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research we're doing

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As a research group, GoodHarbor.org is focused on gathering the kinds of information our community needs as the basis for public policy conversations that includes all of the stakeholders: police officers, policy makers, administrators, taxpayers, crime victims, and anyone else who comes into contact with law enforcement as we develop our local public safety policies for the 21st century.

Our goal is to build a consensus around sensible, data-based public safety policies that will keep us safe while treating everyone, from every walk of life, equally and with respect.

We want to make sure that Gloucester has the right data-based policies in place to help make that happen.


RESEARCH WE’RE DOING

Research we’re working on includes:

  • Getting to the bottom of the firing of former chief Leonard Campanello in 2016. Ex-chief Campanello was fired after he was accused of putting two different women in fear for their safety, destroying evidence and lying to the mayor. Although the city fired Campanello on October 3, 2016, it quickly reversed itself just days later, reinstated him to full salary, gave him three months fully paid leave, and allowed him to retire with full pension and no discipline of any kind in January of 2017. The city did an internal investigation into the Campanello matter but has refused for years to allow any of the details of the situation that lead to his firing to become public. GoodHarbor.org however has recently been able to obtain key emails, text messages and memoranda that reveal most, if not all of what happened. We are reviewing those documents and will make them publicly available as soon as we can.
 
  • Reviewing and analyzing other Gloucester Police Department misconduct records over the past several years, including records showing that a Gloucester superior officer was found to have directed a patrolman to falsify evidence of sexual assault against a burglary suspect, a different superior officer was found to have run an llegal firearms business and engaged in multiple felony illegal gun sales, a Gloucester patrolman was found to have committed sexual assault while on duty, and a patrol officer so careless or incompetent with his sidearm that he shot another officer in the stomach on two separate occasions.

 
  • Reviewing both the cost and the benefits of stationing armed Gloucester police officers in the Gloucester public schools.
 
  • Reviewing the Gloucester Police Department Use of Force Policy as it compares to model use of force policies developed by national public safety experts.

Research we're gathering

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Research we’re gathering, summarizing, and making available in our public safety resources library, includes:

  • model use of force policies
 
  • data from research conducted by experts on the effectiveness of stationing armed police officers in public schools
 
  • research on the effectiveness of current American policing methods by major crimes as shown in national FBI data and data from the American Community Survey data (data on crime reporting rates, arrest rates, clearance rates and conviction rates, etc.)
 
  • analyses done by other communities such as New York, Boston and Brookline, which have assessed their own public safety policies and collected current thinking on public safety best practices, and,
 
  • Cases of institutional and systemic corruption within police departments around the country, and in Massachusetts in particularly, focusing on police departments that hide and cover-up the misconduct of their officers, such as:

    • the Boston Police Department, which covered up both ex-commissioner Dennis White's domestic abuse allegations and evidence of serial child sexual abuse by former Boston patrolman's union head Patrick Rose,
 
    • the Springfield Police Department whose Narcotics Bureau a 2020 Department of Justice report determined has "engaged in pattern and practice of excessive force,"

    • the Massachusetts State Police, whose widespread overtime fraud scandal involved scores of state troopers including multiple superior officers,

    • the Worcester Police Department, which has had to pay out an average of nearly $150,000 every four months for the past ten years to victims of abuse at the hands of Worcester police officers,

    • the Bristol County Sheriff, which a recent Massachusetts Attorney General investigation found had engaged in a “planned and deliberate . . . use of force” with dangerous weapons that was “excessive and disproportionate” against twenty-five people “who had exhibited calm and nonviolent behavior for at least an hour,” and,

    • racial harassment, including open support for Adolph Hitler, by members of the Williamstown police department, and repeated instances of sexual assault by the town’s chief of police.

  • Case studies of alternative 911 response units such as the CAHOOTS program in Eugene, Oregon, which sends trained mental health crisis responders instead of armed officers as the first responders to 911 calls relating to mental health, homelessness and addiction.