division, launched our Fair and Impartial Policing Training at UMASS Boston for law enforcement officials, as well as residents and community leaders. 

We hope that creating these trainings will enhance the understanding of racial profiling and how the brain works and reacts.  What I’m most excited about is that these trainings were developed using the stories and experiences of real people, both law enforcement personnel and community residents from all over the Commonwealth. 

The Fair and Impartial Policing training will be available to anyone interested in preventing racial profiling, understand how it works and how it can affect everyday business. Most importantly, this training will focus on how racial profiling affects both the person in question and the law enforcement officer.

Topics covered in the modules include cultural influences, unconscious biases and even innate biological factors that influence how individuals react during a range of community and police interactions. These influences, including their effects and repercussions, are examined by experts from both the police and community perspectives.

The Fair and Impartial Training Workshops will serve as an important tool to help prevent racial profiling in Massachusetts.  Racial profiling can occur anywhere, anytime with anyone for whatever reason! Become aware!

Fitting In

Michael Christopher, Manager of Public Policy and Public Affairs, Executive Office of Public Safety and Security

As I begin my eighth week as the Manager of Policy and Public Affairs for the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security’s (EOPSS), I can confidently say that I am finally starting to find my bearings.  EOPSS is a highly-functioning, well-oiled machine, and with a $966 million operating budget and you can imagine that things can be pretty fast paced up here on the 21st floor of Ashburton.  The other pressure that adds to the intensity of EOPSS is the fact that the issues and policies we deal with affect the public’s security and safety – whether it be crime prevention, homeland security preparedness, or ensuring overall safety of all visitors and residents in the Commonwealth.

Much of my first month has been spent trying to learn how our Secretariat and the 14 agencies that fall under our jurisdiction function.  Each agency is basically its own corporation that goes about its business everyday to ensure the public’s safety, security and efficiency.  EOPSS’s job is to ensure that each agency is equipped with the tools necessary to do this.  Tools can range from having a budget to run the day-to-day operations of the agency while also having the jurisdiction to act swiftly and justly to ensuring the public’s safety and security.

My role is assisting in the managing the agency’s public policy, as well as assisting in Legislative affairs on behalf of EOPSS.  To break that down even more, EOPSS, in conjunction with the Governor’s Office files legislation with the State Legislature each session to create, amend or change certain laws that exist in the Commonwealth.  Some of these changes can be very small while others can be very large.  With every piece of legislation that is filed I am part of the team that works to educate the Legislator on the issues and why EOPSS is taking this position. That ranges from setting up meetings, doing briefings and managing data.  The other part of my job is to work with the staff of State Legislators in assisting with their constituent inquiries.  At times, state government can be tricky to navigate for residents and Legislators are often called to assist in this process. My job is to assist the staff and make sure they are getting the information they need in a timely fashion.

It is a very exciting time to be working at EOPSS because of all the different things that we have going on.  I am consistently impressed by the work ethic my colleagues at EOPSS bring to the job everyday. The citizens of Massachusetts should go to sleep at night knowing that their Public Safety and Security is the number one priority of Secretary Mary Beth Heffernan and her staff.





An Act Relative to Criminal Sentencing

Greg Massing, General Counsel, Executive Office of Public Safety and Security
General Counsel Greg Massing's bio

One of the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security’s key legislative initiatives this year is reform of the criminal sentencing laws.  Although our bills were filed just over a month ago, hearings have already been scheduled before the legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary, one on March 16 and another on March 30.  We don’t know yet which bills the Committee will hear which day – they have designated March 16 for “parole,” and March 30 for “probation,” but our bills cover both topics.  Still, it is exciting, and a bit scary, to see the attention being paid to this issue.
 
It’s no surprise that these issues are on the front burner.  State and county prisons are overcrowded, and the Commonwealth is facing unprecedented fiscal challenges – we can’t just build more prisons.  Meanwhile, states across the country are reevaluating the costly and ineffective sentencing polices associated with the “War on Drugs.”  And, finally, the public has lost confidence in our system of community supervision, not just because of scandal in the Office of the Commissioner of Probation, but also because in many cases we seem to be keeping the wrong kind of person in prison for too long, letting worse offenders out too soon, and sometimes not supervising the most dangerous criminal at all.
 
