Getting rid of a disgraced cop is just the beginning
It took five years to discover the dark heart of racism and antisemitism that beat within a Woburn police officer — five long years in which John Donnelly patrolled that city’s streets, made arrests, and testified in court. Donnelly resigned Oct. 17, but the question remains: how much damage did he do during his seven years on the force? And, just as importantly, will a new system put in place to protect the public from police who have abused their authority and disgraced the badge be used to make sure Donnelly never again gets to join another police force — not here, not anywhere.
It wasn’t until earlier this month that an investigative piece published in the Huffington Post, complete with video, placed Donnelly at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. — the same rally at which a young woman was killed when a rallygoer plowed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters.
Donnelly acknowledges in video shot at the rally that he was there to provide security to its star attraction, white nationalist Richard Spencer.
A cameraman asks Donnelly, “Were you at the torch rally last night?” — the one at which hundreds of white supremacists marched across the campus of the University of Virginia carrying tiki torches and chanting, “Jews will not replace us!”
“Yeah, I was protecting this guy,” Donnelly says, gesturing at Spencer.
A scouring of Donnelly’s posts in various alt-right chat rooms, also collected for the HuffPo piece by a group called Ignite the Right, an antifascist coalition, showed a horrifying hodgepodge of racist, antisemitic, antigay, and anti-Muslim rantings.
Donnelly was immediately placed on paid leave the day the news broke, and Woburn Police Chief Robert F. Rufo Jr. and Mayor Scott Gavin issued a joint statement saying, “What was said and done in Charlottesville is in direct opposition to the core values of the Woburn Police Department to serve all members of the community equally and treat them with respect and dignity.”
At the same time, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan announced her own investigation of any pending or closed cases in which Donnelly was involved, asking the public to come forward with any complaints about encounters with the officer.
By Monday Donnelly had resigned from the force — and that saves his department the trouble of firing him. But the cleanup effort — undoing the damage that one hatefilled cop can cause — may take years.
Now the state’s corps of public defenders have asked that any cases “touched” by Donnelly be subject to dismissal.
“Our clients and their communities have been victimized and traumatized by the knowledge that they have been subjected to a law enforcement officer who endorses and actively promotes a bigoted ideology,” said a letter from officials of the Committee for Public Counsel Services to Rufo. “We are going to do everything we can to dig into his cases, and we will make sure they are scrutinized with an eye toward dismissal.”
But beyond that, the CPCS team is demanding to know “what steps have been taken or will be taken to determine whether other officers have also breached the trust of the Woburn Police Department and, more importantly, the community.”
And while the letter notes the lawyers “look forward” to working with Ryan “as she conducts her investigation,” they are also launching one of their own, requesting all case files and disciplinary records involving Donnelly — and any documents already supplied to the state’s Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, the agency charged with certifying — or decertifying — police.
Rufo told the Huffington Post prior to Donnelly’s resignation that if the allegations are sustained — an internal affairs investigation is ongoing — he would ask the POST Commission “to decertify Officer Donnelly, ensuring he may no longer serve in law enforcement.”
That’s the bottom line here. Woburn may well have rid itself of its “Donnelly problem.” But at age 33, he could move on to another department — unless and until he is formally decertified and put on a national database of decertified officers.
And once again the POST Commission, which has a policy of not commenting on pending individual cases, nor even confirming the existence of an investigation, is front and center on a case that cries out for transparency and for swift action — rather like a case involving several Stoughton police officers whose chief has also demanded that they never again be allowed to serve in law enforcement.
Ridding law enforcement of an officer like Donnelly is the essence of what the state’s decertification process was to accomplish. But if no one knows it’s working and if it doesn’t make its decision public, the commission will indeed be like a tree falling in the forest — its sound will remain unheard.