The Top Left Corner

(above left) Harvey Wasserman speaking to a crowd at the State House in Columbus, Ohio; photo courtesy 360.org; (right) Marianne Williamson speaking with the media at the 2019 Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa; photo by Gage Skidmore.

Hey, Greylock Nation —

This is the Top Left Corner, Episode #171, and I’m your host Jay Velázquez. This is a special presentation, as I’m thrilled to bring you a conversation with one of my personal heroes, Harvey Wasserman. In addition to be part of the Western Mass group of activists who coined the phrase, “No Nukes,” Mr. Wasserman is also one of the founders of the Liberation News Service, which was instrumental in shaping independent, alternative news for decades since it’s original reporting on the war in Vietnam.

Free Press Senior Editor and “Superpower of Peace” columnist Harvey Wasserman is also senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service. He is author or co-author of a dozen books, including Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, and Harvey Wasserman’s History Of The United States.

Harvey and co-author Bob Fitrakis have been called “the Woodward & Bernstein of the 2004 election” by Rev. Jesse Jackson. Their HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, published by the Columbus Institute of Contemporary Journalism, is the definitive digest on the theft of George W. Bush’s second term. Their WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO? (co-authored with Steve Rosenfeld) is the leading document book, published by New Press.

His newest (autumn, 2021) is The People’s Spiral of U.S. History: from Jigonsaseh to Solartopia.

Greylock Glass readers/listeners can get BOTH books, Solartopia and The People’s Spiral of U.S. History simply by writing to [email protected], letting them know you heard about them on the Top Left Corner, and that you’d like a free PDF of these two important works!

Harvey’s journalistic writings and columns have appeared in major newspapers and magazines worldwide since 1967. He and Fitrakis co-host Radio FreePress.Org, and have appeared on Lou Dobbs, Democracy Now! and other major US media.

Marianne Williamson is a best-selling author, political activist and the undisputed leader in spiritual and progressive circles. She is the author of 14 books, four of which have been #1 New York Times Best sellers.

Marianne Williamson will join us to discuss where America is now and who we need to be in order to reverse course against the fascist right-wing vigilantes. At a time of such an extraordinary threat to our democratic norms, we need to radically rethink where we have been and where we’re going. From psychological perspectives to the history of the New Deal, Williamson scans the landscape for the insights we need right now to avoid a cataclysmic end to democracy.

MODERATOR: Expert/Author/Activist Harvey Wasserman author or co-author of 21 books, including The People’s Spiral of U.S. History: from Jigonsaseh to Solartopia. and Solartopia!, at www.solartopia.org. He co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection zooms Mondays at 5pm Eastern (www.electionprotection2024.org).

Date: Sunday, Sept 25, 2022
TIME: 4:00 p.m., Eastern Time
WHERE: A Private address which will be given upon receipt of ticket
Tickets: Limited Amount of In Person $36.00

Viral Tickets: $15.00 includes call-in questions. Zoom link will be sent upon receipt of payment.

Scroll down a bit and use the Donation button under:
“Grassroots Election Protection“

Donations to CICJ are tax deductible.

If you prefer, you can make out a check to the
“Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism”
Mark for “Grassroots Election Protection“
and send it to:

The Free Press
1021 E. Broad St.
Columbus, Ohio 43205

CICJ/Free Press Donation
Support the Free Press’ investigative reporting, exposure of election fraud, and training of budding new journalists in 2011. It is published by a 501(c)3 organization, the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism

This is also a fundraiser for election protection, so please bring your credit card/check books, cash etc.for GREEP Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition

Let’s get to our conversation with Harvey Wasserman.

Editor’s Note: The Greylock Glass pays to have rough transcripts of interviews produced. We attempt to remain as faithful as possible to the speakers’ original meaning, and apologize for any errors of transcription. That said, even the imperfect transcription we perform is costly. Please support us financially by becoming a member or making a one-time contribution to help us continue to provide this service.

Jay Velázquez: And with me on the line is the legendary Harvey Slugger Wasserman joining us from California. Mr. Wasserman, it is a true privilege and an honor to have you on the show.

Harvey Wasserman: Well. Great to be with you. Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Jay Velázquez: Well, you’re you’re history is is well known to a lot of people in progressive circles, in energy circles. But just for those people who, you know, the Gen Z’ers maybe who don’t haven’t heard of you yet, just give us a brief history of how you got into activism. And I know it was like in the late sixties or early seventies, what were you doing? What was going on and what sparked the fire in you?

Harvey Wasserman: Well, my parents, I had the the greatest the greatest gift anyone can have in a human life is to have wonderful parents. And I had great parents. They were very liberal, very open minded. And in 1962, in Columbus, Ohio, I was in high school, I was a junior captain in a tennis team, and a friend asked me to come to a demonstration at a roller rink in Columbus that was segregated. This was 1962, for God’s sakes, in Columbus, Ohio was racially segregated. And so me and my buddy Allen and his girlfriend Susan, we went demonstrated and we can’t I don’t know who was running us. I don’t know why. We just did what we were told. And I don’t even know who was telling us what to do. But we went and picketed and rollerblading at 18th and main and we chanted, Don’t skate, integrate. And then we went in. For some reason I don’t know what the what the plan was, but we won. We desegregated that roller rink and I was, what, 16? And I thought that was so cool. And this is another sport I can play, you know, obviously played all sports. And so I just from the very first moment in my career, we had a victory. And I just assumed, I have assumed ever since 1962, which is now 60 years, that we would win. And so I then had the great good fortune to go to the University of Michigan.

Harvey Wasserman: And there I joined the Michigan Daily, the student paper. And I had another astounding experience, actually, I was the editorial director in my senior year. That means that I ran the editorial page, which to other people we were a six day a week paper was a big paper. The Michigan Daily still is. And I came in on a Saturday in January of 1967, and I didn’t have anything. I had the whole paper, whole page to fill. I had nothing. So on the right side you could easily take stuff off the wires. And we had lots of syndicated stuff, so that wasn’t hard. But the left side, you had to write your own stuff. And I had been thinking for a while about writing an editorial for legalizing pot. I didn’t smoke pot. I didn’t really know much about it except that I like the smell and I saw no reason why it should be illegal. So I just said okay. And I wrote a piece called “The Use of Marijuana — It should be legal.” And I went back. The guy previous to me is editorial director Jeffrey Goodman, and he actually knew a lot about pot. And I went back and he had written an article for legalizing pot about a year prior. So when he got it, I took all his research and I just moved things around and I wrote the editorial and we were a morning paper.

Harvey Wasserman: I sent it down maybe 9:00 / 10:00 at night, and then I just happened to be the campus stringer for the United Press. They hired kids on various campuses and sent them articles and they paid you five bucks. Now five bucks back then. You could you could buy to do this for five bucks. So I know. Nine, ten. And they said the thing about it, I called UPI in Detroit and I said, Hey, you’re not going to believe this. Some crazy hippie just run an editorial in the Michigan Daily advocating pot. And they got they got totally excited and they told me to wrote it. Write it up. Now, back then, you didn’t get a byline as a stringer. It was just special to the UPI, right? So I wrote the piece about my piece and they didn’t notice that I was writing about my own article. And, you know, of course it was by Harvey Wasserman, but they didn’t they didn’t put one one the one together. So it went out on the wire. But I went over to in the morning, I just said, Wow, man. I filled the page and I made five bucks. What a great day. Six in the morning I get a phone call and it was ABC News in New York, one of the biggest stations in the country. And they asked me if I’d written this thing. I said, Yeah.

Harvey Wasserman: And they said, Well, so it was the first radio interview I ever did, and they went all over New York and just said, Well, you know, I’ve never smoked it, but I think it’s a civil liberty issue and blah blah blah. The second call I got was from my parents in Columbus saying, Hey, you know, you’re in the paper. They didn’t know anything about that. I didn’t care. I just thought it was cool. I was in the paper, you know. So what happened was that back then, before the 24 hour news cycle, nothing ever happened on Saturday. And so anything that you got on the wire was going to go everywhere, because all the papers in the world had these big Sunday editions right when they sold cars and garden equipment and stuff like that. But there was never any news. So my article was in probably every country, in every paper in the world, let’s see. And I wound up getting well, why don’t you think about it? Why in January 1967, what if the world news that a college kid writes an article for legalizing pot? But, you know, the mindset back then was, well, this is like, you know, this is unbelievable. And we had a governance board of adults that at the Daily didn’t mess with us usually, but they wanted to shut the paper down. Of course they did, you know, for having somebody advocating legal pot.

Harvey Wasserman: But there you go. So I did about three, three, four weeks of you know, I was on all the big TV shows and all that stuff. And then and I always said the same thing. I said, Well, I’ve never smoked it, but I think it’s I don’t see why it should be illegal. And then at the end of that round of stuff, I went out and actually smoked it and it turned out I still like the smell after all these years, but it does make me dizzy. I don’t smoke pot after all these smoked it for about five years and now I’m getting into meditation. But, you know, being at the University of Michigan in the 1960s was like being in paradise. I mean, it was just phenomenal. I got involved in the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement in 1966, actually the summer of 66, the paper flew me down. We had a budget and they flew me down to Mississippi and I marched with Martin Luther King and the James Meredith March. I actually shook Dr. King’s hand for a nanosecond, but he seemed like a nice guy, and it was a great shock to me, one of the great shocks of my life that I was actually taller than Martin Luther King, five, ten years, about five, seven. You know, I couldn’t believe how could I be taller than Martin Luther King? But there you go.

Jay Velázquez: Well, I’ll tell you these days, if you can get forget a college pay, if you can get your, you know, the county paper record to pay for your pens and notepads, you’re doing good these days.

Harvey Wasserman: Well, those days and hopefully they’ll come again. And I still know the woman who is the summer editor, Charlotte Walter. And, you know, some things don’t change. So I just had a dinner, my wife and I, a few months ago with six or seven of the people that I was on the daily with. And they all had phenomenal careers.

Jay Velázquez: Interesting that is.

Harvey Wasserman: Right now, you know. Yeah. So the way life works, at least in my case, is things somehow happened as the long story. But I wound up on a hippie farm in western Massachusetts and that was paradise in the town of Montague, just on the east side of the Connecticut. And we got there because the FBI literally destroyed our or tried to destroy our news service. We had a thing called liberation news service. They infiltrated us and push came to shove our group load up on this incredibly beautiful farm in the town of Montague. And we all the stories that you heard about those hippie farms are true. And that was paradise. And I was there from 1968 until I went back to Ohio, where I grew up in the mid 1980s. So in 1973, the last month in 1973, we, we were writing and raising organic food. The first decision we made when we got to Montague Farm was to not use chemicals. And we wound up we didn’t know anything about it, but it just seemed like, hey, let’s do this. And we have a book called The Organic. A guide to organic gardening and farming from the Rodale Press. And they advocated no chemicals we inherited. When we got to this point, we inherited one of the great legacies that you can get at a farm, which which is a barn full of manure. It was a dairy farm and there was just a hundred years of manure there. And we spent it all on this beautiful piece of turf that became our garden. And we were written up in organic Gardening and Farming magazine, which is still operating in 1970 as sort of like pioneering a new generation of organic food. And that became $1,000,000,000,000 industry. And then in 1973, I’ll never forget this, we get the local paper, the greenfield recorder, which I assume is still there.

Jay Velázquez: It’s still.

Harvey Wasserman: There. And on the front page, there was an aerial photograph of this piece of land four miles from our house called the Montague Plains. And it was a geological anomaly. It was like a sandy beach in the middle of the Berkshire foothills, and superimposed was an artist’s rendering of a nuclear power plant. The for Mars my house. Now, luckily, I was an expert in nuclear power because I had done a report on it in ninth grade, which was cribbed from our friend The Atom, and which I had gotten from my bar mitzvah. So I actually knew how nuclear plant works and we all just we didn’t have a meeting or anything. We just all instinctively said, you know, him being chased by a fox, we’re not going to let this happen. And we were all seasoned activists in the antiwar movement, the civil rights movement. And most of us were college grads. And we were writing books and making movies. And, you know, the whole area that whole area in western Mass was just really alive in the early seventies. There were communes everywhere. And we’re part of the five college area and people were raising pot and the war was still going on and we just said, Oh, we’re going to stop them. And we coined the phrase No Nukes. We put a bumper stickers and T-shirts and did everything you do to organize. We have referenda. And then they never came in, the bulldozers never came in. And then the the area the Montague Plains got designated as a conservation area. So you can go to the money. You put things right the way down on your back and look up at the sky and and know that you’re right there where there would have been an atomic power plant.

Jay Velázquez: So those those listeners who because, you know, I have listeners who probably don’t know that they’ve visited the area. They might have visited the Montague Plains and not known that it almost was destroyed. I want to back up just a tiny bit and thank you for the thank you for doing that for for saving that. You mentioned liberation. Go ahead. Oh, I’m sure it was me.

Harvey Wasserman: It was really a total pleasure, but go ahead.

Jay Velázquez: Well, the I mean, you do have a track record of winning, which is which is I was going to ask you how you managed to keep positive, but I guess you’ve gotten a couple of wins at critical points that sort of propelled you forward, ever, ever forward. You mentioned liberation. Are you talking about the liberation news service? Yes. So that was your group? That was Raymond Mungo? Yeah. Ray was a graduate of Boston University and Marshall Blum.

Harvey Wasserman: And there’s a wonderful film. There’s a film you can see all about it. It’s called Under the Ground. A Higher Commitment is done by PBS in Rhode Island. Under the ground, the Liberation News Service really worth seeing and a fascinating story and just, you know, stuff you couldn’t make up, as Yogi Berra would say. But the point is to be to have a successful life and to be in the winning side of issues, you have to be. Right. Right. It was right. That part should not be illegal. And, you know, just I just took a bunch of CBD to get to sleep last night and you know, there’s now a multi don’t even know about CBD. I mean I guess one or two or three people but you know, and so it was right to advocate legal pot, the civil rights movement. It was right that people of color should have have their rights. The war in Vietnam was a complete catastrophe. You know, everything we did to oppose the war in Vietnam within a nonviolent framework was the right thing to do. And nuclear power has been a complete mess, I mean, a total curse on humankind. And here we are. I got to say, after all these years, starting in 73, it’s now.

Harvey Wasserman: 50 years next year fighting nuclear power. And there were still. Right. And this one has been really persistent. I mean, the one Vietnam is long gone. The civil rights movement, of course, is still with us in many ways. But we’ve gotten over some major mountains here. But the nuclear power, these idiots are still building these plants. And we got 92 of them in the US. We shuttle well, as best I could tell, there were about at the peak there were about 250 or 60 nuclear reactors ordered for the United States one way or another. More than half of them were canceled before they ever got built. We came through another 40 or so, so we’re down to 92, but any one of these 92 reactors could do incredible harm, heal millions of people, destroyed trillions. I mean, just if any one of the major reactors in the United States went off and we have a Chernobyl era, a Fukushima, the damage to the American economy would be irreparable, the ecology would not recover. And I’m involved, in a way, fighting the worst of these two reactors on earthquake fault at Obispo in the middle of the California coast. That if, God forbid, one of the earthquakes, one of the many earthquakes is cooling, the San Andreas goes off.

Harvey Wasserman: We’re going to have California’s going to be a dead zone and the radiation will pour all over the United States. And this is absolute reality. I mean, we saw I went to Three Mile Island nine months after the accident and I interviewed people there. People were dead and dying all over the place. Everybody tells you nobody died at Three Mile Island. They have no idea what you’re talking about. I went to Chernobyl. I went to Kiev ten years after the accident and was confronted with the horrible impacts of that catastrophic and totally avoidable disaster. And Fukushima. I was that before the accident I was in Japan in the 1970s. I marched in major demonstrations against nuclear power in Tokyo in 1976 and 77, and everybody said, look, you’re building nuclear reactors. All the earthquake zone is washed by tsunamis. Are you crazy? And you know, the Japanese government, tens of millions of people in Japan marched against Fukushima and other reactors like this, saying exactly what was going to happen, you know, and then we were pooh poohed by the government. And then in 2011, there it was. I will never go to Japan again. Why?

Jay Velázquez: Why is it that those people who were so condescending when you were trying to explain what the dangers were, why is it that we never hear about them after one of these things happens? Like, you know, with Fukushima, obviously, I’m not following the Japanese press that much, but certainly there must be people who were just so high and mighty assuring the public that nothing can go wrong. Where what happens to these people? Do they just somehow manage to skate?

Harvey Wasserman: Well, when things go wrong, they’re up there saying there’s no damn dangers that can harm you. Right. These people say, oh, well, you know, minor, minor problem, but there’s no radiation. And they say that Three Mile Island, it’s a lie. They say Chernobyl, that a small number of people died at the lie. And they say at Fukushima, now that nobody’s being harmed, it’s a lie.

