Here’s how many police officers were denied recertification in Massachusetts through the state’s law enforcement licensing commission

Massachusetts State Police marching unit at the 69th Holyoke St. Patrick's Parade on Sunday, March 20, 2022. (Hoang 'Leon' Nguyen / The Republican)

The state’s law enforcement licensing commission denied recertification to seven Massachusetts police officers ahead of a Friday deadline as it looks to finish administering renewals for thousands of officers across the state.

A majority of officers who successfully submitted their information to the Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission by the required deadlines passed muster. The commission has 431 law enforcement agencies under its purview — 399 submitted information by required deadlines and 21 were granted extensions. The remaining agencies either had no officers up for recertification in this group, or were expected shortly, according to officials.

Of the 6,366 law enforcement personnel who submitted their recertification packets, 5,606 were certified, 683 were granted conditional certifications, 60 officers’ recertifications were processed “but merit further review,” and seven were not recertified.

“So this amounts to 98% of officers that will be certified or conditionally certified,” said POST Commission Executive Director Enrique Zuniga.

An officer is classified as “not certified” when the commission determines “the officer has not satisfied all requirements for recertification and POST cannot renew the certification that was set to expire on July 1, 2022.” The officer can request POST to review the decision within 21 days of the official notice.

It is unclear who the seven officers are and which departments they work at.

“At this time, we are not releasing details on the seven officers who will not be recertified, nor the reasons for further review on some others,” a POST Commission spokesperson said in response to a MassLive inquiry.

It’s the first time the POST Commission has worked through a licensing process set up under a 2020 reform law enacted in the wake of high-profile cases of police misconduct. The journey has included heated debates over how to determine an officer’s good character — and multiple lawsuits in part taking aim at a certification questionnaire.

The POST Commission has been working toward a July 1 deadline to process recertifications for police officers with last names starting with letters A-H. Zuniga said staff members were finalizing ways to notify agencies of officers’ recertification status Wednesday.

“I will tell you this was a construction project. You should not lean on the walls because the paint is literally still drying,” Zuniga said during a Thursday morning meeting, adding the commission has worked quickly in order to comply with tight deadlines laid out in state law.

Zuniga said the POST Commission plans to send out notifications Friday to everyone who submitted recertification packets. Agencies can go online to see a report and unique certification number for each officer at their department.

“We are asking agencies to distribute to these individual officers these notifications that include their unique certification number, and keep a copy of these notifications in each officer’s personnel file,” Zuniga said. “Again, we were just testing this type of process in the last few days and that has been successful and we’d expect that we’ll continue in that fashion.”

Licenses for officers who are recertified now expire on July 1, 2025.

Another 10 agencies in Massachusetts confirmed they had no officers in the A-H cohort while the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office had not yet submitted recertification packets. Zuniga said he believes the office “will submit something literally today.”

“So I’m fairly confident that we have close to 100% compliance,” Zuniga said.

A group of 2,181 officers are part of the 21 agencies that received extension requests and must turn in their information by July 15. The numbers include the Boston Police Department with 882 officers in the A-H group and 980 at the Massachusetts State Police.

Zuniga said initial breakdowns — 88% certified, 10.9% conditionally certified, 1% needing further review, and 0.1% not certified — should stay consistent as officers with extensions turn in information.

“There’s no reason to believe that these percentages will not hold similarly — that we would have some 10 or so percent of officers that would have to have some kind of remediation in the conditions for the recertification and perhaps a similar, small percentage that we have to look at to schedule a hearing or not certify them at this time,” Zuniga said.

Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Jackie Cowin earlier this week threw a wrinkle into the recertification process when she blocked the commission from asking officers to disclose social media posts that “could be perceived as biased” and whether they were part of a group that “unlawfully discriminated.”

Cowin left the door open for the commission to revise the questions to “meet constitutional requirements.”

The questions were included on an eight-question questionnaire officers had to complete and sign as part of the process to determine their “good moral character” and fitness for duty. Cowin argued the social media question was “impossible to answer” because it asks officers to determine what “unknown third parties” might perceive as biased.

The membership question, Cowin said, could only be justified when there is “‘some substantial relation’ between a compelling government interest and the information required to be disclosed.”

“Here, there is not even a rational relation between the commission’s goal of ferreting out bias in policing and the information sought in question [seven], because the question requires disclosure of group membership that says nothing about whether an officer harbors bias,” Cowin wrote.

Zuniga said the commission would not consider responses to the questions in the current recertification process for officers who have last names starting with A through H and directed chiefs of police to do the same.

“The commission will review the questionnaire before its use in future recertification processes,” Zuniga said in the statement.

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