Transparent and opaque are not synonyms
WPD Chief Gary Gemme would make a terrible teacher, not that he’s any better a cop.
Today, the WPD was kind enough to start the trickling out of public records relating to Worcester Police Officer Mark Rojas. Worcester Magazine has the story on a press release about the… uh, press release.
The Worcester Police Department has just released a statement that the department intends to release the records this week, though samples of the records to be released include heavy redactions—including a full page blacked out in one case. In the statement, the department also criticizes the Telegram for “polarizing the debate.”
According to the WPD:
“Under normal circumstances it is not unusual for a request of this magnitude to take months to comply with, and the past several months have not been routine,” the statement reads, discussing the ongoing investigation of court overtime abuse. “While the…Attorney General is reviewing the criminal liability…[WPD] had to prepare completed case files with all relevant documents. Many of these tasks are still ongoing and limit the opportunity to complete the T&G public records request.”
“…the police department embraces transparency, but it must be balanced against the protection of citizen and police officers rights.”
Let me be up front here, I dislike authority figures. I don’t dislike cops, most cops I know are great men and women, I hate what they as a group believe they stand for. This notion that a thin line of police officers is all that prevents civilized society from descending into chaos. Its 100% ego driven bullshit and this latest episode with the T&G drives home that fact. Here we have a cop with a personnel file larger than most criminal records, a fair number of those pages consisting of citizen complaints that seem to dead end on the Chiefs desk. All the T&G is asking for is a copy of those records. Not to drag the department through the mud, they’ve proven themselves fully capable of doing that without outside assistance; this is simply to report on one cop who seems to think it’s OK to beat the tar out people and a chief who by obstructing the process seems to concur.
The word transparency means something; it is not just a catch phrase for municipal agencies to toss around so as to appear open in an effort to superficially appease the masses. If you don’t think you have a right to know what your public bodies are doing with your money, your time and your trust or even worse you don’t care, then neither you nor those public bodies are deserving of a republican democracy. Chief Gemme has gone from being arguably incompetent to unquestionably dangerous during the course of this fight for public records. The WPD is not an entity separate from the rest of Worcester, it is part of our City, a very essential part. It’s time the good men and women on the department recognize and respond to that necessity by reeling in their colleagues and act like Stewards instead of laughably organized thugs.
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33 Responses to “Transparent and opaque are not synonyms”
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Right on.
Talk about makin a mountain out of a mole hill, this thread is BS Brendan! Chief Gemme is DANGEROUS? Give me a break that statement is conformation that this thread is BS and that you have some kind of ax to grind with cops in general! Gemme is running the BEST force in the Commonwealth! You can’t hit em for not keeping Worcester SAFE because Worcester is the safest city in New England! So you come up with this bullshit process charge with the T+G! You don’t like him because of his position on GUNS and Bar room safety and it taints anything you post about the WPD or the Chief!
Actually Newton is the safest city in New England.
After you’re done reading up on public safety statistics hit the Constitution and Massachusetts public records law, then you have my permission to come back and have a big boy conversation.
Brendan is right in every way. The WPD does a pretty good job in a lot that they do, but this is NOT one of those things. The chief records officer for the state said that whats going on here is ENTIRELY against state law. If the WPD does not have the resources to provide people with PUBLIC records in a timely fashion, then this needs to be corrected. Also, the fact that Officer Rojas still has a job is to most people beyond comprehension and in itself should completely discredit his boss(es). Bullshit like this shouldnt be tolerated, and I think that Mike OBriens head should be called for, because of his support. The chain of command goes like this in case we have forgotten:
Taxpayers of Worcester
City Council
City Manager
City Managers Cabinet
Dept heads
City employees
Newton has about 75,000 people, it’s not comparable to Worcester that has about 180,000 people, compared to all LARGE CITIES in New England Worcester by far is the safest!
Ya right Brendan it’s a “Constitutional crisis” a cop that swears woopteedoo! They’re cops not BUTLERS! Come back down off the high horse Brendan!
Worcester isn’t a large city, Gordon.
Worcester IS the second LARGEST CITY in New England! And compared to Boston, Prov. Springfield, New Haven, Hartford etc…..Worcester is by far and away the Safest!
….and Chief Gemme has a lot to do with how safe Worcester is!
Another place where Worcester can hold it’s head high is our politicians, City Managers and Dept. Heads you have never seen any of these people hauled away in handcuffs for law breakin or corruption like Boston Prov., Springfield etc…! You can disagree with them on certain positions they take but they are Honest and unstained! I believe that the plan E form of Gov. is one big reason! But I guess Charter Change is a subject for another day!
You’re clearly missing the point Gordon. This isn’t about Public Safety, I’ve certainly never claimed Worcester has a crime problem. And It’s really not even about Officer Rojas. It’s about a public records system that is defined by laws to be accessible, obviously, to the public. It’s easy and reasonable for Chief Gemme to come out and say this is the best we can do when you figure in limited man hours, costs, ect. But in doing so the chief and the City Manager are redirecting blame. The real problem here is the system the City of Worcester uses for record keeping.