Jay Velázquez: So basically they’re like, they’re pitbulls. They just sink their teeth into it, into the lie. And they just keep they just keep grip on that forever. Hey, I want to ask you about.

Harvey Wasserman: The role model. They got the Donald Trump template here. Just when things go terribly wrong, you just stand there and line by line pretend nothing’s wrong.

Jay Velázquez: It seems to work. I never would have thought, you know, 20, 30 years ago, I never would have thought that somebody could just stand there and say things that are so demonstrably false. Not just like there’s no a gray zone. No, they’re demonstrably false. And you can just sit there and say them. Now, there are people.

Harvey Wasserman: Who know me, 1984 reading Animal Farm. I mean, these these the models that they use.

Jay Velázquez: Yeah, actually, it’s fascinating to even even Robert Heinlein wrote a book called Stranger in a Strange Land, which is probably pretty big when you were in college also. And strangely, it does not get the press that it deserves because it also predicted in a post-truth era. I want to ask about good writing.

Harvey Wasserman: It’s like the composers that came after Beethoven and they were all great, but nobody could match the Masters. So once 1984 was written, you know, nobody’s beaten by today’s foreigner. You can still sit down and read 1984 and be blown.

Jay Velázquez: Away, which is why it’s not required reading in most high schools anymore because it’s too close to the truth. So I want to ask I want to ask about the the argument that I hear all the time. But the designs are safer now. It’s we can we can build them now. They’ll be safe. We don’t have to worry. We know what we’re doing now. Is there any veracity to that?

Harvey Wasserman: None. It’s the pinnacle of stupidity and arrogance. And here’s the situation we’re in with nuclear power. They built, as I said, you know, about 250 orders and they’re down to 92 reactors. There’s a generation of large reactors from three or 400 megawatts up to about 1200, which is these are big. But the big ones have been a catastrophe in every way imaginable, including economically. So the last of these big reactors is coming through the pipeline. This is United States. I mean, around the world, there are other things going on. But in the U.S., the last of the two, the two last big ones are invoked. Vogtle. Georgia, they originally supposed to be $14 billion coming in. They’re still not done and they’re over 30. And the big issue, the quiet issue in Georgia election this year is a lot of different issues in Georgia. It’s a really key state. But is are they going to be able to get these reactors into the into the rate base because you’re talking about $30 billion, but nobody’s going to do it again. Nobody’s going to build any more big reactors. So there’s that switch to small reactors, which is somebody piped during Bill Gates, apparently, and they want to build small reactors and we call them mini bombs. They want to put them all over the country. And but they’re not going to be. They’re still basically trying to get these built. They’re not going to have any until four, six, seven years. So the bottom line is we have a six, seven year gap here where our main priority of life is to shut the old ones, because I’m terrified.

Harvey Wasserman: I’ve seen that we know what they can do. I did not go to Chernobyl, but I was 80 miles. I certainly know what’s going on at Fukushima, so we don’t want that. Our number one priority is to get these reactors shut, but they’re not going to build any new big ones. And they’re eight, six, seven, eight years away from getting the small ones in the interim. And this is one of the great miracles of their life. And this is what gives me positivity. And more than hope is that when we first started fighting the nuke, a guy from my farm minister organized what was called a Talk Tomorrow Fair at UMass and in 1975. And there were two big thinkers there, Leo Evans, and a guy named William Hieronymus, who was a professor at UMass. And he was Hieronymus was talking about windmills, offshore windmills. There will be five megawatts, which at the time was big enough to be considered completely of. And this guy was viewed as kind of a gyro guru. So now they’re building 15 megawatts offshore. Mean we’re getting windmills offshore. They can be almost as tall as the Empire State Building, and they’re incredibly cost effective. They’re just starting to come online now. But there’s absolutely no doubt that they will work, that they’re going to be huge, and that they will produce a very substantial percentage of our electricity. And ironically, a lot of them are going to send electricity straight into the switching stations where the nuclear plants were like Maine, Yankee and Vermont. But. Seabrook When we finally got it.

Jay Velázquez: Shut in New Hampshire, yeah, there’s a certain there’s a certain symbolism to that that I think is enjoyable.

Harvey Wasserman: Yeah, well, it’s also profitable. So but the bottom line is we use when we’re when we’re fighting the nukes, people would say, well, what are you going to have for the power? And we said, wind, solar. We had no idea what we were talking about, but they looked good. And the bottom line is that they have absolutely exploded one of the great technological revolutions in human history. Is that the stuff we advocated actually works and works better. If you projected from today, it looks at 1975 how good these wind and solar technologies have become. People would have said I was completely unrealistic. But the reality is that this industry is going straight up in cost effectiveness and size and applicability.

Jay Velázquez: Probably a good time to bring in Solartopia.

Harvey Wasserman: Yes, I wrote a book. Well, the vision. I had a vision. We all had a vision that the whole world could operate on renewable energy. So I wrote a book, I can’t even say it was 2005, basically laying out what the world would look like if we had 100% solar energy. So I have a mythological plane line anybody wants to write me. By the way, I’ll send you a PDF of this book — [email protected]. So it’ll be a gmail. Just write me so. The idea was this guy flies or actually engendered. Narrator looks down from Munich. In Germany, they had the first hydrogen filling station. And actually the real genesis of the book was that I got a grant from some friends of mine, 7500 bucks to write a book on the hydrogen hydrogen economy. There was a brief six month period where everybody was talking about hydrogen. And so I sat down to write a book about the hydrogen economy, and I realized it wasn’t going to work because hydrogen is not a it’s not a natural fuel, it’s just hydrogen. You have to separate it. And so what you get from the energy you get from hydrogen is really just all you put into it. And but I spent the money, so I had to come up with something. So I said, okay, all right, I’ll write Solartopia, which is a mix that has solar panels with big wind farms, things like that. But the bottom line is, again, in my life, in our lives, as a generation, the stuff worked. If we had advocated wind and solar in 75 and by 2022 had blown out, we’d be saying, Oh Jesus, I guess we were wrong, but we were right, for God’s sakes. We don’t know why, but was one of the biggest industries in the history of the world.

Jay Velázquez: Now, I suppose when you look at it, the time frame, when you see the the distance we’ve come, then it is cause for optimism. It is cause for hope. I think one of the things that makes me that gives me hope for is that other technologies will not have to fight so hard. I mean, because there are other excuse me, perfectly clean, renewable generation models such as there’s a sterling engine, for example. The sterling engine is basically it’s an air exchange of hot air and cold air. There’s a chamber that’s a hot chamber, and then there’s a cooling chamber. And as the air in the hot chamber heats up, it pushes a piston up. And then as the air cools, it pushes the it pulls the piston back down, creating a chug, chug, chug, chug, chug motion. Not very good for like high performance racecars, but you can build them such that in the United States, Department of Energy has one out in Nevada that’s been running for 20 years that can could power. They’re not using it to power it, but they could power all of us. Las Vegas, by focusing the heat of the sun with parabolic mirrors on the hot chamber and then the cooling chamber only you only need a seven degree differential.

Jay Velázquez: So the cooling chamber only has to just be, you know, regular, you know, ambient temperature. So these are the sorts of things that people are finally beginning to see. You know what? For certain places that get a lot of sun, obviously not New England, but for certain places, this could be an additional source. So I’m really bullish about it. If we don’t kill ourselves or wipe ourselves off the planet, taking half the species with us before we achieve these these solar utopia visions. And I guess I want to I want to pivot here because we can return to I could talk about renewable energy all day, but I do know that we have a real critical election coming up in in November. The midterm elections often undo a lot of the good that that gets started in the first two years of a presidential administration and can basically cause it can cause the was the cause a lame duck period early on. And there’s a lot of concern that there are going to be some real shenanigans. Oh, real shenanigans. And you are going to be speaking with Marianne Williamson next. It’s going to be September 25. I lost the page.

Harvey Wasserman: It’s afternoon and it’s going to be livestreamed so people can again write me [email protected] and I have been well and again in the cavalcade of unintended consequences of my life. I, I wound up I grew up in Columbus, Ohio. I was born in Boston. But we move to and I grew up in Columbus and then went back there in the eighties after 20 years of hippie heaven. And I was teaching at two colleges in central Ohio, teaching U.S. history, which led to my writing my history book. I’ll also send people free if you want a free PDF. It’s called The People’s Spiral of U.S. History. The Long Story Behind It. Maybe I could talk about it someday. I’d love to do that. You’re a great interviewer. I’m happy to stay with you. By the way, if you want to go for the full hour, it’s fine with me. So what happened was I was living in Columbus. I had a buddy, technically my colleague, but we were just great friends, Bob Petrakis, and he was a professor at Corbett State Community College, a full professor of political science. And I was an adjunct teaching history, which was that the janitor made more than I did. But, you know, he worked harder, so.

Harvey Wasserman: And anyway, in November, we all know what happened in the election of 2000 where Greg Powers, the governor, had shown that Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida, disenfranchised more than 90,000 people. Everybody since Florida 2000 has been screaming at Ralph Nader, which is outrageous. Ralph had nothing to do with the, you know, George W Bush stealing the 2000 election. But we had this history of a stolen election. And then in 2004, Bob, who’s quite a genius, kept telling me all the ways that the Bush Cheney, Karl Rove apparatus was stealing the Ohio election. And long story short, he kept he fed me this information, and I wrote these articles up and we put them out on the Internet. And I got a primer in how elections are stolen. We put out six books about this. We couldn’t get John Kerry to do anything about it. We get the Democratic Party. We’ve always got a more hostile response from the Democrats and from the Republicans. But the bottom line is that since 2004, I have been involved in the election protection issue, and we know a hundred different ways they can steal the 2022 election. We have to stop them. So I now run a co convened a Zoom call every Monday at 5 p.m.

Harvey Wasserman: where we have about 100 people we’ve been going for. This will be 108 coming up. So we’ve been going since April 2020 discussing how to protect elections and how to win elections. And we basically put bring people together who are involved in election protection. We did an amazing thing, actually, in 2018 and the 2021 elections. We brought together people from Georgia who pioneered great grassroots organizing. A woman named Andrea miller, who has something called the Center for Common Ground, and a guy named Ray McClendon, who’s now the political director of the Georgia NAACP. And we did a template is available on our website. You might want to look at it. Anybody can look at it. Our website is https://grassrootsep.org/ And we have basically a handbook or a guide on how to do grassroots organizing for elections. And that’s how that’s how we got to do it in 2022. Or we can get cream. I mean, fortunately, the Trump influence, they have really put up some bad candidates. And I think there’s a pretty good the Democrats will keep the Senate. The House is going to be really difficult.

Jay Velázquez: Well, it’s it’s it’s it’s tough to say. I was listening to excuse me, there’s a show, a YouTube show called Breaking Points with Crystal and Sagar. It’s Crystal Ball who had been involved in Bernie Sanders campaign and Cigar and Jedi, who is a sort of the old style conservative sort of fiscal conservative, not so much, not so much as sociological conservative, but they have sort of a back and forth show every, I think, three or four days a week. And they were talking about how if if the Democrats know what they’re doing, they could conceivably pick up a couple of seats in the House and maybe even in the Senate, which would mean that we don’t have to care as much about what Chris Kirsten Cinema and Joe Manchin have to say, which I you know. I do not understand how these two Democratic senators have managed to derail so much of the policy, the platform that Biden had laid out, which was essentially not even his platform. It was bits and pieces of Bernie Sanders campaign that they repackaged to please the progressives or is mollify the progressives. Why is it that the Democrats since 2000. I was a reporter. I stayed up all freaking night on that for that election waiting. Gore, you know, Bush, Gore, Bush, Gore. I waited. I waited. I waited. It never happened. Obviously, we had to wait as a country for another couple of few weeks while the Supreme Court was getting ready to throw it to Bush illegally. Throw it to Bush? But why is the Democratic Party so lame when it comes to protecting its own interest?

Harvey Wasserman: Well, it’s late period. And the Democratic Party lost its soul in Vietnam and Jimmy Carter came in. He had one good year. And much of my people spyro of US history, I think was five years history, the whole United States. And when I got to Clinton, I just wanted to stop. But Clinton is the Clinton people don’t understand writing a whole history. I think I worked on it literally for 50 years. The worst part of it was writing about Clinton. People don’t understand what a miserable President Bill Clinton was, horrible president. I actually think that the world would be a better place if Clinton had not been elected in 1992. I think George George won quite a bit, by the way, in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1980. You know, back then you could go on the primaries and and you can meet all these guys. I met Ronald Reagan. The minute I saw Ronald Reagan, I knew he was going to be president. I mean, this guy was just total charisma.

Jay Velázquez: Too.

Harvey Wasserman: Slick. More slick. He was he really had a powerful presence. Ronald Reagan. But but George I Bill Clinton completely destroyed the Democratic Party. He was a horrible president. Tell me one lasting achievement from the Clinton administration. I’ll tell you the only one the only thing that Bill Clinton really accomplished was to open a national dialog on oral sex. That’s about all he accomplished in his eight years. So what with dad handing the presidency to George W Bush? So the bottom line is that the Democrats have been corporatized and we now have the major struggle in our country is the struggle to make the Democratic Party a progressive entity. And, you know, just like you have to understand, the fossil nuclear industry is holding on for dear life because they are about to be completely made, totally obsolete and put in the ashcan as a radioactive ashcan of history. And the real engine of social change in terms of the energy is rooftop solar, because we now have the ability for everyone to control their own power source. And believe me, these industries even today are fighting tooth and nail. That’s why you’re having a so-called nuclear revival, is because the utility industry cannot hang on against rooftop solar energy. Rooftop solar, you can take down the wires. You need these guys. So with the Democratic Party, the Clintons in the eighties just sold whatever progressive instincts were left to the Democratic Party. They just took them and packaged them up and did their nice smiley face kind of thing, but they delivered nothing.

Harvey Wasserman: If you look at the Clinton administration’s accomplishments for social justice, for the environment, for anything virtually nil. And, you know, it was actually Bush won who ended the Cold War with Nancy Reagan. By the way, Nancy Reagan was one of our better presidents. You know, I mean, we’ve we’ve had two women who’ve run the United States in lieu of their husbands mental collapse. The first was Woodrow Wilson’s wife, Ida. She was miserable. And by the way, Woodrow Wilson was the very worst president in the history of the United States, much worse than Trump. And maybe someday we’ll talk about that. And then the second, it’s very clear that Ronnie Reagan was out of it by 84, 85, both his son and one of the right wing guys. O’riley I’m pretty clear on that. And Nancy took over there. She was pro-choice, by the way. Nancy Reagan, right? She was actually you know, she was a horrible person in many ways, but she wanted to end the Cold War. When they when they say the Reagan end of the Cold War, they’re partially right. It was Reagan and Gorbachev, but it wasn’t Ronald Reagan. It was Nancy Reagan. She wanted it. She wanted a legacy. And she wasn’t crazy. And anyway, long story. But the bottom line is the struggle now in American politics is the struggle for the Democratic Party. You know, just like Trump is now taking over the Republican Party, we need a progressive Democratic Party.

Harvey Wasserman: Bernie Sanders is one of the great heroes in all of history. And I will tell you that the the single major most important transitions going on in the human race and this is a major theme of the people’s family’s history is the transfer of power from men to women. You know, it is more than. I’m kind of trivial sidelined. Women are different, for God’s sakes. And you have to remember that the indigenous tribes of North America were almost all run by women. They were matriarchs. And this idea that white people came to North America and there was a wilderness and there were these primitive whatevers that quite human red people running around. This is a huge myth. As a matter of fact, the most advanced democracy in human history was the Iroquois Confederacy. The Iroquois were the inspiration for American democracy. And we had Greece and Rome, but they were way, way, way behind the Hudson. And so there were a few colonists who were smart enough to pick up on it. Most importantly, by far, Ben Franklin, who is, as far as I’m concerned, is the most important single figure in Western history. But there was a wonderful documentary made about the Iroquois and they they asked the indigenous elder and they said, why is it that if the women run the tribes, the men are the chiefs? And she said, Well, it makes them feel important and it gives us something to do.

Jay Velázquez: Like like any well run household, frankly. Exactly. Exactly. But but but here’s the thing I just mentioned, Kirsten cinema. You know, you said that Bernie Sanders is a real hero. And we talked about how Nancy Reagan was actually really the president for the last four years or so. A lot of people have suggested that while Bill Clinton had an emotional intelligence, he had a good knack for reading a crowd from reading the room. It was really all Hillary when it comes to what were the policy objectives, what was the agenda? A lot of people have suggested that it really was HRC who set that agenda. So while I would love to give women credit for being a source of goodness and light, there are plenty of examples in modern history that suggests that you have got to kind of keep an eye on them, too. Right. I mean, you know.

