Police Sgt. Texted Worcester Councilor During Tyre Nichols Prayer

WORCESTER, MA — City records show that Worcester At-Large Councilor Kate Toomey received messages from a police sergeant and union leader during a prayer at a January meeting for Tyre Nichols, the Black man who died in January after being brutally beaten by Memphis police.

The incident played out live during the broadcast of the Jan. 31 meeting as Toomey stood behind District 4 Councilor Sarai Rivera, who was wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt. Toomey intermittently folded her hands to join in the prayer and checked her phone as Rivera spoke. Toomey said she was looking at various messages and alerts but wasn’t actively texting anyone.

But the caught-on-camera moment offers a view into the political relationship between key police employees and city councilors, and into the effort to equip Worcester police with body cameras. Toomey is near the center of that relationship as the longtime chair of the Standing Committee on Public Safety, and as a supporter of recent police expansions like the drone program and acquisition of ShotSpotter Connect technology.

According to phone records released by the city, Toomey received two messages from Worcester Sgt. Richard Cipro — president of the IBPO Local 504 union that represents ranking officers — just after 7 p.m. on Jan. 31.

"Heard..Thank you very much," a message from Cipro at 7:04 p.m. said.

"You are the best," the second message at 7:06 p.m. said.

Toomey, who works for the Worcester County Sheriff's Office, confirmed Cipro asked her to “hold” — a relatively common parliamentary maneuver in Worcester — four items on the Jan. 31 agenda related to the police department, including an update on body cameras and a department racial equity audit. The two messages were in reference to the holds.

The items were put on the agenda by At-Large Councilor Khrystian King, and Toomey’s “hold” barred discussion on the items until the next meeting. The hold also delayed the items from being sent to a public safety committee meeting scheduled for Feb. 8.

Toomey said she never responded to Cipro’s texts during the meeting. She also said she was attempting to reach King to tell him about the hold as Rivera’s prayer for Nichols began.

“To be honest, it was impulsive to look at my phone,” Toomey said. “I was not intending to be insulting or disrespectful.”

Rivera, a local pastor, said she didn't notice Toomey during the prayer and was more focused on Nichols, a 29-year-old beaten by five officers after a traffic stop on Jan. 7. Nichols died three days later, and Tennessee officials released bodycam video of the beating on Jan. 27, sparking demonstrations across the country, including in Worcester.

"For me that day was just about trying to process our own personal emotions as a community, not paying attention to anyone else," Rivera said of the meeting.

But Rivera said it was ironic Toomey was getting texts from Cipro, who has harangued Rivera, King and District 1 Councilor Sean Rose on social media.

Cipro co-founded the IBPO Local 504 Facebook page in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and the page has since been the source of controversy, like when a member posted a photo of Mayor Joseph Petty dressed as Hitler. Members of the group also cheered when the city’s Black Lives Matter mural along Major Taylor Boulevard was vandalized by a driver in July 2020. And in 2021, Cipro ran for Rose’s seat, often depicting Rose as an absentee representative.

He’s called Rivera out by name on the page, including in January 2022 when he posted a photo of elected officials holding their hands over their hearts at a swearing-in ceremony. In the photo, Rivera is standing with her arms behind her back.

“I wonder if she actually took the oath to defend the Constitution and our Laws,” the post said, questioning Rivera’s participation in the Pledge of Allegiance. “I demand that she be made to take the oath individually so we can be sure she was actually sworn in!!”

As a union leader, Cipro has also been negotiating a pay bump for officers due to the rollout of bodycams on Feb. 27. Toomey has said she held the bodycam items at the Jan. 31 meeting because Cipro and others couldn’t make it to the meeting to speak.

Cipro did make it to the Feb. 7 city council meeting, where he asked the city to delay the implementation of body cameras until his union could finish negotiations for a collective bargaining agreement amendment.

“One thing we have been clear and consistent on with this program is recognizing it as a change of work conditions, which is a mandatory subject of bargaining,” Cipro said.

The next day at a Standing Committee on Public Safety meeting, Toomey asked police Chief Steven Sargent about negotiations with the police union and the upcoming bodycam program.

“Let’s hope we can get everything done because it's important that people are compensated appropriately and all of that, and bargaining is done appropriately as well,” she said.

Toomey said the police union members are entitled to a stipend because the bodycams will change working conditions, but said she has no wider role in the contract negotiations. The council has met in closed-session to receive updates on the bodycam negotiations.

“That's impact bargaining, and they’re entitled to it,” she said in an interview this week.

Toomey's public safety committee handles issues related to some of the city’s biggest and most critical departments, including police, fire, 911 dispatching and inspectional services. The committee meets relatively infrequently — the Feb. 8 meeting was the first in eight months, and it only convened four times in 2022, with three of those meetings focused on the police drone program. (Some committees meet less frequently than public safety: the transportation committee met once in 2022, and the education committee twice.)

The U.S. Department of Justice in November launched a civil rights probe into Worcester police, a relatively rare move with only 78 such probes dating back to 1994. Worcester police have also been accused in recent years of wrongdoing in multiple federal lawsuits, resulting in millions in settlements paid with tax dollars. Toomey has not touched on those issues in her committee because it is not charged with oversight and is barred by the city charter from digging into personnel issues, she said.

“It's not my style to go after people and really grill them. We all have different styles of how we handle things,” she said.

Issues typically only go to the committee, she said, if they are referred there by city council or city leaders first. Infrequent meetings are also due to scheduling conflicts with three members. Rivera and At-Large Councilor Donna Colorio are the other two members.

“These men and women, every day when they put on their uniform, and now their bodycams, are putting themselves on the line for being injured or worse in an effort to protect the citizens of this city. It’s a job where you just don’t know if you’re going to come home at the end of the day,” Toomey said about police, adding she feels similarly about other “hard-working” professions like teaching and the firefighting.

Reflecting on the Jan. 31 meeting, Rivera compared it to another relatively recent Worcester City Council bout surrounding a high-profile police killing of a Black person.

After the killing of Michael Brown in Missouri, former councilor Konstantina Lukes in early 2015 asked the council to pass a resolution to support Worcester police “and the department’s high level of professionalism, leadership in community relations and dedication to the citizens of Worcester.” Although the Black Lives Matter movement was surging at the time, Rivera said it was politically risky in Worcester to express support for the group. Lukes’ resolution passed in a 9 to 2 vote. Rivera voted no, Toomey voted yes.

Six years later, Rivera says her ability to stand up at a council meeting wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt is proof of a change in Worcester.

“Hopefully we can take this and put it as something to learn and grow from instead of something that's negative,” Rivera said of the Jan. 31 meeting. “We’re not there yet, but we’re still striving.”