The ideals of the public records system and Freedom of Information act are based on reasonable requests, reasonable costs and reasonable times for release. That term reasonable means something very different every time it’s used as it’s dependent on context. In the context of the WPD as an isolated entity, the Chief is correct and his department has acted reasonably. But in the context of 2008 where I can browse the library of Congress from my bathroom, not so much.
The city has had years to upgrade systems which would allow for streamlined record keeping, publishing of records and even redaction of sensitive data. None of these things should involve human hands in 2008, not in Podunk USA and certainly not in the second largest city in New England. This records release should have taken hours, not days, weeks or months. You’re free to believe otherwise, but in doing so you’re showing yourself to be willfully ignorant of both the law and the tools available to truly transparent municipalities in 2008.
Most importantly, the systems that would allow the City to act responsibly would cost less than the man hours they’re designed to replace. And since they would increase the turnaround time for availability of records, you would likely see an increase in requests and therefore an increase in revenue for the services. All this is dependent on the City or Worcester choosing to actually be transparent, though.
There’s reasonable and there’s responsibility, The Chief has a legal responsibility not to let out legally protected information or jeopardize on going investigations, that takes TIME(Lawyers), also the Chief has the responsibility to run his Dept. and keep the City and his employees safe, sometimes that means putting things in priority and if you read the T+G today you will have read that the chief had to let go one of the cities BEST vice squad Officers! He has bigger fish to fry if you will, give him some time you’ll get your records on Rojas! Be reasonable!
You don’t seem to have any idea of what’s being discussed here Gordon.
If the Chief and the City Manager were concerned with transparency as a standard for the city, public records would be off their plate. Software for scrubbing sensitive data has been available off the rack and in use by courts, municipalities, private companies and even home users for years now. Your arguments are based in a reality that hasn’t been real for decades.
Please forgive me if I’m less than interested in explaining the current state of professional data management to you. With a tiny bit of research, you’ll see how little sense you’re making. I will however help you get started:
Google: Redaction Software
Well I understand your point but the reality is the City isn’t using that software today in the present so your point isn’t pertinent to the case at hand, so maybe the Council will take your point and sometime in the future the system will be available for future cases.
Unfortunately that’s not good enough.
Again this whole debate is based on what is and is not a reasonable time, reasonable cost and reasonable expectation of information. While the Chiefs position may in fact be reasonable if we view Worcester as an institutional island cut off from reality, his position is not at all reasonable when measured against the easy and affordable availability of tools that would completely eliminate the aspects of his argument that have both slowed down and increased the cost of fulfilling this request.
If the City chooses to not make use of tools which would streamline their processes, I’m actually OK with that. But to ignore the existence of those tools and then claim you’re doing the absolute best you can is disingenuous at best but quite possibly negligent and obstructionist.
Again it seems like you have an ax to grind with the Chief that’s separate from this issue, using language like disingenuous, negligent and obstructionist is way over the top!
So help me out then, Gordon. What language would you use to describe someone who willfully disregards the existence of very basic and readily available tools that would serve only to make his job easier? If not:
disingenuous - Pretending to be unaware or unsophisticated
negligence - Failure to exercise the degree of care considered reasonable under the circumstances, resulting in an unintended injury to another party.
obstructionist - One who systematically blocks or interrupts a process
You got it all wrong Brendan! Those definitions don’t fit Chief Gemme as far as I’m concerned! Gemme is a straight shooter a cops cop, a peoples cop!
At what point does the internet equivalent of Allen Funt jump out and tell me this is all a joke?
The American Christian anarchist Ammon Hennacy used to say, “An anarchist is someone who doesn’t need a cop to make him behave.”
It’s not often that I think of anarchists when I read this blog…nice post.
A “cop’s cop”…now there is someone that I would trust to make unbiased and lawful decisions.
It sounds like Gordon may really a member of the city’s dictator’s regime?
This is NOT the first time the current city administration has violated open meeting laws or stalled in answering to request for information.
Brendon is right. What is bullshit to me is that I believe that city manager does toss around the word “transparency” and “public trust” as a front or for when he really intends to control matters and place hardship where he wants to satisfy his paranoia and lust for power. If you ever accepted block grant money from the city you may know what I am talking about. He or the council has little room for citizen voices and for citizens to have access to what is really going on, or better still, to have control over matters. This is ever way worse than pre city manager charter days. To obviously veil reality and cause more divisiveness, Chief Gemme made a big deal to state, on radio, that the taxpayer will be paying the majority of the cost to “produce” the report requested by the T&G. That also is bullshit to charge a buck a page and then pretends it actually cost 4 times more, telling us that the tax payer will pick up the tab. Why the city council is not calling for resignation of the City Manager and or the Chief is suspicious. Why tolerate a government body that has more concern for self interest than it does for the people or is perceived as corrupt?