Harvey Wasserman: Well, she she failed. She failed. She failed. She wasn’t she she I met Hillary Clinton a couple of times. And, you know, she was too conservative. She was a Goldwater Republican growing up. She could have done health care, but they wouldn’t they wouldn’t discuss single payer. She she couldn’t afford health care. And you’re right about that. She probably spent a fair amount of the agenda, but the agenda didn’t get through. And then she lost the presidency in 2016. Who loses an election to Donald Trump, for God’s sakes? Yeah. So she was not the right person. A woman could have come forward. That would have been a lot better. But she was not the one. And at some point, I mean, look at Europe. You look at Angela merkel, you look at the woman that I just saw a little clip on YouTube, the two countries, the one determining factor and how well countries did in their response to the COVID was that the countries that were run by women statistically, hugely, had lower death.

Jay Velázquez: Rates. I think New Zealand was one of them. Yeah.

Harvey Wasserman: And you’re looking at you’re looking at women like Goldberg because she did a center. Right. But you know what? When Fukushima happened, she said, okay, we’re taking down our nuclear plants. Clearly the right decision. And, you know, you hear all this yapping. Look how France is responding to the crisis, have two reactors in France and shut 55 reactors. Half of them are shut. They can’t run them. So Angela merkel, there are examples of other women who yes, Hillary was clearly a determining factor in the administration, but not she didn’t have it. Nancy Reagan actually was pretty good. So there you go. We’ll see who comes next. But when you have all this hoopla about Liz Cheney, you’ve got to remember how right wing her her voting record is. She voted with Trump 90% of the time. And before this thing with Trump, we used to refer to her as the spawn of Satan. So.

Jay Velázquez: You know, Democrats the Democrats are the polling shows that if the election were held today, Democrats would vote for Liz Cheney.

Harvey Wasserman: Yeah, they would. Wow. She’s really great. She’s a great hero. She stood up to this guy and he is a Hitler, a Donald Trump. The thing that people like Hitler, Putin, Trump, Stalin, Mao, these horrible dictators in history are they have no compassion. They have no empathy. That’s what defines them. They’re almost like a different species. And so what Liz Cheney did was incredibly important. Is he Trump is extreme, still remains somewhat dangerous. But, you know, she she played a major role and as did, by the way, Stephen Colbert, you have to remember that, you know, in the nonviolent world, the number one tool against a dictator is ridicule. Nobody does ridicule better. Stephen Colbert, I do want to mention, by the way, in terms of women, we do have a great event coming up with Marianne Williamson, one of the truly great women of our era. And it will be September 5th. It’s going to be online. People should write me directly or topia at Gmail. Maybe you’ll carry it. We can or we can get you to interview her. She’s a magnificent person and so emblematic. She was a great candidate. I love that she ran. I thought she handled herself very well. People.

Jay Velázquez: Yeah. I want to talk about I want to talk about her because I’m fascinated by her as a person. I’m fascinated by her as a candidate. And I do run an online 24 hour a day radio station. So I would love to carry that and we can talk about that. But the thing that I think that Marianne Williamson, the importance that she has for a lot of people, is that she does not separate out. And this you know, this is kind of the the the other side of the coin to the Christian the the the theocratic notions of modern Christianity and United States. She also is not afraid to allow her spiritual. Corps. To inform her policy beliefs. But she does it in a way that is not prescriptive. She does it in a way that’s, as I said, informative. She has been the subject of some scorn because of her, her spirituality, and how she’s open about it. But at the same time, there are a lot of people who seem to be who are coming around to the idea that humanity is at stake in addition to the environment and a lot of other species. But there is a human element that has been missing from politics. All the blood has been drained out of it from corporate, you know, ever since, certainly Citizens United before that. But Citizens United really was the nail in the coffin and that until we bring back a humanity, and if that means to some people a spirituality and individualistic spirituality is fine, we’re not going to get the change that we need, because nothing is motivating people today to to do the hard things. People are motivated to do the hard things when they have a spiritual connection to the earth, to the ecosystem, to their fellow human beings. What do you have to say about that? Is there a place for some kind of spirit in our policy?

Harvey Wasserman: There has to be. You know, all these people, all these right wingers running around calling themselves Christians, our Jesus would be appalled and horrified. Marianne Williamson’s spirituality is very simple. You know, the critical element that’s missing in our human society is empathy and compassion. And there’s no greater pressure of empathy and compassion than Marianne Williamson. And so, again, please join us, people. September 25th. Email me directly from Whitopia at Gmail and I’ll give you the. We don’t have the URL yet, but it’s going to be livestreamed out of that.

Jay Velázquez: And you’re going to be talking about this stopping the election steal.

Harvey Wasserman: We’re going to be talking about grassroots organizing. The big thing that has to change with the Democratic Party, in addition to making it an actual progressive force, is the type of campaign being done. They take hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, with their endless emails and they buy ridiculous TV ads that their high paid consultants make commission on. We want grassroots organizing. That’s how two Democratic senators were elected in the state of Georgia. For God’s sakes, a black guy and a Jewish guy, right? I mean, come on. As a historian, I can basically tell you the odds on that. And, you know, it’s done with grassroots campaigning. So we have these Monday. This is the Miriam’s presentation that’s a benefit for the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition, or Greek. We do these calls every Monday. Again, write me sort of your Gmail. I’ll put you in touch with it. And we talk for 2 hours every day with up to 110 people about how to do grassroots organizing and how to save the year. You should come on, by the way. Monday this Monday, we’re having Keith Ellison, the attorney general of the state of Minnesota.

Harvey Wasserman: And we’ve had great authors and writers. Greg Powers was just on. Miles Rapoport, many, many key organizers from around the country, both on environmental and on election protection issues. And our goal is to organize grassroots campaign. So get out the vote. We’re technically nonpartisan. We want to get out the vote and make sure everybody can can get a ballot and cast it and get it counted. What a concept. So we have great discussions about all of this and we bring together people from all over the country. Well, of course, just happened in Kansas, for God’s sakes. The state of Kansas, one of the most conservative states in the whole country, goes 6040. Right. To protect a woman’s right to choose. I mean, really clearly, the the Republicans have set the world on fire by reversing Roe v Wade and a woman. Women are not going to stand for this. And it is a hugely empowering moment. And we have to make sure that all this energy goes to actual knocking on doors, getting people out, getting their votes counted and not squandered. Hoping on clever TV ads.

Jay Velázquez: Right? Right. Yeah. No. And I think that I think that as much of a sociopath as Trump is, he’s also not stupid, because after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, he said this is going to be bad for the Republicans. He’s just going to. And he called it right, because now people are saying, oh, shit, we’ve got to start thinking about about our long term viability with an angry public. Yeah. And I think but but you’re right. You have to keep that momentum going.

Harvey Wasserman: Well, as the guy was 24 T4 sexual imposition charges pending against him, I think he might have gotten to sort of a sense of the power of women. But, you know, clearly this is the moment I think Democrats can hold the Senate. I’m praying that it flips in Ohio and Georgia. Those are the two key races, as far as I’m concerned, or whether we keep the seat in Georgia and flip the one in Ohio.

Jay Velázquez: Lastly, before, let’s assume that they do. But lastly, because I know we’ve we turned this into a double feature at the drive in. So I’m grateful that you’ve been so generous with your time, and I want to just extend it a little bit.

Harvey Wasserman: You’re a great interview. You’re very easy to talk to so.

Jay Velázquez: Well, thank you. Thank you. I, I don’t show up with just a bunch of bullet points that I want to ask about because it’s stilted. It’s stiff like that. I like conversation. The the thing about Biden is that he’s actually the architect of a lot of the things that he says he wants to undo. I mean.

Harvey Wasserman: Yes, right. His 1994 climax.

Jay Velázquez: Yeah. And the work that he’s done with with banks and and making I mean he is the part of the problem that student loans have become such a problem for people.

Harvey Wasserman: Right. Well, again, we talk about the strong woman and all the indications are that Jill is really calling the policy shots. And, you know, she’s a doctor who teaches at the community college. Yeah. For God, having taught 14 years at a community college. You know, there’s a real grassroots thing there. And I think Jill Biden, I think is. Is running the show.

Jay Velázquez: Oh, she’s got to be. And you know what? It wouldn’t be it wouldn’t surprise me entirely if he decided to step back and she decided to run. That would be. Wouldn’t that be something, huh?

Harvey Wasserman: Yeah, but, you know, I don’t think it’s necessary, but that’s a good point. I hadn’t thought of that. But listen, she’s a lot of things to Hillary Clinton. Wasn’t Hillary Clinton’s problem is not that she was a woman. It was that she was Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton had no moral center. He was a terrible president. Terrible. President Obama was somewhat better, I have to say. And I would say that nobody handled the the theatrics and the management. Nobody in the history of our country and I put this in The People’s Spiral has handled the the day to day reality of being president better than Barack Obama. That was the most scandal free eight years that the presidency of the United States has ever enjoyed. And, you know, I thought the issues with him but and our callers are co-convener by the way on Mondays by Joel SIEGEL, who actually wrote the ACA, the Affordable Care Act. He was an aide to John Conyers. But listen, we got to do more of it. [email protected]. Marianne Williamson will be speaking with us on September 25th. Write me and you say, come on, I will introduce you on our Zoom calls on Monday. I’ll be there. 5 p.m., 5 p.m. Eastern. Right. Me, I’ll send you the link. I’ll put you on the list. It’s a fantastic group of people and you with here you got make sure you raise your hand. Let me know I’m on and you’re on and I will. You can put your links in the chat and everybody else just join us. They’re really great cause wonderful people, about 100 people. Sometimes we use about 70 or 80 and we’ve been going for this week will be our 108th call.

Jay Velázquez: I’m looking forward to it. Harvey Wasserman, you are a real and maybe the word legend is overused, but you are a legend. I’ve been looking forward to speaking with you and this has been every bit as enjoyable as I’d hoped. The only disappointment is that we can’t just keep going on and on and on. But I will have you on the show again. We’ll talk about more stuff. And for now, stay cool, stay safe and keep the faith. Right.

Harvey Wasserman: Thank you. You’re really great. I will send you my a PDF of the people’s photo of your system, but there will be a quiz, so I’ve got to go.

Jay Velázquez: Well, you are a professor, so there it is. Much obliged. Hey, take care. Bye bye.

The post Top Left Corner #171:  Harvey Wasserman, “A Gathering To Save Our Elections & Our Earth” appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

And this is Episode #170 of the Top Left Corner, right here on The Greylock Glass, greylockglass.com, The Berkshires’ mightiest independent alternative newsthing. Today is Sunday, September 4. 2022, I’m your host, J. Velázquez, and, as always, I thank you for tuning in. 

Before we begin, though, listeners are cautioned that this episode comes with a content warning. My guests and I talk discuss themes of murder, rape, serial killers, the discovery of corpses, and the investigation of extremely violent crimes. I myself was disturbed listening to the conversations during the editing process, and determined that this advisory was required. Please consider whether or not your own psyche can absorb the distressing details of this subect matter and make your own judgement about listening. End of warning.

This episode has been in the making for some time now, and while I was planning on releasing it this weekend, I am deeply saddened that it’s publication comes so close on the heels of the presumed identification of the corpse of Megan Marohn.

The subject of today’s show is that of murder and missing persons cases that have gone cold. Detectives either haven’t been able to find enough clues to point them in the direction of a suspect or have insufficient hard evidence that would be ground for an indictment. We hear first from Bershire District Attorney Andrea Harrington about how her office has made pursuing cases such as that of Kim Benoit a priority. 

In the second portion of our show, we speak with Dr. Sarah Stein, an expert on cold cases whose insights are sought by police departments nationwide. Dr. Stein describes how the use of suspectology and victimology are critical to recreating a picture of the components of a crime. She explains why time, the enemy of a fresh investigation, can be an investigator’s friend when working cold cases.

Although the case of Meghan Marohn wouldn’t be considered cold by any measure yet, many of the same techniques of discussed both by Harrington and Stein will, no doubt, come into play.

Ms. Marohn, a poet, and activist, and a beloved high school English teacher at Chatham High School in Chatham, NJ and then at Shaker High School in Latham, NY for three years, disappeared the evening of March 29, of this year. 

Her friend, Christopher Hedges, wrote on ScheerPost,

A few days before Meghan Marohn, a 42-year-old English teacher at Shaker High School in Latham, New York, disappeared, she confided to friends that she had gone into hiding to escape from a man who had “brutally harassed and intimidated me because I wouldn’t sleep with him.” She said she was too afraid to stay at home, especially when she saw him drive by her house. She was granted a leave from teaching and camped out at The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She was last seen on March 27. It was cold, snowy, and windy.

Over a quarter of a million girls and women go missing in the U.S. every year. Male-perpetrated violence, especially domestic violence, is intimately linked to missing girls and women. The FBI reports more than 80 percent of violent crimes are committed by men. That is 99.1 percent of rapes committed by men and 88.7 percent of murders and manslaughters committed by men.

I strongly encourage you to follow the link in the shownotes to Hedge’s full article. And while I never got the chance to meet Meghan, the more I read about her, the more convinced I am that she’d quickly become one of my favorite people if I had. For this reason, I’m publishing this episode in her memory, and in the sorrowful hope that the details of her demise are learned, and, should detectives determine her death a murder, that her killer be brought to justice.

Top Left Corner: District Attorney Andrea Harrington, welcome to the top left corner.

D.A. Andrea Harrington: Hi, Jay. Thanks for having me.

Top Left Corner: Well, we do try to have you on, it seems, every year or so. And this this is no exception. I have a feeling we’ll probably have you on again before November as well. But we’re talking today about about cold cases and in particular the case of Kim Benoit of North Adams, who who was murdered, abducted and murdered 47 years ago in North Adams, last seen at the Sons of Italy Club for a dance. And that is that is most of what the public knows at this point. You you have been very active in trying to make sure that the public is aware that these cases, while cold, are not dead. They are not you haven’t just shuffled them off to the archive in the basement. But but there are some things that are difficult. For example, the families are still looking for closure. And you’ve talked to those families. What is it like to talk to these families who experienced this when you were? I don’t even think you were born at that time.

D.A. Andrea Harrington: I was not born at that time. No, I was not. So having. Going back and putting resources and revisiting the unresolved cases is a major priority of mine and of my office. And I very much appreciate you helping us with building awareness around Ken Benoit’s murder. So thank you for that. And I thank the public for for paying attention to these cases. We are very confident there are people in the north northern Berkshire community that have information that would be helpful to detective in solving this case. And we’ve met with a number of families in the unresolved cases, and they are the most difficult, wrenching conversations that I’ve had in my lifetime, because families are very much still grieving and traumatized and desperately want and need answers in regards to what happened to their loved ones. And we’re very limited in what kinds of information we can share. And that limitation applies even to the family members. And it’s so difficult to be in those conversations. And the family members too desperately want information and we can’t give it to them because we can’t. In order for us to solve these cases and we would love to ultimately prosecute these cases, we have to have a very strict control on the flow of information.

Top Left Corner: Mm hmm. Yeah, and that makes sense. It makes sense that you don’t want to go contaminating basically the crime scene, you know, retroactively with with with, you know, ideas that may be well-intentioned or things that people heard. That somebody told them. That somebody told them. What what do you recommend that people do? If they I mean, I’m just going to put this out there in the beginning of the podcast rather than the end. What should people do if they’ve heard something?

D.A. Andrea Harrington: Oh, please. If you have any information to share, even if you if it doesn’t seem significant, significant to you, it could still potentially be significant to the case. So please contact the state police detective unit assigned to the district attorney’s office. That’s for 134991112. We ask people, please contact us. And as you said, putting information out into the community about a case that’s not not solved where we still want to interview witnesses. It does contaminate the information that we could potentially get back. And I used to see this on the death penalty cases that I worked on in Florida, where we were working to get our clients off of death row. And we always looked back at what was put out in the media and how could that have impacted the witness statements and how could potentially investigators have gotten lead off track by information that was shared in the media? So it’s very much as a part of a defense in these cases. So it’s a very real issue.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, the the and I should say many people most people, I’m sure have just the best of intentions because North Adams, you know, those people who are left in North Adams, which was a much more populated town back in in was in 1974 and much more populated. I think the I think it was probably around 45,000 people or so back then. So almost triple the population. And and those people who are left today are truly the sort of the legacy families, many of them who do remember. And they do have long memories and they have connections and they they don’t forget. And for better or for worse, they don’t forget things. And that is going to be the case for this murder and for others. What other cold cases are we looking at right now from from the Berkshires?

