Letter: Coalition Demands Response To UMass Police Misconduct

The following letter was signed by 731 members of the UMass community. The names of all of the signatories can be found here

We are writing to express our continued outrage about the University’s response to the arrest of a student of color on November 1, 2022. (see also here). 

Over 2,400 UMass students, staff, and faculty signed a petition last year calling for the administration and the UMPD to drop all charges against the student. Instead, he was charged with a felony, which will follow him forever regardless of the outcome of the legal process currently underway. 

In this incident, UMPD could have taken many actions that did not involve arresting the student and charging him with a major felony. Police officers could have directed traffic to stop, rather than physically grabbing (assaulting) the student. They could have escorted the student from the area without an arrest. They could have decided to charge the student with a misdemeanor or engage the student and officers in restorative conversation. It should also be noted that the police never charged the student with jaywalking or another initial, minor infraction.

UMass community members organized to protest, but the administration’s response was simply to hire Margolis Healy, a consultant firm with multiple, clear connections to law enforcement, to investigate the incident. How does the UMass administration justify hiring a consulting firm founded by two former police chiefs and including a majority of team members with law enforcement, security, and/or military affiliations, to investigate questions of police conduct? 

On March 30, 2023, the campus was informed through an email from Brandi Hephner LaBanc, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Campus Life, that Margolis Healy’s investigation found no wrong-doing and exonerated the UMPD of any responsibility. Despite multiple witness statements to the contrary and alternative actions available to the officers, the report also claimed that there was absolutely no evidence of racial bias or excessive force in the officers’ actions. In their recommendations to the university, Margolis-Healy also recommended continued use of police trainings and pedestrian safety procedures that are already in place. These results are unsurprising and predictable given the pro-policing bias of the investigating firm. How does the UMass administration justify accepting an investigative report that is so clearly inconsistent with publicly known facts and so clearly focused on exonerating individuals, rather than questioning larger structures of policing and punishment?

In addition, contrary to Massachusetts law, the administration has refused to release the entire Margolis Healy report to the public. Vice Chancellor Hephner LaBanc’s email also declared that the full report is confidential as it pertains to personnel matters. However, policing reforms in 2020 exempted investigations of police misconduct from personnel protections, explicitly making them public record (Subclause (c) of Clause Twenty-sixth of Section 7 of Chapter 4 of the Massachusetts General Laws). How does the UMass administration justify accepting the results of a clearly biased investigation and refusing to share them with the campus community impacted by them?

This response falls far short of what we consider necessary to address the racial trauma and pervasive communal division inflicted by this incident, in a campus climate of profound and ongoing racism and lack of belonging experienced especially by students, faculty, and staff of color on campus. UMass administrators have often been outspoken in critiquing incidents beyond campus in which police have violently escalated interactions involving minor infractions by Black and Brown people (For example, UMass Chancellor Subbaswamy Responds to George Floyd and Systemic Racism and Statement from Chancellor Subbaswamy on the Guilty verdict in the Murder of George Floyd). And yet when these incidents happen on our own campus, the administration has been silent and complicit.

Given UMass’ claims to be revolutionary and antiracist, why has no member of the UMass administration come out publicly to state that under no circumstances should a police engagement with a student for a minor pedestrian infraction lead to an arrest with a student charged with a major felony?

Given UMass’ claims to be revolutionary and antiracist, why has no member of the UMass administration come out publicly to state that under no circumstances should a police engagement with a student for a minor pedestrian infraction lead to an arrest with a student charged with a major felony?

Given the repeated failures of police to further campus safety and community, why has no member of the UMass administration publicly questioned the decision to enforce pedestrian and vehicular traffic patterns through police coercion and violence?

Given the bias inherent in the investigation by Margolis Healy, what actions is the UMass administration taking to encourage alternatives to the punitive and policing-focused suggestions presented by Margolis Healy?

We feel that it is time to take action to authentically address the concerns we have raised and, therefore, we demand the following:

• That the University administration reject the limited purview and pro-police bias of the Margolis Healy investigation

• That the University administration reject Margolis Healy’s erroneous conclusions that there was absolutely no evidence of racial bias or excessive force, given the multiple witness reports of both

• That the University administration immediately release the full Margolis Healy report, unredacted other than the student and witnesses’ names, to the UMass community

• That the University administration condemns the continual violence and oppression of Black and Brown people through institutions of policing and punishment

• That the University administration publicly acknowledges and apologizes for its complicity in the criminalization of Black and Brown people through its repeated reliance on policing and punishment as a solution to community challenges

• That the University administration completely removes all police presence from campus, including UMPD, student cadets, state police, local police, and militarized private security

• That the University administration develops alternative civilian response teams, building on the CRESS model being used in Amherst

• That the University administration develops and invests in transformative justice alternatives to police interventions 

• That the University administration repurpose police funding to support civilian responses, physical and mental health resources, and other transformative and restorative approaches to harm and conflict

Those wishing to add their names to this open letter should contact the coalition at umasssolidarity@gmail.com

The UMass Coalition for Transformative Justice and 731 members of the UMass Amherst community.

The UMass Coalition for Transformative Justice is a new group on campus that brings together students, graduate students, faculty, and staff working to create strategies across campus for responding to harm in ways that work toward mutual healing and recovery rather than levying more retributive harm.