Wow! I just heard an uninterrupted 40 minute interview with the Chief on the Hank Stolz Experience on WCRN! He answered all questions from Stolz no duckin, dodgin or hiddin what I would call aggressive transparency! He answered questions about Rojas, the Boston ACLU, the overtime scandal and the coverage by the T+G! It was a home run for Gemme, Worcester is lucky to have the Chief and Iron Mike for that matter of fact!
Then Stolz interviewed Frank Raffa And Don Courtney about 12/3/99 and the 6 Great Ones the memories came flooding back the smoke the horror, the best hour of talk radio I’ve heard in a while! And then I recalled the out pouring of LOVE that came from every corner and demographic of the City, ignited the Lyons Family when they FORGAVE the 2 homeless people who I thought would be thrown into the deepest darkest dungeon in the Commonwealth for the rest of their lives! You know this place called Worcester is a special place filled with special people, I am so GRATEFUL that I live here! Long live Worcester, Chief Gemme and the memory of the 6 Great ones, Amen!
Still waiting on Allen Funt…
You’re a funny guy Brendan!
So at least I have that going for me.
[...] Original post by Brendan [...]
you’re a faggot, brendan.
Thank you for the enlightening addition to the conversation.
How can I enlighten someone who has already proven to have such poor reading comprehension. You have no business writing about things you have such a poor clue about. I figured I’d speak to you on the only level I knew you could understand.
You fail to see the writing on the page in such a profound way. You don’t quite understand the process. Maybe $1 is not the price Staples charges for copies, but I doubt that the WPD goes to staples. Do you know the cost of 1500 pages (I think I read somewhere it was that long) in regular ink and paper? Do you know that when releasing public records with redaction (especially under threat of legal action by victims protected by such redaction) that it has to be copied, then blacked out, then copied again and gone over for mistakes with more black out, then copied a final time so that raised paper/being able to see through black ink doesn’t unnecessarily leak out information?
Did you know that only Sergeant level officer or higher can black out these records, followed by a legal team? Surely even someone as seemingly dense as you can understand that there aren’t all that many Sergeants in the small IA unit and that 1500 pages takes time to read. Why don’t you start reading War and Peace, right now, and email me when you finish it. Log the hours. I want to know how long it takes you. It’s something like 1,463 so you should be able to breeze through it, black out 60% (I’m being super generous here) and then do it again. Then photocopy the entire book, three times. But in addition to this, continue working your day job and working on your really awesome blog, and let’s just see how quickly you get it done. No you can’t listen to the tape on your commute, but I’ll allow reading while stuck in traffic.
You’re post is nothing but bullshit spin. You have no response to what is actually going on, you speak in gross vagaries and attempt to throttle Lord Gemme, but you can’t really point out what he’s not being transparent about. You want to be edgy but there’s no substance. You call the chief dangerous when it is you who is being an alarmist. The penis mightier than the badge. And yes, I omitted a space in that last section just to arouse you.
The cost for copies is laid out by Chapter 66, section 10 of the M.G.L. so that’s a moot point. 1,500 pages can only cost $1,500 (mailed) even if the department chose to use fine parchment.
Your third paragraph is absolutely spot on, which I conceded earlier (while we’re talking reading comprehension). But it’s only a reasonable argument if we accept the claim that proper redaction of public records is dependent on human intervention. No part of the M.G.L. demands Sergeants or above be a part of this process, that’s a departmental decision. One discount PC, a little OCR and just a touch of the redaction software in use at all levels of government would be a much better use of public resources and could probably handle 1500 pages in under 10 min. Ch 66 also lays out clearly a 10 day period for providing requested records. While 10 days may not have been a reasonable time for a limited staff to scour 1,500 pages in 1967, we’ve managed to remedy that in the last two decades.
The state supervisor of records has through the M.G.L. a very straight forward and reasonable set of guidelines for release of public records. If the City of Worcester in general or one of it’s agencies/departments in particular, is incapable or unwilling to meet those expectations they can not claim transparency as a defense. Attempting to do so, as both the Chief and City Manager have, is simply ridiculous.
Thanks for the offer of early afternoon arousal, but I’ll stick with chicks for now.
Geez! Bobby I am heartened by your defense of the Best Chief and Department in the Commonwealth but I think just like Brendan and others went over the top with their characterizations of the Chief and Iron Mike some of your characterizations of Brendan are likewise over the top some not, this blog is awesome and I am privileged to argue the topics of the day with Brendan and his guests! So post on Bobby I think Brendan can handle it! Good to hear from ya!
Thanks for the comment Gordo. Brendan and I have actually emailed back and forth now and it’s all good. Im going to keep his blog on my loop and hopefully give him an opportunity to call me some choice words in the future haha