D.A. Andrea Harrington: Well, we have a number of cases that we’ve highlighted recently. And just because we’re not necessarily talking about a case in the public, we have a number of investigations that are open. We never, ever forget about victims of unresolved homicide. So I just want to reiterate that so recently we’ve been able to highlight the case of Lynn Burdick, who’s another North brochure case. Josh Racette, who is another North Berkshire case. We have our playing card project that we did with the Massachusetts State Police. So there’s a deck of playing cards now that are all pictures and information of victims of unresolved homicides. These cards were created by the state police. It will be in the dock facilities. There will be the only cars that are used in state prison facilities. And we have four individuals from Berkshire County featured on those cards. So we have, as I mentioned, Lynn Burdick, we have Nick Calello, we have Busy Brown from Pittsfield and we have Mr. Dominguez, also another Pittsfield unresolved case. So we’re always working on these cases. There’s the Jan Stackhouse case from South County. And the playing cards have been very helpful. You’ve gotten a number of tips. I actually hired a detective who’s retired from our state police detective unit, and he was a detective lieutenant. He is hired by my office specifically to work on these unresolved cases, because I’m sure you can imagine, as we have we have a lot of ongoing issues. We have things that have to be responded to in the immediate by our detectives. So this is a way to bring more resources to the unresolved cases.

Top Left Corner: Now, you say that there’s there’s somebody out there or maybe a couple of somebodies out there who have some bit of information. And this is this is not just your hunch. This is a pattern that plays out across the across the world when it comes to investigating cold cases, that there are people who who have either the complete story or parts of the story. What would prevent somebody at this late date from coming forward and saying, you know, I know this this bit of information or actually, this person before they died, for example, told me this. What would prevent people from coming forward?

D.A. Andrea Harrington: Well, I think you put it really well in terms of the fact that what I’ve seen in particularly from working on death penalty cases, which can last for decades, people have motivations to come forward, as with the passage of time. And like you said, if somebody passes away, potentially that could help somebody feel freer to come forward and to share information. And now we also have a $15,000 reward that is being offered. 10,000 of that is coming from my office, another 5000 from the family to help motivate somebody who just needs a little push to be helpful in this case, to share information that can lead to the arrest and a conviction of somebody for this homicide. So we’ll prevent people, I would imagine, that just can weigh on your conscience if you have information that maybe you could have shared before and you didn’t, then I would imagine there’s a lot of conflicting feelings around that. And I just want people to know that we’re we understand that. And this is not a time for people to be worried about being judged. We just want to know the information that you have to share with us.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. Now, of course, there’s also the fear that people probably have that if they knew something 45 years ago, that they are in some way complicit after the fact. Are you going to be weighing that with the types of information that people have and their motives for for withholding that all these years? I mean, should you know, should people feel you said you’re not going to judge, but that, I think, would be a main reason for me not coming forward. I would feel that perhaps there’s some liability.

D.A. Andrea Harrington: Well, there’s no criminal liability for not sharing information with law enforcement about a homicide or any case, you know, criminal liability only attaches for aiding and abetting somebody. So having information to share is not something that people need to be concerned about, that they’re going to be prosecuted for not sharing the information earlier.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. Let me ask this. The I brought up the hypothetical because this was almost 50 years ago. Her murderer, Kim Benoit’s murderer, could possibly be dead by this of natural causes. And after all this time, this reward. Would you consider adjusting the the. Terms of the reward to information that brings about closure in this case rather than an arrest?

D.A. Andrea Harrington: Well, we’ve reached out to a number of other jurisdictions that have offered rewards around the best practices and how we can utilize it to our advantage. And we’ve determined that these are the appropriate terms, which is, you know, information leading to an arrest and conviction. So those are those are the terms. And that’s going to be what we’re sticking to. Hmm.

Top Left Corner: I mean, I can understand that certainly in a case that’s a little bit fresher, it seems to me that the families at this point I mean, I would guess that, yes, they would like justice if the person is still alive. But I think they’d probably like closure. And I think that that would excuse me that there’d be a hefty value on that alone. But, you know, that’s that’s your call. Perhaps the family would be willing to. To adjust their terms if closures is what’s important to them. The the question that I have about. The shorts. And I know that you are you know, you’re not an investigator on the day to day. Exactly. But perhaps tell me what you can about the sorts of things that are different when investigating. The case this old than a case that’s, say, five weeks old or five months old?

D.A. Andrea Harrington: Well, the biggest difference is the technology piece. Now, the investigations are very much driven by technology. Electronic evidence is a huge piece of our investigation. We have tremendous resources. When there’s a crime, we have crime scene services come out and we have chemists that come. We’re able to take DNA, we’re able to take fingerprints, ballistics. We have all of these science forensic tools that are a lot more sophisticated now than they were in 1974. And a crime scene from 1974 was not processed in any way near the same way that a crime scene is processed now. So we’re at a we’re at a big disadvantage. And when we go back and investigate unresolved cases, because we lack a lot of that data, that those are the things that we really rely on to solve cases.

Top Left Corner: We spoke with a cold case expert who comes at it, not from an investigator like law enforcement angle, but from the psychology angle. We spoke with Dr. Sara Stein, who’s actually written extensively on this subject. She’s been involved in many cold cases and consults police forces all over the country. She said a few things that I think are fascinating. One of them is that most of the most of the. Cases that end up being cold. They’ve discovered that the police had the person, the actual perpetrator’s name in connection with the case within the first month, sometimes within the first week of the discovery of a homicide that the the police had interviewed them, had been told that they should interview them. I had some reason to know, to have knowledge about the person who ended up being the perpetrator of the crime. Have you any experience with that?

D.A. Andrea Harrington: Yeah, I can absolutely see based on my experience, why that would be the case. And it’s consistent in terms of the cases that we are looking at. I’ll just say generally that that there are particular individuals that were interested in. Absolutely.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. Now, the guests are really the last component of this is, I know, one that’s sort of near and hard to say, dear, but it’s near to your heart, though. There are some men who are sort of scattered in this list of of victims. In cold cases, they’re predominantly women. One of the hallmarks of your term as district attorney has been to put an increased focus on justice for women. How does this fit into that? How does this, you know, going back and revisiting these cases, how does that sort of fit into your personal sort of mission?

D.A. Andrea Harrington: Well, I’ve been very. Lucky and privileged and honored to have the opportunity to be the first female district attorney in Berkshire County. And to me, that in and of itself is not it’s not remarkable. It’s only an important component if I use the position that I have in order to benefit the rest of my community. And I’m particularly interested in benefiting women and girls in this community who don’t have the same privileges that I do. So in my office, we have a lot of amazing women, very powerful women that work here. The office looks very different now than it did four years ago. We have a my first assistant is female. The chiefs of all of my units are female. We have a lot of women prosecutors. We have a lot of women leaders in this office. And, you know, when you look at who’s I feel very safe in this community. I think a lot of the people, my family, my friends, I feel like they are safe. But the reality is that there are people in this community who are not safe. And our work is all about how do we expand safety to those people? And the people that are not safe are the people that are living in homes where there’s domestic violence, child abuse, women who are being subjected to sexual assault. And they tend to be people that are vulnerable, people that are struggling with mental illness, substance use disorder, poverty. So we very much see it as our mission in this office to make sure that those people that are more vulnerable than ourselves are just as safe in this community as the rest of us. And I mean, certainly women like Benoit, who were never given the opportunity to grow and to grow into themselves and to be empowered because their lives were taken through violence is a that’s totally fits in with the mission and accountability for violence against women. We have a culture of violence against women in Berkshire County and across the state and across the country and across the world. And I think in order to address that, accountability is absolutely critical.

Top Left Corner: I was going to let you go after that. And that’s that would be a perfectly good place to wrap up. But something you just said brought up another topic that Dr. Stein brought up. So I want to ask this question. Dr. Stein also brought up the notion of the the white woman victim. There has been so much said, so much written about this, this I mean, I’m sure people have heard about it for the tendency of the especially the news media, my brothers and sisters in the trade, to focus an inordinate amount of attention on victims who are white, who are often of a of an upper class, you know, upper middle class, upper class. The disappearance, say, of Molly Bish would be a certainly a you know, which case was was horrible at the time. And I was, in fact, a journalist in that area when Molly Bice disappeared. And it always ticks me off that I was never able to to turn up anything that would be helpful. There were reporters from all over that side of the state who were all putting in overtime, trying to trying to be of assistance in any way we could. But, you know, Molly Bish, she was blond, she was pretty. She was, you know, from a fairly, you know, well-to-do family. What what is this white woman victim? Issue and who who bears the the brunt of responsibility for it. Is it the media? Is it. Is it law enforcement? What’s what’s your take on that?

D.A. Andrea Harrington: Well, I thank you for raising that issue. And it’s it’s an issue it’s a very real issue. And you can see how certain victims maybe are discounted in comparison to other victims. And you can see that even in the case law. So there was a case, a famous study called The Baldness Study that was done. I mean, this is an old study that showed that the people who got the death penalty, the number one driver of who got the death penalty, wasn’t even the race of the defendant. It was the race of the victim. People who killed white victims were more likely to get the death penalty than people who killed black victims.

Top Left Corner: Oh, wow.

D.A. Andrea Harrington: So you can see it in different contexts. And that was why when we did our playing card, when we selected our case, our unresolved cases to feature on our playing cards, know we are featuring two black male victims that were victims here from Pittsfield because we’re very conscious about that fact. And in our work, our big goal right now with our victim witness program is to really work to ensure that we are treating victims equitably. And so I’ve worked hard to diversify the office and diversify our victim witness advocates in particular. And we have a very diverse group of advocates, because I think representation is important. And when we are, they are the face of the office with our victims. And I want victims to recognize that there are people in this office who look like them, who know their experience and who are advocating for them.

Top Left Corner: Mm hmm. Yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense. And certainly the the the issue of race cannot be overstated. It’s it’s it is the case that there are so many faces that we’re not we’ve never seen before, so many names we don’t know who are victims, just the same as as a Molly Bish or Kim Benoit. Although I would say that class is is a component, too, because, you know, Kim, she was not from a wealthy family. And I have to wonder how many Kims out there didn’t get the best investigators or the best investigative procedures put in place because they just weren’t. They weren’t valued in the community anyway due to poverty. Poverty is it’s a quicksand that can really manifest itself in a lot of ways, and I think justice is certainly one of them. Do you do you find that there has been any improvement in justice for the poor in this regard?

D.A. Andrea Harrington: Well, in terms of how we address violent crime here in Berkshire County, we have definitely, you know, in the cases that we’re working on, I mean, we we provide services to all of the victims of crime. We really work to make sure that we are have tools to communicate with people who speak different languages. We’re working on making sure that when we have like a first interaction with a family, with a victim, that they immediately feel like they’re being supported. And I have advocates that are on call, like we make contact with the families of victims in homicides and suicides in fatal overdoses as soon as these events are occurring and we are becoming aware of them. So that building trust, there’s a lot of crime that does not even go reported. Because what you’re talking about, there’s there’s segments of our society who don’t feel like they are being protected by law enforcement. They feel unsafe. They’re worried, especially among the immigrant population. There’s a lot of fear of law enforcement. So we have a lot of work in law enforcement to build those relationships among the law enforcement section of the U.S. Attorney Civil Rights Task Force. And I specifically thought that out because I have an interest in making sure that prosecutors and police officers are well trained and sensitive to these issues, because we’ve got to build those relationships and we got to build those relationships in order to solve our cases.

D.A. Andrea Harrington: You will find cases in North Adams. Usually people are willing to come forward and to talk to the police and to share information, and that’s how we solve a lot of our North Adams cases. And I find it’s a little more difficult in Pittsfield and it’s a little bit more difficult when we have crimes that are happening in the black community. And for me, the the problem of addressing racial disparities in the criminal legal system and appropriately responding to violent crime and supporting victims of violent crime, those things are very intertwined. I have information that black women who are victims of domestic violence are less likely to come to law enforcement for help because they’re afraid that law enforcement is going to overreact and that their abuser is going to be overly punished, whereas white women have a different concern. And these are generalizations, but white women are more concerned that law enforcement is not going to react enough. So to me, that is the job of law enforcement, is to address these racial disparities, to build relationships so that we can work to solve these violent crimes.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. Yeah. I think that those sorts of priorities are probably what really got voters enthusiastic when you were running. Just those sorts of concerns that not every prosecutor has that not every but every district attorney has. So we’ll have to come back and talk a little bit more, because I know that you’ve got a race coming up and we’ll get you on again, hopefully. And until then, Andrew, I want to say thank you so much for really kind of putting some meat on the bones of this this issue, because it’s it’s it’s confusing. It’s it’s definitely frustrating. But I know that there are a lot of people who want to see justice done. And it’s it’s great to see that these victims aren’t forgotten. So thanks for for coming on and talking about this.

D.A. Andrea Harrington: Thanks for having me. It’s been a really interesting conversation and I look forward to coming back and talking to you more.

Top Left Corner: All right. Take care. Have a good weekend.

D.A. Andrea Harrington: Thanks, And you, too.

Top Left Corner: My guest on the show is Dr. Sarah Stein. Dr. Stein is an award winning authority in unresolved cases who serves as a national consultant for law enforcement with graduate degrees in both forensic science and criminal justice. Dr. Stein has taught academia for universities as well as law enforcement academies. She’s an expert in victimology, suspect ology, crime scene analysis, behavioral analysis and missing white woman syndrome. Serving as consultant for numerous high profile cases, her skill for investigative preciseness is recognized around the globe. Dr. Stein, welcome to the show.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Top Left Corner: Well, let’s let’s I guess just get started with the question of how did you find yourself in this line of work?

Dr. Sarah Stein: Well, I actually began pursuing this field when I was an undergraduate in Washington, D.C. and we were asked to in a criminal justice course, we were asked to research an unsolved case that was interesting to us. And I selected a case from across the country in Oregon and unfortunately wound up speaking to a murderer of two young girls, the 12 year old girl and a 13 year old girl for the period of on and off, probably about five months. And when they arrested this man, I was so. Horrified that an individual could commit an act like that and and function perfectly well in society. And I found it so horrifying that I thought, I’m going to try and do everything I can to make sure that no case like this ever happens again. So that’s where it started.

Top Left Corner: Yes, I can I can certainly understand how you would be heavily affected by that, as would most people, I think. The seventies especially seemed to be an era that saw a lot of. A lot of high profile cases. Is there a particular reason that you’ve ever come to or at least a theory as to why that was such a densely packed time with with these these cases, the Son of Sam and the Zodiac, all of these all of these serial killers. What was going on then?

Dr. Sarah Stein: Well, we have a number of factors contributing to the increase in these types of homicides. In the late sixties and seventies, particularly, there was the civil rights movement. There was a significant amount of unrest in the country with that issue alone and coupled with Vietnam, the political era that was happening. And one other thing that is very interesting in the etiology of cold cases is that up until the late fifties and probably mid-sixties, we had a very high solve rate for homicides across the country. But the country began to be more mobile. You know, people were traveling across state lines much more frequently. Our interstate system was developed very heavily and people got more mobile. So we started to see an increase in these types of serial killings and instances where people were committing these crimes in different jurisdictions and with serial offenses. That’s one of the biggest difficulties that the beginning of a serial investigation is that these offenders will experiment and find their preferred modus operandi. And so law enforcement has difficulty linking early serial cases because the modus operandi may be different. One victim may be strangled, one victim may be shot, and so on. So there were a lot of different factors contributing to that increase in those types of cases.

Top Left Corner: Well, these are a lot of aspects that I hadn’t considered. The idea that that they’re practicing they’re they’re looking for what turns them on. I guess so, unfortunately.

Dr. Sarah Stein: That’s correct.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I think I think it we don’t get quite as many of these cases that we know about these cold cases. How many of them are open from from this time period?

Dr. Sarah Stein: Still a significant number since let’s see, they haven’t I don’t know of a national effort to quantify how many of these cases still exist from before the 1980s. But since the 1980s, we have over. 200,000 unsolved homicides.

Top Left Corner: That’s amazing.

Dr. Sarah Stein: It’s a pretty daunting number. And in addition to that, there are also over 40,000 unidentified bodies and victims and morgues.

Top Left Corner: Across the country. That was going to be my next question. How many of these cases still have missing persons and how many of them are the the opposite? They have the remains, but no, no actual identification to put with them. What are some of the reasons why remains would be found and never identified?