The main idea of our proposals is to make sure that repeat, violent offenders get serious time, with costly prison beds are reserved for them and community supervision when they finally get back on the street, but that non-violent offenders whose worst problem is drug addiction are punished in proportion to their crime and are able to get the training, treatment, and services they need.  Our proposals strengthen and close loopholes in the so-called “habitual offender” laws, and those changes are necessary.  At the same time, lengthy mandatory minimum sentences are imposed on thousands convicted of drug crimes.  If these offenders use guns or involve children, they are a danger to their communities and deserve those long sentences.  But we are spending far too much of your money providing costly prison beds for non-violent drug offenders who turned to crime because of addiction.  I am personally familiar with the story of a defendant who was convicted twice for possessing drugs with intent to distribute – both times involved a single, $10 bag of heroin – who received a mandatory minimum term of 5 years, which is what the law requires.  This was a man with a problem, not someone who threatens society so much that he needs five years in a state prison cell to keep us safe.  And there are hundreds of stories like this.
 
It’s easy for lawmakers to “throw the book” at hardened criminals, so I am confident that something like our habitual offender proposals will pass soon.  But it takes courage to say that mandatory minimum sentences are too harsh for some drug offenders and should be eliminated, or at least shortened.  We need both types of changes.  The Governor has shown his common sense, and his courage, by proposing laws that will readjust our sentencing priorities in a way that is both tough, and smart, on crime.

Look Before You Leap

John Grossman
Undersecretary of Forensic Science and Technology
Executive Office of Public Safety and Security
John's bio

My grandfather said:  “If two people tell you that you are drunk, lie down . . . even if you haven’t had a drink.”   I have tried to incorporate the lessons of this old Russian aphorism into my leadership style.  First, no matter how much I think I know about something, there are nearly always others who know more.  Second, even when I do in fact have superior knowledge, others may have a different perception – and perceptions often matter more than physical reality.  As a result, I strive to avoid taking a firm position until I have explored its merits with stakeholders; I am always examining decisions from others’ perspectives and adjusting my inclinations as I develop my own opinion.

Periodically, however, I need to be reminded that I may be “drunk.”  When I began overseeing the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for Massachusetts (the “OCME”) in 2007, a management consultant had determined that the agency was “on the verge of collapse.”   It was lacking in leadership, management systems and resources.  Like most people, I assumed that the mission of the OCME was the same as on television – using forensic pathology to catch murderers.  When I learned that in fact, only 10% of our cases were homicides, I thought I had found the solution to the OCME’s problems: jettison much of the work that was extraneous to my understanding of the core mission.

Before announcing my decision, I spent several days at the OCME.  I observed the morning meetings where staff drew on epidemiology to plan the day’s work.  I observed an autopsy that mattered to no one except the family members of the deceased.  They wanted an explanation as to why their loved one, whom they had previously thought was the picture of health, had dropped dead, and the ME’s believed they deserved that explanation.  I tried to help a doctor explain to a grieving mother why her daughter would commit suicide, seemingly without any warning.  Finally, I listened as the doctors discussed how to better persuade parents to cut grapes in half before feeding them to toddlers to avoid deaths like that of the child on the autopsy table in front of them.  None of these cases involved homicides, yet each was immensely important.  I realized my opinion of how to “fix” the OCME was wrong.  These doctors guard public health and by explaining death – not simply accepting it as inevitable – they honor the value we place on life.  Those tasks are as crucial to our society as solving homicides.  So, instead of changing the mission of the OCME, I changed my mission: I dedicated myself to nurturing leadership within the agency, advocating for greater resources and helping build management controls. 

We have come a long way at the OCME since 2007:  we have a thoughtful and experienced management team who have built systems that make the office work, we have been able to recruit and retain a phenomenal cadre of medical examiners, and the extraordinary staff work every day in very difficult conditions to serve the public.  There is work that still remains and some of it is dependent on additional funding but the team at the OCME – and the Commonwealth – have much to be proud of.

An Act Reforming Re-entry and Community Supervision of Criminal Defendants and Offenders to Strengthen Public Safety

T. Jane Gabriel, Deputy General Counsel, Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, Deputy General Counsel Gabriel's bio

Yesterday, the Patrick-Murray Administration filed legislation which proposes a consolidation of all community supervision of adult offenders and defendants into one single agency.  Having worked in the system for many years, wearing many hats, but mostly as a former probation officer and prosecutor, I am genuinely excited about the potential of this idea because of the positive impact it will have.   

