A police officer hid his suspension from a previous job. Here’s how his department found out

When the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission released thousands of police officer disciplinary records in a new public database nearly a year ago, it initially faced icy reactions.

Errors in the records caught the attention of leading police groups. One of the state’s largest police departments argued that the inclusion of volumes of minor disciplinary proceedings damaged officers’ reputations.

On the other hand, some transparency activists were discouraged by the relative lack of information in the dataset. While some records offered insights into cases of police misconduct, many others were scant in detail.

The commission – often known by the acronym POST – was required by state law to make the database public. Over the past year, it has released regular updates to make the database more accurate and complete. Most recently, nearly 200 new records were added Wednesday evening.

And a recent situation has underlined the importance of publishing the records on a public platform, said Enrique Zuniga, the commission’s executive director.

According to the commission, while reviewing its extensive collection of disciplinary records earlier this year, the Babson College Police Department noticed that one of its experienced officers had not been completely truthful about his past when he was hired more than a decade ago.

The officer was suspended in 2012 for two cases of misconduct while working for the Boston College Police Department. His exact offenses are unclear, but the database describes them only as lying, lack of supervision and falsifying records.

But when he left BC in 2013 and applied to Babson, the officer falsely stated that he had never been suspended for a workplace incident, Babson officials told the commission.

Without the database, Babson police would not have noticed the discrepancy.

The college fired officer Fred Winslow in February for lying about his hiring. According to commission documents, the Babson police chief also recommended that the commission use its authority to revoke Winslow’s certification and bar him from future police work in Massachusetts.

“Mr. Winslow either downplayed or omitted the facts and circumstances of his previous employment when he came to Babson,” the commission’s executive director, Enrique Zuniga, said in an interview with MassLive.

Winslow voluntarily agreed to his disbarment in June, accepting a deal of sorts that ended his decades-long career in law enforcement. He was the 20th officer to be disbarred by the commission, all since last year.

Winslow did not respond to interview requests from MassLive via Facebook messages asking for his side of the story.

In a post on his public Facebook page, Winslow thanked his colleagues and superiors at Boston College, and particularly Babson. He said he was proud of his 44-year career in law enforcement, from assisting with security at Faneuil Hall to serving on two college police departments. He did not detail the circumstances of his departure from Babson.

Kate Chaney, Babson’s external relations manager, said that when the school learned of Winslow’s disciplinary records, it “reviewed them and acted accordingly.”

Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn said the school does not comment on personnel matters and could not provide details about Winslow’s suspension.

Police departments use POST database for background checks

Some police departments now rely on the disciplinary records database to check the backgrounds of new officers transferring from other departments, Zuniga said during a commission meeting on July 18.

POST Commissioner Dr. Hanya Bluestone, a board-certified psychologist specializing in trauma and behavioral medicine, said the database creates “a system of checks and balances” whereby police departments can easily determine whether applicants have disciplinary records and whether they have disclosed them.

Sophia Hall, deputy litigation director for the Boston-based nonprofit Lawyers for Civil Rights, said it was “great” that police departments are using the database to check officers’ backgrounds.

“We don’t want people to fall through the cracks,” she said.

Zuniga said the commission is obligated to investigate when a police chief recommends revoking the license of one of his officers, as in the Winslow case.

He also said that the commission plans to keep officials who leave the system in the system for five years to avoid disciplinary action, as this would help catch those who conceal information about their past when applying for new jobs.

But the database is just one of the tools the Commission is using to help police departments check the backgrounds of new employees.

POST reports to national database

When the Commission withdraws an official’s certification, it also enters his or her name in a national register of withdrawn officials.

Mike Becar, executive director of the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training, which manages the registry, told MassLive earlier this year that it is not a blacklist for police officers. Rather, he called it an “investigative tool” designed to help departments be careful when hiring new officers.

“There were many cases of officers who had their license revoked. They went to other agencies and they didn’t do a proper background check or the officers didn’t mention that they were police officers,” Becar said. “Often they committed the same type of misconduct.”

In Massachusetts, the commission denied licensing to two officials after their names were found in the registry.

When state lawmakers created the commission in 2020, they envisioned an oversight body that could subject Massachusetts’ more than 400 police departments and more than 20,000 officers to a uniform set of standards.

The commission, a nine-member body with several dozen staff, was tasked by Parliament with setting up a public database of disciplinary files. It was published last August and contains complaints against more than 2,100 civil servants that their employers found credible after internal investigations.

The wealth of records, which had until then remained largely hidden from the public, varied widely. Some records described misconduct by officers who used excessive force, drove while intoxicated, sexually harassed colleagues or misused their service weapons. Other records reflected simple workplace violations – such as late submission of pay stubs or obscene language.

Zuniga noted, “The fact that someone is in this database does not mean that they should leave the police force.”

The database angered some police chiefs who said it was unjustified to make it public because officers’ mistakes were on display for all to see. Springfield Police Chief Cheryl Clapprood, now retired, said last year that minor disciplinary violations should have been left out.

“Many officers are upset,” she said. “Their reputations have been damaged by this, and I understand that and agree with them 100%.”

The Commission found that departments submitted the records themselves under detailed instructions and that many smaller disciplinary proceedings were actually excluded from the public record.

Contrary to police complaints, some activists said that while the database was a positive step toward transparency, it did not contain the details necessary to be useful to lawyers, journalists or the public. Descriptions of misconduct were often reduced to just a few words — “violations of policy” or “behavior unbecoming of an officer,” for example — and gave little insight into the true nature of the violations.

The database is a “good first step,” Hall of Lawyers for Civil Rights said last year. “But there are information gaps here that we need to fill to ensure that we actually achieve our goals of transparency.”

In an interview this week, she said her complaints about the database still stand, namely its lack of detail and its reliance on departments to describe its officers’ misconduct.

“But it’s certainly the most information we’ve had in one place,” Hall said. “It’s a step forward. It’s positive for Massachusetts.”

Zuniga acknowledged that many disciplinary files lacked detail and that some files contained errors, affecting about 5% of the files originally released.

He said the platform is constantly being improved and is a work in progress to make records more consistent, detailed and relevant.

Creating the database was a massive undertaking, requiring Commission staff to compile thousands of records from police departments with varying disciplinary and record-keeping protocols.

Some departments described their cases of misconduct in great detail. Others submitted only the bare minimum. Some departments had errors in their files.

Standardizing and verifying records “was an enormously difficult task,” Bluestone said.

Any errors in the dataset are “unacceptable,” she said, because they directly affect an officer and his family.

“But I think we’ll find that there will be occasional inaccuracies,” she continued. “That’s very unfortunate. We’re trying very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen, but with a database of this size, it’s going to happen.”

And with the continued work of the Commission staff, Bluestone said, “I think we will get closer to a database that is very error-free.”