Dr. Sarah Stein: A few different things could be at play. Number one, the individual could not have been reported missing. Unfortunately, again, returning to serial offenders, they often prey on what we call high risk victims, meaning individuals whose lifestyle may make them more vulnerable to being a victim of a violent crime. So, for example, with the Green River killer, Gary Ridgway, he exclusively preyed on sex workers. And part of the reason he was able to murder at least 48 of them is, unfortunately, these women are what we refer to as devalued victim. So meaning they might not get the same level of community attention resources dedicated to their investigation as they would if they were a suburban mom that went missing.

Top Left Corner: Sure. Sure.

Dr. Sarah Stein: So that’s one reason. Another is a. That they might have gone missing from one jurisdiction and there remains turned up in another. There’s there’s just a lot of different factors that can affect that identification. But fortunately, the name of the program has really helped make an effort and a dent in those IDs. So there are programs out there to help investigators.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. And lastly, you sort of allude alluded to this, but you you discuss the missing white woman syndrome syndrome. And you mentioned, you know, if it’s a suburban, you know, sort of middle class mom, she’s going to get a lot of attention or a white high school, you know, student who goes missing. What what progress has been made in combating that bias?

Dr. Sarah Stein: Well.

Top Left Corner: Maybe not enough.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Not? Yeah, unfortunately, in my opinion, I don’t think enough. Excuse me. Has been done to combat that. I originally did research on this for my dissertation back in 2012 and then when Gabbie Potato’s case happened just recently, that was a classic example of missing white woman syndrome. You know, blond hair, blue eyed, beautiful Caucasian female. And the media just devoured that case. Right. And the last time I can remember something like that happening was probably Natalee Holloway’s case back in 2005. So it’s been a long time.

Top Left Corner: Yeah.

Dr. Sarah Stein: But it does seem to have kind of a similar effect, which is very interesting that that’s remained consistent over the years.

Top Left Corner: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Well, in this particular case that I’m looking at here locally in the Northern Berkshires, which turns out was was the hotspot for missing persons and and attacks, murders. The story of Kim Benoit is one that has really vexed this community for the most since 1974, I guess it was. She was 18. She was not, I don’t think, necessarily what you’d call high risk. But she had had a falling out with her folks, from what I understand what I was told anyway, and was living with with a friend. And so that’s a little bit, you know, out of the ordinary for an 18 year old in 1974, but maybe not that much. She was at a dance at the Sons of Italy in a club in North Adams, and she had spilled something on her coke, I guess, on her blouse, and was going to go home and change and come back. And she was never heard from again. Now, I have been told that she was dating a fellow whose name I’m not going to use on the show here and who has since passed away.

Top Left Corner: But she was dating a fellow who was quite a bit older. I guess he was about 30 years old while she was 18. And he had been, according to witnesses, had been known to be abusive to her publicly and was the one who drove her away from the Sons of Italy in ostensibly to to go home, change and bring her back. And was and as I said, she was never seen again. She was found at the bottom of a sort of a ravine, I guess, off Route two in Florida, which is at the top of that sort of mountain area. And that’s really all we know. There’s nothing there’s been no, as far as I know, no real break in the case, except that just a couple of months ago, the Berkshire district attorney’s office issued a press release saying that they were slapping a $10,000 reward on top of the $5,000 reward the family had issued had offered for information that would result in an arrest in this case. So that is that’s all we know. Is this a typical scenario of an unsolved case?

Dr. Sarah Stein: In. In what manner do you mean?

Top Left Corner: The fact that there’s just. Well. Well, it’s certainly the reward. But in the idea that there’s just no evidence, I mean, she was there and then she was gone and no one knows anything.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Mm hmm. Well, you know, one thing that’s often found with these types of cold cases where there just seems to be no information available at all, is that time in cold cases, time is typically an enemy of criminal investigation. The more time that elapses, the less likely it is to be resolved. However, in cold case investigation, time is actually an asset because as time goes on, those people who initially might have claimed there was no information, they didn’t see anything might start to reflect on those statements. Their relationships with individuals who might have been involved may have changed dynamic. They might not be friends any longer or confidantes. So those things could bring information forward. But I have seen cases that, you know, one case that I worked on, I was actually given it was in a shoe box. That was all the evidence. Hmm. That they had. And unfortunately, there are a fair number of these types of cases.

Top Left Corner: Well, so you I know it’s been said I don’t know if it was you or someone else said that very often. There. The person the perpetrator has is actually known to the police and may have even been interviewed by the police. But for whatever reason, they’re dismissed as as a suspect. What what what do we know about that phenomenon?

Dr. Sarah Stein: Well, this phenomenon came to light. It was very fascinating from a gentleman named Dr. Robert Keppel. And he was instrumental in apprehending both Ted Bundy, as well as Gary Ridgway. And in fact, Ted Bundy actually assisted Dr. Keppel when he was in custody to help Keppel. Quote unquote, profile or the term that’s used now is develop a behavioral analysis of Gary Ridgway that led to his capture. And what was found by Dr. Keppel is that in 95%, which is a huge percentage of these cold cases, the perpetrator’s name will be in the police file within the first 30 days of the investigation.

Top Left Corner: That’s a remarkably high proportion.

Dr. Sarah Stein: It is. It is. And what what’s very interesting to see in going back and looking at cold case files is there’s generally a point in the investigation where you can see and again, this is what’s not the best part about my job is seeing this point where an investigation might have gone off track in the police file because cold case analysts come in like a monday morning quarterback, you know, and the goal of the analysis is not to find fault with law enforcement. It’s not to blame anybody because they were working as hard as they could with the resources and the technology that they had available at the time. But rather, it’s to go back and say, okay, maybe this is where we got a little off track, because in the heat of an active investigation, law enforcement isn’t necessarily going to be able to distinguish between a solid lead and maybe a not so solid lead. There’s a lot of chaos going on in those initial investigations, so sometimes it’s easier in hindsight to see that in the file.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, you’re not as moved by a lot of the emotional realities. When things are fresh, when people are there, there’s a lot of tension. The family is is distraught, friends are distraught. And obviously, some people have very strong motivations for not being truthful.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Exactly. And also, you know, law enforcement is just. Inundated in investigations like this. And there’s also a lot of political pressure that comes with these cases from, you know, from the media, from the community. And it can be very stressful. So it is sometimes easier down the road coming back and looking at cases in hindsight. So it’s not at all to demean the efforts of law enforcement?

Top Left Corner: No, of course not. Of course not. And it’s possible, too, that personal relationships, I’m guessing, could have something to do with it. Like you said, a lot of the folks that have a lot of the the murders that we know of, you know, they have these persona that are so believable. They’re they’re they’re social they’re very social people. They’re charming in some cases, or at least they’re not you know, they don’t have the outward appearance of antisocial, you know, behaviors. And I wonder how many times. A police officer will have gone to high school with somebody or have have a brother who works with him somewhere. And I say him, of course, because the typically men and just doesn’t think that it’s possible because of what they because of their own personal association. And so dismissing a suspect just because they think they know them, does that does that? Well, I mean, I guess we can’t know. But does that sound like a likely. Possibly in some cases.

Dr. Sarah Stein: It certainly could be a possibility, as you said. And this is what truly fascinated me about these offenders, that the first case that I ever quote unquote, looked at, I was a college student. And I was just shocked that this man who murdered sexually assaulted a murdered a 12 year old girl and then a 13 year old girl who was the first girl’s best friend. And he would speak to me on the phone. Just as the kindest, empathic claims he wanted to help. Very charming, very genuine. And he was a monster. But the persona was so well established. That it was almost impossible to see through. And until. What I’ve found is just personally, as I’ve gone through my career, is until you’ve actually look the devil in the face. And you know how these people operate. You. You can’t recognize it. Hmm. You can’t recognize it. And that’s a very, very dangerous thing.

Top Left Corner: No, I believe you. I believe you. There is a case that is. Some people have wondered if if it’s related. You had not been you were not familiar with the Kim Benoit case. I think you may have heard about the the Lynn Burdick case, though.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Yes.

Top Left Corner: Now, that was just a couple of years before afterward. I think it was. Afterward. I’ll check I’ll check in a minute. But there was a situation where there was a a student who was on the Williams College campus who was assaulted, and it was a failed abduction attempt. And then just not even an hour later, Lynn Burdick, who had been working at the Barefoot Peddler General Store, goes missing, which led some people to believe that it was the same person. I mean, certainly that you’d think so. Do we know anything about the psychological state of these individuals wherein once that switch is on, they’re just not going to stop until they get that victim? Because that’s what that sounds like.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Yeah. What’s one thing that’s been found with these type of offenders is that typically in the early days of their offenses, a lot of them will feel the need to either be inebriated or use drugs prior to going out and trying to acquire a victim, for lack of a better term, because they need to lower their own inhibitions because they’re so nervous and keyed up, if you will, about committing this crime. And someone who is in the early stages of their criminal career could certainly you know, there’s certainly room for error in acquiring said victim, and there’s a potential that they could go through a couple attempts before they actually do indeed get someone. So it is possible.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. The case with Lynn Burdick. She was working at a cousin’s store and she’d answered the phone about an hour before closing time or so. And the last thing and it was her cousin calling to check on her, make sure everything’s okay. And she said, hey, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a customer. And that was the last anyone had heard of her. Her body has never been found, but of course, the fact that she disappeared from Florida Mountain and Kim Benoit’s body was found on Florida mountain leads some people to wonder if there was, you know, a connection there. And oddly, there is a question as to whether or not the co Hogue killer from Boston who was guilty of about, I guess, at least a half a dozen murders. Apparently there are photos of him. At a motel. He was a big hunter and at the G of the Red Rose Motel at the top of Florida Mountain, which was there at the time. It’s been closed for a long time. And he would stay at that motel when he went hunting in northern Berkshires forests. So people have wondered if there’s a connection there, although some have dismissed it because it’s it’s just sort of the timeline sort of fits, but not. There’s no other evidence. What do you know about Lynn Burdick? Do you know anything about that case that is worth thinking about when we talk about the Benoit Benoit case?

Dr. Sarah Stein: When when relating it to Ms.. Benoit homicide, one of the biggest discrepancies behaviorally, at least to me that pops out, is that Lynn Burdick was taken from her place of work, ostensibly, whereas Ms.. Benoit left, left a party, supposedly with this individual who had known who was known to be violent towards her. And so I would think that just behaviorally, it does not seem to be the same offender. But with Len Verdict’s case, I’m just looking at it right now on the Charlie Project, which is a great website for missing persons cases. And it says normally her best friend worked alongside her, but on this evening, April 17th, 1982, she was working alone. And that’s interesting in the sense that. Any time there’s a first in an investigation like it was her first time being alone at work like this example. Might indicate that it perhaps might not be a stranger, but I don’t know.

Top Left Corner: Sure. Sure. I mean, that’s the difficulty of being in the middle of nowhere.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Exactly.

Top Left Corner: Is that.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Exactly.

Top Left Corner: Well, and it’s so odd because North Adams is a very especially at the time when you look at North Adams today, you see a mill town, a former mill town that’s been ravaged by unemployment, by jobs being shipped overseas. And then, of course, the the the successive waves of things going out of business because because of the exodus. I mean, there used to be 65,000 people living in North Adams. Now there’s. Yeah, I know. Right now there’s 15,000 people. Or 17 million maybe. So we’re talking about a town that was just gutted. But at the time, in 1974, North Adams was happening. I mean, it was prosperous. They they had enough money to to kind of completely mess up the downtown with urban renewal. But that’s another story. But it was a very tight community. Families who had been there for a long, long time, everybody knew. Everybody knew everybody. And so that’s that’s sort of the setting for Kim Benoit’s life. But just up the mountain in Florida, which was had you know, those were better days, too, because you can see as you drive through, there’s an abandoned ice cream stand, there’s an abandoned motel, there’s an abandoned restaurant, but still very, very rural, middle of nowhere kind of place. And it would be very easy for somebody like this. This can’t remember his name. Quahog was his nickname. For him to just come through and and snatch and grab. I mean, of.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Course, you can see that a lot of these you know, these towns that, like you said once, were thriving and had, you know, tourism industries and things of that nature. Those towns are ideal for serial offenders because people do have their guard down because everybody does know everybody. And so it’s very easy for someone like that to come into a rural, trusting community and exploit that sense of safety because nothing like that ever happens there.

Top Left Corner: Right. Right. Yeah, it’s. Well, I have a short story to tell a little bit later, but but I first want to ask. You mentioned early stage career and that’s what I think that might be the most chilling phrase that is part of this kind of conversation. I obviously understand what you mean by that, but that suggests that there are those in a more advanced stage of their killing careers. What what typically describes that stage?

Dr. Sarah Stein: Well, I’m trying to think of a good example for you, but in the absence of an example, what a person will be like in that phase, obviously they’re much more dangerous than they were in the beginning because now they have not only successfully acquired a victim, they’ve successfully killed the victim. And once a killing occurs, particularly obviously with serial offenders, it is not going to stop until they’re either apprehended or they’re dead. And so by this time in their, quote unquote, criminal career, in their killing career, they will be like a very well oiled machine. They’ll no longer have to dull their senses in order to commit the crimes. So in all likelihood, they’re fully sober and aware when they’re acting out. And what’s really frightening with two types of offenders, they’re known as anger retaliatory and anger excitation killers. These are the really charming individuals and who are able to use a ruse to obtain their victims. So to trick a young woman into going with them willingly as opposed to out and out abducting them, and they’ll also have most likely establish themselves in their community. They’ll have a family, they’ll have a job. I mean, if you look at a good example would be the BTK killer, which stood for bind, torture and kill. And he was he was married. He had children. He was the deacon of his church, highly respected in his community. And again, nobody sees it coming.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. So somebody like that could conceivably go on for a number of years without being apprehended?

Dr. Sarah Stein: Absolutely. Absolutely. And again, btc’s actually a great example for this question. He he really when he was apprehended, law enforcement drastically changed the behavioral analysis methodologies and especially the FBI, because he was, to their knowledge, one of the only serial offenders who took about a 20 year hiatus from killing. And then a trigger happened in his life. I don’t know what that was, but something pushed him to become deviant and to kill again. And he made a mistake. And that’s how he was caught. But he didn’t commit a single murder for about 20 years. That’s completely under the radar.

Top Left Corner: That’s terrifying. Now, here’s here’s the thing. There’s a question that I’m sure a lot of people have have asked. And maybe this is maybe this is a one on one level question. But when you talk about finding. Cadavers. When you talk about where they’re found, it’s so often. The same place you would find a McDonald’s box. You know a beer. Can the side of the road. Refuse thrown away. Not I mean they’re not going and going out into the middle of the woods and digging a hole that’s deep enough that they’re never going to. You’re never going to find the body. We find these bodies and they seem to be discarded quickly, you know, as if like I said, like like a fast food bag. Is that because they’re nervous? Is it because they just don’t care? I mean, what what why are we. Why do we find these bodies so easily? When. When we find them on the side of the road?

Dr. Sarah Stein: Right. That’s a very good question. One part of that answer is it depends on the typology of killer that you’re dealing with there. And this, again, could be a whole nother conversation. But Dr. Keppel and Richard Walter, who was a co-founder of the Vidocq Society in Philadelphia, they’re a they’re a group of 87 experts in forensics, behavioral analysis. And they pay for law enforcement once a month to come to Philly and present a cold case to the group. And they have an extremely high success rate for these cases. But Dr. Keppel and Richard Walter came up with four different typologies of murderers, and two are power based in terms of their motivation for killing, and two are anger based. And so it depends on the individual psychology of the perpetrator. But there are some consistencies with the anger categories. For example, they have no feeling towards that victim except rage and resentment. And so they have no value to them as a human being, which is just unfathomable, but they have no value. And then with the power based offenders was the power based killers. Murder is not their initial motivation. They’ll wind up killing a victim when they feel that they’re losing control of the situation. So in that instance, they’re going to leave the victim in a place where they feel they might have control. So a spot where they can go back and check and see if the body has been recovered. And that can’t be a spot that’s too difficult to access. Right. They have to go back and check. So maybe on the side of the road may be a little bit into the woods. But regardless of the typology of killer, terror for the victim is never part. They’re thinking.

Top Left Corner: That’s. Unfortunately. Kind of what I suspected you might say the. The question.

Dr. Sarah Stein: I do a quick follow up to that.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, of course.