It’s important to understand how the system is currently set up to truly understand why this makes such great sense.  Most people are familiar with the concepts of probation and parole- the probation department supervises offenders in lieu of incarceration, and parole supervises offenders released directly from incarceration.  Many individuals are supervised by both the probation department and parole during their criminal careers, but because the two agencies are separate entities who report to separate authorities, there is little communication between them.  More importantly, each has its own set of rules and guidelines which creates inconsistency and ineffectiveness.  Despite the fact that the two agencies cross paths frequently, records regarding the offenders’ program participation, successes, failures, risks and needs are not shared.  As a result, when one agency picks up where the other left off, services are often duplicated and efforts are wasted. 

The Department of Re-entry and Community Supervision (DRCS) will follow an offender from the early pretrial stages of the criminal process to an inmate’s release from prison.  Services will build on one another.  In making sentencing and prison release decisions, the courts and the Parole Board will be able to rely on recommendations of a single department that will use risk and needs assessments and other evidence-based tools as a matter of practice.  The DRCS will apply a set schedule of intermediate and graduated sanctions creating a system that is consistent and reliable in its punishment for violations, and in its communications and interactions with victims, therefore significantly enhancing public safety in the Commonwealth.

Senseless Violence

Secretary Mary Elizabeth Heffernan
Secretary, Executive Office of Public Safety and Security
Secretary Heffernan's bio

The tragedy in Tucson reminds us that gun violence can erupt at any time; occur in any venue; and involve the most innocent of victims.

The individual citizens who traveled there on a Saturday to speak to their Representative in Congress; the Federal Judge who stopped by to offer support to a long time friend; the little girl who went there to see if her future might also include a life in public service; and the people who went to just buy groceries for their families had no way of knowing that senseless gun violence was going to change their lives forever.

Our hearts and prayers go out to all involved, and we in Public Safety rededicated ourselves to keeping the people of our Commonwealth as far from harm’s way as is humanly possible.



Military Sexual Trauma Joint Working Group is convened by Lt. Governor Tim Murray

Sheridan Haines
Executive Director of Council to Address Sexual and Domestic Violence
Executive Office of Public Safety and Security
Sheridan's bio

During a discussion with the directors of the Governor's Advisory Council on Veterans' Services (GACVS) and Governor’s Council to Address Sexual and Domestic Violence (GCSDV), Lt. Governor Tim Murray tasked us with convening a joint working group on military sexual trauma.  Assistant Secretary of Veterans Services and Coleman Nee and I pulled together interested members of both Councils, as well as representatives the National Guard, the Veterans Administration, MA Department of Public Health, and community based service providers such as the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center to address and better meet the needs of Massachusetts residents who have experienced Military Sexual Trauma.

These meetings have been the first statewide attempt to engage a wide array of interested participants––military/civilian, private/public, governmental/NGOs, medical/legal––to embark on an on effort to identify obstacles and systemically address the needs of men and women in Massachusetts who are dealing with the short and long term effects of Military Sexual Trauma. From the beginning a supportive, respectful tone has led the group to familiarize each other with the very different history, culture, policy and procedure development of the civilian sexual assault movement and the military response to MST, thus beginning to bridge these two bodies of work. The Joint Working Group has provided a safe and positive learning environment to address the complicated issues that arise.   

In June, we held the 2nd Annual Massachusetts Women Veterans Conference.  US Asst. Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Tammy Duckworth was the keynote speaker at this gathering of several hundred women vets in June at UMass Medical Center.  Members of the joint working group provided assistance in planning and day-of leadership presenting a panel on Military Sexual Trauma and available supportive services. Further outreach to community-based civilian support services ensured that the “Resource Area” was informative, broad-based and diverse.

This spring, the MST Joint Working Group will embark upon a series of discussions with several “groups” in the National Guard that specifically work with MST survivors including, Chaplains, JAG Corp and Mental Health providers. The goal is to further build the network to support survivors of MST and to prevent MST. 

For Help and More Information:

Massachusetts Department of Veterans Services

Massachusetts Rape Crisis Centers

Fact Sheet on MST