Dr. Sarah Stein: I was just thinking the only exception that you might see is in homicides where a parent has killed their child or someone in the family has committed the murder. So, for example, with Casey Anthony’s case with Caylee Anthony, she was acquitted of killing her daughter. But Caylee was found only a quarter mile from the family’s home and she was placed in a laundry bag and wrapped up. And in JonBenet’s case, long, long time ago from 96. Right. She was found with a blanket over her body. And in those instances, the parent or who? And again, Casey Anthony was acquitted. But if it is the family member, the child might be shrouded in something. And that does indicate remorse. But in these types of Benoit’s murder. No.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. Well, I guess. I guess there’s not. Well, I mean, I have a million other questions, but none that are that are really germane to to this particular case. Is it worth re researching this case, interviewing family again, cousins, friends to see if they remember anything that that didn’t turn up the last time? I mean.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Absolutely.

Top Left Corner: Yeah.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Absolutely. It’s worth it again. Time is time. As your friend in a cold case investigation and going back and re-interviewing family members, friends, intimate partners, employers, all of that is relevant information, certainly. And. Yeah. I think it’s absolutely worth it.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. I guess I ask because this raised a few eyebrows when the DA’s office offered a $10,000 reward. There is the question, though, if. If they’ve done that, do they have new information? Or do they think that there’s somebody out there who may have information who will come forward? And then the second part of that is. If they are. You know, as I said, this this boyfriend who was alleged to have been the last person to see her alive when he drove her away from the sons and sons of Italy, now he’s passed away. If it should turn out that that somebody, for example, could confirm, like maybe he confessed to somebody, to a friend who’s who’s still alive, then there’s not going to be any arrest. There’s not going to be any conviction. I mean, the $10,000 might help reveal some answers, but it’s not actually going to get paid out. You know what I mean?

Dr. Sarah Stein: So I understand what you’re saying with that. And it could be that they’ve gotten some new information that’s pointing them in a certain direction, and they’re hoping that this increased reward will bring confirmatory information that they need. It could have been, you know, requests or repeated requests from the families of Miss Benoit to keep pursuing this investigation. The more vocal these families are, the more likely it is that these cases will really be given another look. But it’s difficult to speculate why now they would be increasing that reward. It is very interesting, and especially given the fact that it says in the press release that you sent me, thank you for that, that it marked the Tuesday, November 16th was the 47th anniversary. So it’s not I mean, 47 years is horrible, obviously, but it’s not a quote unquote big media anniversary. It’s not 50 years. It’s not. Yeah, 45 years. The timing is interesting, I will say that. But it’s difficult to speculate why they might have done that at this juncture.

Top Left Corner: Well, that’s that’s that has been my question. But I guess there’s no way to know what they know. I just hope that the as you said, that the interviews are are reinterviewed if need be. Because I know myself, if you ask me three days from now what I did this morning, I might remember something that I’d forgotten. You know, it’s. Oh, yes, that’s right. I did actually stop at that store and pick up a, you know, a gallon of milk. But but I forgot that the first time you asked me, what did you do on Friday? I might not have remembered that the first time. So.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Right. And people like you said, it was a community that everyone knew everyone. And it must have just been a horrific shock to the community, to her family, to law enforcement. And so when anyone goes through that type of trauma, memory is certainly going to be affected. And so approaching these people, again, once a significant amount of time has passed, that shock has obviously been absorbed or at least mitigated is very advantageous.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. Yeah. Now now for the the the macabre but slightly amusing story of me finding what I think are the remains of a victim on a farm that I own in Franklin County. I hadn’t owned it for very long when I saw some cloth kind of sticking out of the ground. And it was a clothing, some jeans that were disintegrated mostly and and blouse of some kind. And there were several, several other articles of clothing. And they were all like like adolescent girl size and style and. Right. And and I also find a femur with this.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Oh, my.

Top Left Corner: Lord. And I am I’m frankly, I’m pissing my pants because I don’t know what to do now. So I call the state police and and I turn over the femur and it turns out to be a deer femur. Yeah, thankfully. But and it also turns out that there had been a woman who had rented a house and she had lived there with her daughter. And apparently they had. I don’t know. I guess they had. Throwing away some some clothes or I don’t know what happened, but. But there was no foul play. Oh, but it was absolutely. Oh, my gosh. This is. And it’s in the middle of nowhere. So. Right. So I’m thinking, okay, this could be anything turned out to be nothing, but what do you do? If you if you find anything like that, should you touch it at all? I mean, you find some cloth out in the on the side of the road. You you’ve stopped to to make a phone call. You see something? I mean, how how do you handle that?

Dr. Sarah Stein: Well, certainly the the best approach if you are not. In the field you have no training is just to call law enforcement and let them come collect it and hope that it’s hope that it’s a deer bone, right?

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I just that was and of course, they kind of you know, they kidded me more than I. I think that was that was necessary. I thought it was perfectly legitimate, given how far away. But maybe that’s just me.

Dr. Sarah Stein: No, I’m sure it’s terrifying to find something like that out in the middle of nowhere. And by all accounts, you know, you see clothing and you find a bone.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, that’s of.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Course, that’s where your mind is going to go.

Top Left Corner: So, you know, and.

Dr. Sarah Stein: You did the right thing.

Top Left Corner: Thank you. Thank you. I’ve wanted some I wanted somebody to tell me that and not laugh at me for about a decade now.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Oh, believe me. Listen, no laughter at all, you know, of course, that’s where your mind is going to go. And that’s where mine would have gone.

Top Left Corner: Right. And you’re a professional, so there you go. So speaking of that, let me let me just I guess just sum up by asking what first of all, what do you think law enforcement should be doing for Kim Benoit’s case right now? What would you be doing? Just obviously, they’re probably doing as much as they can, but what sorts of things would you be doing if you were in their shoes?

Dr. Sarah Stein: Well, you know, and again, like you said, I’m sure they’re doing everything that they can possibly be doing. But with a cold case investigation and any investigation, but really with cold cases particularly is the most important base that you can build in an investigation starts with victimology, meaning. Ms.. Benoit herself. So learning every single possible thing that you can learn about the victim down to what types of clothes they like to wear, what type of music they like to listen to, what their personality was like, how they were, how would they respond in certain scenarios with threatening individual things of that nature and really getting to know Kim Benoit as a person outside of the homicide and that strong base of victimology. If you know your victim, you’ll know your killer. Meaning. Once they know who Ken Benoit is, inside and out, all her activities, everything, they’ll have a much better sense of who would be likely to target her. And given what you’ve explained to me and just the brief amount that I’ve read and also the forensic evidence at the scene and the way in which she was killed, it was asphyxiation with blunt force trauma to the head. Is that right? Yeah. Do we know if it was manual versus ligature strangulation? That’s a cop question.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I don’t. I don’t. They haven’t provided that.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Okay. Well, you know, any type of asphyxiation is an inherently personal crime, right? It’s very different than shooting someone, for example. You have to actually put hands on that victim and it takes a significant amount of time. And so with any type of asphyxiation, it is likely that you’re looking for someone who had a preexisting relationship with that victim.

Top Left Corner: So this could be an anger.

Dr. Sarah Stein: It could be domestically related. A fight between her and her significant other. Hmm. But, you know, the reason I had asked the difference between manual and ligature ligature strangulation is a little different in the sense that it might be, again, a serial offender trying different modus operandi in their early phases of experimentation. Or it could be someone with their insecure about their own abilities. So they’re not going to use their hands. They’re using a belt or rope, whatever. But someone who’s in the throes of anger certainly would be capable of using manual asphyxiation.

Top Left Corner: And they’d have to be pretty strong to.

Dr. Sarah Stein: It does take a significant amount of pressure and time. So, yes, they’d have to have some physical ability.

Top Left Corner: Well, interesting. Well, this has been this is hands down my most unique interview. I’ve done hundreds of different topics. And this is definitely number one, most unique. And I Dr. Stein, I want to thank you so much for your generosity with your time and your your knowledge.

Dr. Sarah Stein: I not at all. If people could help.

Top Left Corner: I hope so. Let’s say let’s say that the detectives decide they could use a consultant. How do they find you? Where do they find out about Dr. Stein?

Dr. Sarah Stein: No. Well, from what I’ve read, I believe they already actually have hired someone to look here in the press release. The Berkshire district attorney’s office recently added a contract investigator to analyze case data, which is excellent. But if anyone wants to find out more about me, they can just go to my website, Dr. Sara Stein, or I’m on LinkedIn.

Top Left Corner: Gotcha. Well, it’s it’s a fascinating topic. It is one that I really I would love to see this one. And I know you say that there’s a they don’t sound connected the Lynn Burdick and this this in the Kim Benoit case. But there were a number of really creepy things going on in northern Berkshires in in the seventies and even into the early eighties. So it would be swell if we could start ticking them off and solving them one by one, starting with with Kim. All right. Well, Dr. Stein, thank you so much. Stay well and and I’ll send you a link to this show when it’s live.

Dr. Sarah Stein: All right. Thank you so much again for having me. And be safe and well.

Top Left Corner: Take care. Thank you. Bye bye.

Dr. Sarah Stein: Thank you. You too. Bye bye.

The post Top Left Corner #170: Investigating cold cases of murder? Time can be your friend. appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Above: The Pittsfield Police Department’s explanation of their actions that led tot he death of Miguel Estrella portrays the facts as crisp as a high-def photo, while the community still finds that explanation as less than clear. Overlay of March 25 crime scene photos from the site of the police killing of Miguel Estrella in Pittsfield onto a still from grainy surveillance footage of the incident; video and photo submitted by Berkshire County District Attorney’s office, graphics by Jason Velázquez.

Jay Velázquez: And this is Episode 169 of the Top Left Corner right here on The Greylock Glass — GreylockGlass.com, the Berkshires mightiest independent alternative newsthing. I’m your host, Jay Velázquez, and I do thank you for tuning in today. At least the day that this was published is Friday, September 2nd. 2022 and looks like it’s going to be a gorgeous day. So if you are occupying the same place in the time-space continuum as I am, enjoyed that. This show is, it’s well, it was it was a show that was never meant to be. I have an interview with Ellen Maxon, who is the chair of the Pittsfield Police Advisory and Review Board, which just saw some real shakeup just yesterday. And I’m going to link to an article by Josh Landes of WAMC in the show notes. He’s done an excellent job covering that breaking news.

What I have is not breaking news. It was actually an interview that I did with Ellen Maxon just a couple of weeks ago that was meant to be part of a larger piece. But due to the fast moving nature of events, I’m going to release this interview in its entirety. Now. Because it makes sense to do that now. So I’ll keep working on the other pieces and present them in some other format, I guess. But this is this is something that you’re going to want to know right now, because it’s it’s critical in what’s going on in Pittsfield regarding the Miguel Estrella shooting by the police officer says about the murder but the district attorney’s Investigation found no criminal liability on the part of the officers. So that would not be accurate, at least as far as any legal observer today observes.

First, though, I wanted to just mention that the GreylockGlass.com just found out yesterday that the local media association just gave us the green light to be part of the 2022 Local Media Fund, which means that the Local Media Association is our fiscal sponsor for the next well, until at the end of the year, until December 31. They are going to accept non tax deductible donations on our behalf. We are unable to do that directly because we’re not a nonprofit organization. They are and as our fiscal sponsor, they are creating an opportunity for you and for businesses or other organizations to support our work.

In this case, specifically about climate, the climate change impacts on the Berkshires over the next however many years that we can predict the different systems, the different sectors of the economy, sectors of the community that are going to be impacted. It’s really it’s really going to be a dense, deep dive into this subject because no one locally is doing that sort of analysis. The number of interlocking pieces is is kind of mind blowing and won’t be able to do it in one published work. It’s going to have to be sort of a series. It’s going to be a lot of a lot of eye opening material, though, I promise you that. And it’s going to give businesses and community leaders real pause and a chance to think about where they’re going to be going in terms of planning. Because, you know, we’re talking about population changes, changes, impacts on the health care system, educational system, transportation system, you name it. There’s almost no part of society that’s not going to be touched.

So what I’d like you to do is I’d like you to help support this make a tax deductible donation to support this work by going to the show notes here and looking for the link to our Give Butter donation page. To Give Butter is a basically a processor that allows all this. That’s the it’s the go between that makes it all happen between us and the local media association. So you can go to the link in the show notes of this episode or go to go directly to give butter slash Berkshires dash climate. So that’s give butterscotch slash Berkshires hyphen climate and that will get you and give, you know, give till it hurts. Because I promise you, this information that I’m going to be digging up is going to be helpful to you, your families, your business, your community.

Jay Velázquez: It’s it’s going to be very impactful. So please do visit the show notes, visit give boston.com slash Berkshires dash climate. And I thank you. Now onto our interview with Ellen Maxon, the chair of the Pittsfield Police Advisory and Review Board right here on the Top Left Corner.

The 2022 Local News Fund is a program administered by Local Media Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization affiliated with Local Media Association. The purpose of the program is to allow independent and family-owned news organizations to solicit tax-deductible donations from their communities for journalism projects that focus on critical local issues. Contributions to this program are tax-deductible to the full extent of U.S. law; please consult a tax advisor for details.

Editor’s Note: The Greylock Glass pays to have rough transcripts of interviews produced. We attempt to remain as faithful as possible to the speakers’ original meaning, and apologize for any errors of transcription. That said, even the imperfect transcription we perform is costly. Please support us financially by becoming a member or making a one-time contribution to help us continue to provide this service.

Top Left Corner: All right. Well, Ellen, I do want to thank you so much for for speaking to the Top Left Corner here in The Greylock Glass. It’s a. It’s no secret that we are doing a deep dive into the events surrounding the death of Miguel Estrada. And I did not recall seeing the advisory board mentioned in the media coverage of of the investigations into the event into his killing. Were you in the I mean, has anybody come and talk to you and asked you what your your thoughts are?

Ellen Maxon: First. Jason, before we go any further, I want to make clear that I don’t speak for the board. Of course I am the chair. Okay. So just so that everyone understands.

Top Left Corner: Got it. No, no, I understand.

Ellen Maxon: Okay. So you wanted to know if someone had come and asked us about it?

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I just. I was surprised not to see not to see the advisory board mentioned in the reporting. And I just I’m wondering if I missed anything. I mean.

Ellen Maxon: If people have you didn’t miss anything. The advisory board doesn’t have that power or role, especially in the DA’s investigation. That’s a criminal investigation. Sure. And in the police, any sort of police investigation, we only see it per statue, per ordinance, post the termination, and then we get to review things at that time and then offer our thoughts, insights and suggestions. So that pretty much limits our involvement. And that’s why you haven’t seen it. What we did do was one of the things we could we offered at a couple of our monthly meetings for the public to specifically come and offer their thoughts about the shooting, and that we would pass that on to the mayor and the council.

Top Left Corner: Did you get much of a turnout or.

Ellen Maxon: Yeah, I think it was. I can’t remember which meeting. It’s been a probably three meetings ago and we usually meet once a month, but we didn’t meet in June or July because we missed a public meeting post deadline if we don’t get our agenda posted by a certain. So we missed that for July so we let’s see that would have been June May. It might have been the April meeting. Yes, we got quite a bit of conversation at that meeting and it mostly was about three areas and that was basically people expressing what they wanted to see done in the future. Body cam or what else was it? Body cams and. My mind’s gone blank here. It happens when you turn 70. Body cams and social work, involvement and use of non-lethal weapons.

Top Left Corner: Okay.

Ellen Maxon: Well, those were the three areas.

Top Left Corner: Well, you’re doing much better than I am because I just turned 54, and I’ve been I have been wondering where my memory has gone for the last couple of years. So you’re doing great.

Ellen Maxon: Okay.

Top Left Corner: So I guess I want to back up just a little bit. I, I saw in a. An article in the Berkshire Eagle a couple of years ago where they had asked you a few questions about I guess this is Amanda Burke asked some questions about the advisory boards role and you had answered that that you will frustrated that everything is after the fact. And and and it’s you know, there’s nothing binding about about the advisory boards determinations. Do you feel that in the case of a shooting such as the fatal shooting of Miguel Estrada, that the advisory board. Has more to offer.

Ellen Maxon: That’s a good question. I think if our role all along had been defined as. Somehow being a voice during the investigation where and I’m not sure what that would look like because there are all sorts of legal issues. But I do think it’s always helpful to have different eyes on it, on a on any sort of investigation. And so I think. If there’s a way to get more perspective on investigations, not just police officers doing it. And I want to be clear, I don’t think we have a bad law enforcement department or I think we have a good chief. But I think that the whole institution of law enforcement. Probably could benefit by some changes to it. And as you know any large institution that. Very hard to do. Hmm. So could we offer more? I think any time you have more eyes on the on something and have more opinions, you’re going to get a better, more accurate result. As we know that two people can, as you’ve seen in this investigation, observe the same thing and come away with completely different stories of what happened.

Top Left Corner: Yes. Yes. And go ahead.

Ellen Maxon: So, yes, the idea of having an 11 person board with all sorts of different perspectives is great. But if it’s only post determination, I don’t know how much that really helps.

Top Left Corner: Would it surprise you to know or to hear that many states require civilian? Participation in investigations such as this.

Ellen Maxon: It would surprise me. I haven’t heard of that. And again, we have to follow the laws of the Commonwealth and that puts constraints on what city councils and town councils and select boards can do. And I think some of the laws of Massachusetts. So I can’t be specific about what probably limits. Citizens Advisory. The other thing is, I was an investigator for the Vermont Human Rights Commission for 12 years. Mm hmm. It’s a full time job to do investigations. You don’t just. You know, have volunteers pop in, you know, for a brief interaction and have it do a lot of good, I don’t think.

Top Left Corner: Well, I don’t you know, I don’t think that there’s necessarily anything in the Massachusetts general laws that prohibit any sort of. Participation in in reviews and investigations into things that have already happened, you know, shootings by police officers. It’s. Go ahead.

Ellen Maxon: I think the public service laws and restrictions and contracts may make it very difficult. You know, I don’t know what we do. Police. I’m not sure what role the police union plays in in determining who gets to do it. We certainly have questioned if it’s very effective of us doing this stuff post determination.

Top Left Corner: Well, the police police unions typically are are the some of the strongest pushback against any citizen involvement. It’s just kind of across the country, in every state, every town, there’s they said over my dead body kind of approach. The the challenge is that this is the current thinking in not having a citizen component to an investigation of any police violence, anything ends up in an injury is that if you don’t have citizens involved in the police department investigation comes out so quickly as it did and says, nope, we didn’t do anything wrong. All that really serves to do is nurture an animosity, a mistrust. And people say people say, well, we knew that was going to happen. We knew they were going to not find anything wrong with their their actions. And it just sort of creates this cycle that is difficult to break. And in the case of the district attorney’s investigation, by having the police and I should stop right there and say, many experts say that the police department should not even attempt to investigate these things. There are many.

Ellen Maxon: Well, who say, yeah.

Top Left Corner: They should they should shouldn’t go ahead.

Ellen Maxon: One of the things they’re investigating is whether police policy was violated. That’s what they’re investigating. They’re not doing a criminal investigation. Right. And so there’s as you can if you read I don’t know if it’s so much between the lines, but basically when a law enforcement officer feels. Threatened to the point of their safety. That triggers the response of being able to use force. And then it’s, well, what kind of force? And it depends on the situation. So it’s it’s a very subjective. Taking a look at the situation, it’s subjective, but it’s also kind of a special well, if you feel threatened for your safety or you think someone else’s safety, that kind of opens the door for the police to use force. And so the policy isn’t violated because the police officer and I think I think this police officer definitely did feel threatened. Have you ever been in that situation?

Top Left Corner: Sure. Have you had the opportunity to view the video?

Ellen Maxon: The one that the district attorney used.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I actually I actually used the raw footage and I that was provided to the media and I cleaned it up and I would say not to toot my own horn, but horn. I did a little better, I think, than the FBI did in terms of clearing it up and making it more viewable. Right. And I’ll send you a link to that. It’s it’s in the show notes to the episode. That podcast that I did just basically was the the the total press conference. I didn’t really have much to say. I just, you know, did the audio for that. But what you can see is that the officer’s statements describe backing up and giving him Miguel Estrada a lot of space. The video shows that at the crucial moments, the last. You know, 45 seconds to a minute, they were about six feet away from him and they just kept on him. They didn’t actually back up at all. I mean, they were backing up as he was moving forward, but they were not. They were continuing to place themselves directly in front of him in a way that if he is walking forward, they they will always have a reason to say that they felt threatened.

Ellen Maxon: Yeah. And I haven’t seen that. And I certainly I can’t make a judgment. I hear what you’re saying. I hear what the DA said. And I don’t have a I can’t make a statement, of course.

Top Left Corner: But if you haven’t seen it, you haven’t seen it. That’s. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll send you a link to that. So, you know, it won’t be in time for this, but. But it’s worth it’s worth taking a look at. And it’s it’s not very good quality video because it was from a a security camera across the street, basically about a hundred or so, maybe 120 feet away. So it’s not a great not a great picture, but but you can see the general gist of of the certainly the order of events, I guess, with the. With the district attorney’s investigation, the challenge of having the the Pittsfield Police Department investigation first and come out so quickly and so strongly in support of their officers behavior, that puts the district attorney into a little bit of a bind because she’s left with only two options to either agree or disagree. You know, the police that they’ve done the wrong. Now she’s asking a slightly different question. You pointed out that it’s not so much about a crime, it’s about policy.

Ellen Maxon: Whereas at least it’s about policy. For her, it’s about. Yeah.

Top Left Corner: About a crime. So I think it’s it’s I’m not sure anybody asked quite the right question ever because the challenge. Was that these officers had been there once. They decided that they didn’t have the authority to. To take him to the hospital to though. Though the Massachusetts law clearly states that if they feel that he’s a danger to himself, they have emergency powers to to take him in which they claim they didn’t feel they had. So I don’t know what happened there, but the second time I mean, let’s forget about the first time. Let’s go to the second time. They knew that he had cut himself. In the face. They knew that he was talking about harming himself. The people who called nine one specifically asked that he be taken to a hospital. So it’s not as if the officers didn’t. Understand that this was very specifically a mental health crisis. This was not a crime that was, you know, in the process. Did your board did the board release any. Any sorts of I don’t know what you call them, I guess advice to the police about dealing with mental health crisis situations in the future.

Ellen Maxon: Well, that was one of the very strong recommendations from the public comment. And I think our board I can’t remember exactly where we’ve come out on that. But my recollection is everyone feels that there needs to be social workers, crisis intervention, people involved. And as a matter of fact, someone from NAMI is speaking at our next board meeting, which was supposed to happen two months ago to to help us come out with a statement about mental health workers. I can tell you personally, having a master’s in social work, that took me three years, part time to get it. It’s ridiculous to think that police officers have those skills. Right? Yeah. It’s so I think for me, I become frustrated when police officers or teachers or whatever especially are expected to take up these roles they’re not really trained for. Yeah, they may get a few hours every once in a while or whatever, but. They shouldn’t be responding to these situations or shouldn’t be responding alone. There should be crisis intervention, social workers.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, it’s it’s a matter of there are tools for law enforcement and there are tools for social work and there are different skill sets. And yeah, it does seem like exactly the wrong tools and exactly the wrong skill sets were on hand. On a notice street on March 25th. I don’t know that I can. I know I haven’t come to a decision personally about. How much? Fault I want to place on the officers. How much I want to let them off the hook. What I do know is that is that his family called his friends called trying to get him help and they never anticipated. That it was going to end up with with him dead. I mean, that’s just that is there’s no whether it was the specific officer’s fault or not. It’s not. It’s not pardonable that that happened. Whose fault is it? Is it the system’s fault? I don’t know. But. But good.

Ellen Maxon: My fault. And I think I think it’s systemic. I think the fact that that that social workers have not been part of this, I’m not sure how much research you’ve done on the 911 system, but I think it is set up that police officers either have to respond or EMTs have to respond. There’s no option to say, oh, let’s send the social worker instead or let’s send the mental health worker instead. Yeah. So what I’m saying is there’s so many pieces to this enormous system keeping the peace that. And again, it’s inexcusable that this happened, but it’s not inexcusable just because of one officer’s actions.

Top Left Corner: That’s right.

Ellen Maxon: Right. It’s just so much. And then, you know, I know Dennis Powell had mentioned something about the racism. And here’s another issue if. We all have implicit bias. And when we are scared or frightened, our implicit biases tend to kick in. So black and brown people are going to unfortunately pay the price of that more because white people become afraid. And I’ve done implicit bias trainings. I’ve worked on my own implicit bias, and we can move beyond that. But much of the population has not worked on that. And again, I think the police officers get some training in that. But some training doesn’t change that. That fight or flight reaction happens.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, yeah. And yeah.

Ellen Maxon: All these forces are playing a part on what happened. And I’ll tell you, as long as we have law enforcement officers who carry lethal weapons around with them for every interaction with the public, this is going to happen. I mean. Yeah, it’s going to happen. It is. That’s not a.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. It’s a terrible thing to. It’s a terrible thing to face because there aren’t any quick fixes. As you point out, we have implicit we have biases that are, you know, in some cases with this from almost since birth. And we do try to weed them out or dilute them as much as possible. And that’s not always enough, even when you’re aware of it. But when you’re in a situation like that where it’s not like you have a lot of time to sort of investigate your own biases before making decisions. It’s it’s difficult. It’s it’s not as if. It’s not as if we haven’t had a lot of time to deal with these questions of bias of police involved shootings. I mean, certainly, I guess for me, my question is, has the Pittsfield Police Department knowing that they have a fairly diverse community? There are plenty of Hispanics there. There’s a fairly substantial black community. There’s a middle Eastern community, Asian community. We know that there are different people here. Has the the department kept pace in terms with its cultural awareness? I don’t know that they have. Good.

Ellen Maxon: You ask the chief specifically. I do recall that he says that officers either can or do get implicit bias training. But please don’t quote me on that. Should we have to ask? Sure. And again. We used to do trainings when I worked for the Vermont Human Rights Commission on implicit bias, and we’d spend probably half a day on it. And the resistance from white males was incredible. And it doesn’t happen with just one training. You know, it takes and people are. We’re not talking about racism here. We’re talking about a brain reaction to things that frighten us and are different. And it’s very ingrained. So you have that piece playing and I know this officer said, hey, I’m I’m a person from a different culture to blah, blah. You know, I don’t remember his whole.

Top Left Corner: Beal Yeah.

Ellen Maxon: Right. But, but he did try to connect with them that way. I assuming that’s true. And, but so when, when you say, like you said, when trying to look for blame here, it’s a massive blame. Yes. This guy pulled the trigger twice and it’s horrible that it’s happening. And I’m not minimizing what happened at all that never should have happened. But it does and it keeps happening. So a system needs to change and taxpayers need to be willing to pay the price to pay for social workers that want to do this because there’s a social worker shortage and there’s especially a shortage of people that want to do crisis intervention. So that’s going to cost.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, it’s it’s it is definitely going to be one of the hardest. Gut wrenching jobs that you can do probably right up there with with working with children who are in the in the system, the state system. It’s probably about as as you know, hard to. Hard to leave that at the office. But but it has to happen or we’re going to keep getting what we what we got.

Ellen Maxon: Right. It’s going to keep happening.

Top Left Corner: If you look at the video and you read the testimony of the different actors in this situation, it’s. It’s clear that it didn’t have to end this way. And I think that when you have. A citizen review board on in place. I mean, there are a number of vacancies on your board. I see. Which I think is scandalous. You’d think that.

Ellen Maxon: They’re. And they’ve been there a long time.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, they should be full.

Ellen Maxon: Yep. And who knows why it isn’t? I don’t.

Top Left Corner: There’s a couple, you know, there’s a few boards that are they seem to have no problem getting everybody, you know, getting every seat filled. But this one is one. And I think the Human Rights Commission also has some empty seats on it as well. And I think that that’s that’s that is a mark of lack of faith. I think that you can be effective. I think if people thought that they could be effective, they would be more quick to fill those seats. And to me, that in itself is a bit of a breakdown of a system that could. Could really, you know, make use of positive energy from the community. That’s that’s that’s the way I see a citizen review board, not as a we’re here to make your lives miserable, but we’re here to make sure that we cut down on these incidents. And the rate of these incidents is severity of incidents as much as possible. So but, you know, that’s you know, as you point out, that’s everywhere. There’s pushback. Well, let me ask this. Do you have any and I know you’re not speaking for the board. Itself. But do you, Ellen, personally have any final thoughts about. About the but the outcome of this and about what you wish the review board would be able to do in a future, God forbid, but a future event.

Ellen Maxon: Well, I’m not surprised about the outcome of both the investigation. Most of the people I’ve talked to were not surprised. And as far as the board and the future again. If somehow we could figure out a way. In all. Whether it’s a citizens complaint or investigation to allow non-law enforcement to at least have a voice, predetermination, I think that could be helpful. And I don’t exactly know because there’s ins and outs of all the systems and, you know, like and. I don’t know how to say it could happen, but if it could happen, I think it would be helpful.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. Well, let’s. Let’s assume that other people are feeling the way you’re feeling about this. And if they. I didn’t know that there are some empty seats on that board and are interested. Obviously you have to be a resident of Pittsfield. But how should people get more information about joining the board?

Ellen Maxon: I think contact the mayor’s office because the mayor is the person who puts up people for the board and the council approves it. Approves the individual. Are you interested?

Top Left Corner: Well, I’m from. I’m from Williamstown, so I don’t.

Ellen Maxon: Oh, I didn’t know that.

Top Left Corner: I don’t. I know. I know. Actually, I. I mostly cover North County News.

Ellen Maxon: Yeah.

Top Left Corner: But when people tell me that I should focus on Pittsfield for this reason or that reason, I listen. Because that tells me that they want to. Get a perspective. Or maybe. Perspective, but a deeper like I said, a deeper look, because that’s something that I’m able to do with The Greylock Glass that it’s difficult to do when you have to come up with, you know, 36 pages of news every day. Right.

Ellen Maxon: Right.

Top Left Corner: And I don’t have to do that. At least not yet. If I can get out if I can get it out a couple of stories a day, I’m doing pretty good.

Ellen Maxon: So there you go.

Top Left Corner: All right. Well, thank you so much for speaking with us. And I really, really appreciate the work that you’re doing because as you said, it’s not easy and it takes it takes a little bit of commitment. So I appreciate that.

Ellen Maxon: Okay. Well, if you have any clarifications, call and email.

Top Left Corner: I sure will. Have a good summer.

Ellen Maxon: Okay. Bye bye.

The post TLC #169: NTRVW — Ellen Maxon, Pittsfield Police Advisory and Review Board appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Hey, Greylock Nation!

Welcome to Episode # 168 of the Top Left Corner here on greylockglass.com, published Monday, August 22, 2022. I’m your host, Jay Velázquez and I thank you for tuning in.

We’ve spoken in the past on this show about Massachusetts’ dismal ranking in the area of transparency. Today’s topic takes the problem of the opaque old-boys club to the next level. We’re talking about the Governor’s Council, which I had always assumed was probably a benign, if wasteful, bit of blue-blood anachronism. Brothers and sisters, I tell you it goes way deeper than that, and today’s guest is a candidate for the open seat in September’s primary, and she’s going to spill the beans on why we need to care about this office as much or more than any other contested race this year.

First though, I need to repeat something: this podcast, and everything you see and hear on the Greylock Glass, is primarily audience and member supported. If we don’t get help from a lot more of you, and fast, the thousands and thousands of hours that have gone into building this independent alternative newsthing will go up in smoke. We have hundreds of hours of conversations with the most fascinating local folks and interested visitors to the area archived and accessible to the public FOR FREE. I do not exaggerate when I say it’s a treasure trove of recent history that should NOT be allowed to die of starvation. Please, visit greylockglass.com/support and choose a method of contribution that fits your budget and commitment to local news. And thanks.

The Massachusetts Governor’s Council, also known as the Executive Council, is composed of eight individuals elected from districts, and the Lieutenant Governor who serves ex officio. The eight councillors are elected from their respective districts every two years. The Council meets weekly to record advice and consent on warrants for the state treasury, pardons and commutations, and recording advice and consent to gubernatorial appointments such as judges, clerk-magistrates, public administrators, members of the Parole Board, Appellate Tax Board, Industrial Accident Board and Industrial Accident Reviewing Board, notaries, and justices of the peace.

Members of the public are welcome at Council formal assemblies and hearings.

To view the livestream of the Governor’s Council Assembly or Hearings click on the link below: 

Governors Council Massachusetts – YouTube

Top Left Corner: And with me on the line is Tara Jacobs, who is candidate for Governor’s Council District Eight here in the Berkshires. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Tara.

Tara Jacobs: Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Top Left Corner: Well, it’s you know, I saw your initial release about this race. And I’m going to admit I don’t know much about the Governor’s Council. I you know. You know, by the governor, you know, about the local legislature legislator. What what is the Governor’s Council?

Tara Jacobs: Well, you are not alone in asking that question. It has been a key component of this campaign is to help spread the word on what this council is, what it does and why it’s so important. The Governor’s Council is made up of eight members in eight districts, and they work directly with the governor and the lieutenant governor. And lieutenant governor is actually their ex-officio chair. And they confirm every judge in the entire state from the district court level all the way up to the Supreme Judicial Court. Every single judge is confirmed in the advice and consent role that is in a check and balance on the executive branch. Their decision is final and can’t be overruled by the governor, though they can override the governor’s choice. They also do a lot of other things that are equally important. For instance, they are the ones who choose, who serves on our parole board in the state. They confirm every clerk magistrate across the state. And also if there are pardons or commutations up for consideration, they are the ones who make the final decision on those cases. There’s a bunch of other judiciary related roles as well, so the work they do is quite important and it’s one of the least well known elected positions, partially because it doesn’t show up on the ballot as Governors Council. So people are often say to me that they’ve never voted on it or seen it on a ballot, and probably that’s because it shows up on the ballot under the word councilor rather than saying Governors Council.

Top Left Corner: That’s weird. Why in the world would that be? Do we know?

Tara Jacobs: We do know. I actually tracked it down because I really have been curious and if this can be changed. I spoke with Bill Galvin, our secretary of state, and it hearkens back as many things with the Governor’s Council does to the origins of the council, which are written into the state’s constitution from colonial days. And so many of while it has evolved over time, what the Governor’s Council does and the fact that they’re elected now, they used to be appointed and other things have changed over time. There are still lingering, constitutionally created aspects to how the Governor’s Council works and things like showing up on the ballot under the word councilor instead of Governor’s Council. Another thing that I also think is partially why there’s a lack of transparency for the Governor’s Council work and existence. They are not subject to open meeting law as so many of our other bodies are.

Top Left Corner: Oh, my gosh.

Tara Jacobs: Who is constitutionally. Yes.

Top Left Corner: Oh, my gosh. So a lot of people don’t know this. I should we’ve talked about this, I think, in connection with Democratic the debacle that occurred in the Democratic Party during the last campaign between Richie Neal and that was Alex. Yes. Alex Morse. Thank you. And and how and, you know, as many of our conversations do in this show, it sort of meandered a bit, but we covered the the issue. Well, there’s you know, what you find out when you have a long form news show is that there’s a lot of things that are related to a lot of other things that make it hard. If you if you just doing the 30 seconds soundbites or nowadays 15 seconds sound bites, you, you don’t understand the connections between a lot of this stuff. But the fact of the matter is, is Massachusetts is one of the least transparent states. I didn’t know that. For example, legislative votes, you know, you the state the state reps in the state, senators, you you don’t know who voted for what in committee. So they can publicly they can publicly support or or oppose any legislation they want to to make their voters happy and then go and do the opposite in committee and they can vote the other way. I mean, that’s real, you know, facade, cardboard cutout, democracy, sort of sort of behavior. So the fact that we don’t know what’s going on in the Governor’s Council and we can’t demand it through a, you know, Freedom of Information Act, that’s that’s appalling. That’s appalling. Would you and of course, you know, this is a leading question, but I’m assuming that you’re against that, that you’d like to see more transparency.

Tara Jacobs: It’s one of the it’s not the leading reason I’m running at all. But it is definitely a key component in in my campaign, is that I would love to bring more transparency as well as more accessibility and accountability to the work of the Governor’s Council. Because, for instance, for the first time ever, they brought cameras into the Governor’s Council chamber due to COVID because the statehouse where they meet every week was closed for so long. And so they continue to do their work remotely. And so the cameras were introduced and then when it became safe again to be present in person, the Governor’s Council removed the cameras from the chamber, which they have the right to do. But there was a huge backlash and outcry from constituents, community members and especially organizations, nonprofits and the media. And after pressure for about a little more than a month, they brought the cameras back again. But that’s another instance where especially the state, which not to say that we’re the hugest state in the country, but coming from the Berkshires to Boston, there is an accessibility issue in terms of being able to participate actively as a community member.

Tara Jacobs: If you want to give input into a confirmation process for whatever, whatever role that might be, if you have personal experience you want to share. There’s a level of privilege involved with having the time to go to Boston and you don’t know what part of the day you’ll get to participate. So having a day to go to Boston and wait your turn, but also the privilege of transportation, which we all know is an issue here in Western Mass, it it really excludes many voices from the process. So accessibility and transparency are two issues that I’ve been talking about because, you know, for instance, when there’s a judicial nomination for a local western mass, but I would love to see what I can do about enabling the entire process to shift to that local demographic area. Because, you know, being in person in a community that will be served by this position and having the ability for community members to actively engage easily, I think would be to the benefit of all of us in choosing the best the best care.

Top Left Corner: Here, here, here, here. Yeah. No, look, these are some amazing issues that seem so such common sense, so simple, right on their face. You have to wonder. What’s what’s the downside? And the downside typically means that and not to get to leading again with my questions but it sounds like there’s well it’s you know, this is you know, it’s a news show, but it’s you know, it’s my news show. So I say what I want. That’s kind of what we do there. It’s well, it’s a talk show. It’s really it’s more of a talk show. So. Where were we? Oh, that’s. We’re talking about the downsides. The downsides are that. You have to, if these transformations were enacted that you suggest that would lead to an amount of power sharing with the general public. And potentially, as you.

Tara Jacobs: Said, I think you’ve nailed it on the head literally. I think you’re nailing it on the head because I think to a degree there is a gatekeeping and a power centering the power. For instance, the legal community tends to be very protective of the Governor’s Council positions, as though only a lawyer could possibly weigh in on these important decisions, which is, I think, the farthest thing from the truth. I think not to disparage the legal community in any way, and I have full respect for lawyers, but lawyers are involved heavily in the process of confirming our judges throughout the process. The process of confirming a judge begins with the governor. The governor nominates a candidate. And there’s first one group that is 100% made up of lawyers called the Judicial Nominating Committee. They weigh in on the initial vetting and and moving down the chain candidates that are up for consideration. Then it goes to a second group and they are 100 again, 100% made up of lawyers who do the second round of vetting. And they are the joint bar committee that is appointed by bar associations across the state, which, by the way, Berkshire County spot is vacant at the moment. So we don’t even have a voice in that process.

Tara Jacobs: But nonetheless, 100%, two groups of lawyers and then there are six lawyers on the Governor’s Council already. So the legal community is very well represented, but they also tend to be very protective of the role. And there’s a lot of inside baseball politics in the process of partners who want to be judges and, you know, sort of because there’s no open meeting law, there’s you don’t know what might be going on back chamber. Right. Jockeying for, you know. So I do think it’s an advantage for me that I’m the only person in the Democratic primary running right now who’s not an attorney, and that I am doing this to be that voice, to represent the people in the process of making these decisions, to add diversity of perspective to the work. And 99 plus percent of us aren’t lawyers. We deserve a voice to where our lives are impacted by the choices that are made. And judges don’t just work with lawyers. They work with families and victims and advocates and community members who are not lawyers. And I think it’s important to diversify the viewpoint involved to ensure that voice that represents the people is present in the work they do.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. And coming full circle in this conversation, we’re talking about the importance of this this role that most people seem unaware of. And now we realize it’s not entirely an accident, or at least it’s not entirely unexplainable why people don’t know more about it. The fact of the matter is, and we’ve seen this on the national level, that when you don’t pay attention to the judicial nominees and appointments, you can find that the very face of your country changes in one administration.

Tara Jacobs: Right.

Top Left Corner: I mean, we we just saw that. And the fact of the matter is, the people who end up on the Supreme Court of the United States are people who may have started out locally. You know, they they rise through the ranks. And this is your chance to you know, this Governor’s Council is the chance to say, hmm, what sorts of people are fit for the bench?

Tara Jacobs: And exactly.

Top Left Corner: And what sorts of, you know, what level of of objectivity or what level of agenda do they bring? Are they going to be activist judges? Are they going to be trying to be as impartial as possible? Now, we see that that impartiality is not a requirement for these jobs anymore. You know, it’s a I mean, it should be, obviously. But clearly, as you say, the appointments are less and less about, or at least as you hinted they might be less and less about. You know, can you can you administer justice fairly versus do you have a worldview that fits mine as I appoint you and. What I wish I could remember where I saw the figure. But there was a survey done as there is about trust in government all the time. I mean, trust in local, trust in regional and trust in national. And one branch of government that has always enjoyed the high level of trust has always been the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court. Right. And for the first time, that number dipped significantly. Can’t remember where we are.

Tara Jacobs: Americans are well, justifiably so. I mean, having made that call that for the first time ever, removed rights from citizens.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, sure. I mean, I think.

Tara Jacobs: It’s.

Top Left Corner: Just started. I mean, the public started smelling something rotten in the back of the fridge with Citizens United. And though people did not understand the implications of it until later on, I mean, there were some people who were jumping up and down, waving their hands, saying, this is very bad. And most people well, I mean, you know what, it really is the abuse going to get that, you know, a corporation is really going to end up having, you know, being able to just buy politicians. That’s not really going to happen. Well, you know, whatever. I have never I was I was born with a skeptical bone in my body. And so I never trusted it. But but the idea that Americans and not just Americans like broadly, but right here in the first years would lose faith in the justice system. That is the sign of a failed state. If you if you cannot trust.

Tara Jacobs: And degrading democracy, you know, it’s the very foundations of the grand American experiment are being dismantled.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, and it happens not just in Washington. It happens here. No, it starts here, you know.

Tara Jacobs: I’ll give you another example. I’ll give you that. That goes back to how shocking it is sometimes to really put a microscope on our state. So Massachusetts, in so many ways is such a progressive state and has done so many times, has been the leader in moving the entire nation forward through legislative decisions made here, like, for instance, gay marriage and things like that. But when you take a look at our state’s incarcerated population, the racial disparities in our state are among the worst in the entire nation, which seems to fly in the face of the perception that we are such a progressive Commonwealth. But the reality is we have the same problems that we’ve been seeing across the country. But they’re actually, to a degree, worse.

Top Left Corner: Well, they are worse because they are. They are whitewashed. I mean, to put it, I’m using that word very, very pointedly. The perception is that. We have this this progressive, you know, sort of structure, you know, that the paradigm that sort of guides Massachusetts civil life is is forward thinking, is fair, is equitable, is diverse. I mean, it looks great, but it’s just it doesn’t. And the thing is, when you pretend that it is, you’re doing so much damage because then for the.

Tara Jacobs: Well, you protect the status quo. That’s what happens. You protect the status quo that you believe is is rosy when the reality is we really do need change to undo the systemic injustices that are baked into our entire state system.

Top Left Corner: You know, I lived in Tennessee for a number of years, and there’s this notion that Tennessee is in the South in general are so racist, you know, and there is really blatant racism in parts of the South. I’m not going to deny that. But at the same at the same time, that racism is really public and, you know, we’re you know, we don’t want to go. Right. Right. You know, there was a there was a a mechanic shop, custom car care, and it was spelled with the C’s turned keys like so, you know. Yeah. Right. So, you know.

Tara Jacobs: Oh not him.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. So I’m not going to be bringing my car there if I’m a person of color or Jewish or whatever. Right. So. And, you know, people will say things to you in certain areas that they would not say here, because we hide we hide of racism here. But at the same time.

Tara Jacobs: And we deny it. We deny it to people who have very good hearts and are trying to do the right thing, have denial around their own racial beliefs because it’s dangerous and uncomfortable to actually look at and evaluate and do the work to shift their biases. If you won’t acknowledge your biases and deny they exist, you can’t do the work to do better.

Top Left Corner: No. Yeah.

Tara Jacobs: And I’ve definitely found that to be the case where there is a defensiveness and a denial. And so my my educational background is psychology. I majored in psych and, and specifically social psychology research and studying the human animal of what our makeup is and what that results in, in terms of our thoughts and our behaviors and our attitudes, etc.. We are all racist. I mean, we all have we’re wired to differentiate for safety reasons from back in the days of living in the caves and and pre civilization survival to recognize who are my safe people here and who are other and then to in the course of differentiating other fear and difference and it’s bad and not safe and that’s just human nature is wired that way. That doesn’t mean we can’t take ownership of that and improve it, but the first step to any problem is to acknowledge it exists. And then there is active productive will actually help change your thought process work you can do to shift your biases. But the first step you have to acknowledge you have them.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, it’s a funny thing and.

Tara Jacobs: That that I find is.

Top Left Corner: It is a problem and it’s kind of a double thing because you have to convince yourself that you’re not a racist and then convince yourself that you didn’t just convince yourself of that. You know, you have to sort of. Right. You got to sort of forget that that it was work to to sort of let yourself off the hook. But, no, I did a lot of, you know, a lot of jobs down south, you know, standard working class jobs. I worked in warehouses, I worked in restaurants. And the rank and file, they worked together like there’s a mixing of of different cultures, you know, black and white people both working together in a restaurant kitchen that’s 120 degrees. And they’re working and they’re laughing and they’re talking and they’re joking and they might not go and hang out with each other, but they work together and they socialize at work in a way that you don’t see as often here. It’s a weird thing. I can’t quite explain the difference, but it’s the fact that maybe it’s because there’s a social strata that knows that there’s not a lot of upward mobility for anybody. So there’s nothing to fight over. There’s nothing to be guarded about. I don’t know. But, yeah, here in the Berkshires, it’s it’s a tough nut. It’s a long row to hoe to get to get people to sort of face that. So I, I think that your, your background actually sounds like you’d make a great judge yourself, given that you have a sort of a bird’s eye view of the human mind here.

Tara Jacobs: Do you want to hear a funny fact that also comes from our Constitution? That’s still is technically true, though I don’t think ever actually plays those. Yeah, you don’t have to be a lawyer to be a judge in this state. No way. You don’t technically have to if that is truly the case. I can’t. I couldn’t tell you the last time someone served as a judge without having had a legal education and passing the bar. But technically, officially, you don’t have to. I, I can’t foresee any time when someone who’s not a lawyer becomes a judge. So it’s almost an immaterial little factoid. But it’s interesting.

Top Left Corner: You know, there’s a certain proletarian side of me that appreciates the heck out of that that, you know, because, like, there are some folks that I know who are far more level when it comes to listening to to two sides of a story than anybody else have ever met in the legal profession. Anyway, I want to I want to, I guess, just ask a little bit more about why you I mean, there’s a lot of different things you could be putting to you could be putting your talents to work towards why this role why you.

Tara Jacobs: So both good questions. And I will say that I have two main motivations for governor’s counsel. The first is the work itself. It’s the kind of work that I find really not just important but interesting. And most importantly, I see it as as an opportunity to affect actual change in our state, for our communities, in the work that they do. I’ve been approaching this from the standpoint of wanting to be the person who can help to consistently center the issues of social justice and racial justice and and other other forms of justice as well when it’s relevant for the role. But like environmental and economic and gender and, and youth justice in the work that the Governor’s Council does, they do occasionally ask questions related to these issues, but it’s very spotty. Whereas I would actually infuse these kinds of questions to assess the values of each candidate regardless across the board. Because I think I think we need to have going back to the conversation we just had, we need to have people who are serving in these roles who are focused on not just justice but fairness, who are have have the character of compassion and understanding of the communities that they are serving and the challenges they face who don’t necessarily go immediately to incarcerate. When sometimes addiction or mental health issues are have driven, whatever has led to that person being in court? And while consequences need to happen, they don’t necessarily need to happen in a one size fit all way. And so having people who are serving from the standpoint of really also going back to the other conversation or trying to understand what their own biases are, doing the work to affect their own biases, but also understanding the biases that are driving our state to the level of racial disparity in our incarcerated population now and making different choices that can help to level the playing field.

Tara Jacobs: More so doing that actual work, just like the systemic injustice in our system, actively doing the Governor’s Council work in an effort to be one cog in a machine, to work to dismantle the systemic injustices that we have here in Massachusetts. And so the work itself is a major motivating reason because I do see that opportunity to make a difference. The other reason I’m running is the opportunity to advocate. Through the access you have as a Governor’s Council member there in the state house every Wednesday. They literally are in the governor’s suite, their chamber doors next door to the governor’s door. They work directly with the governor and the lieutenant governor in the state house. They are surrounded by our legislative body. So the opportunity to create relationships and advocate for Western Mass and our needs that are so in so many ways, our problems are the opposite of the problems in Boston. And our voice here in western Mass is underrepresented, even more so underrepresented with the new redistricting where we lost the legislator in the redistricting. So we were already underrepresented. And now even more so. So to be another voice to amplify western mass and in a way that articulates our problems and helps to find solutions that actually work.

Tara Jacobs: That opportunity was just too good not to take on this campaign to try to win this primary and serve that role. So those were the two reasons I decided to run. As to your other question is why me? It’s an interesting you know, there’s no incumbent. It’s an open seat. Four of us have jumped in. I am the which one of us is not like the other candidate and I’m the only non attorney. As I mentioned, I’m also the only woman and I’m the only Berkshire County resident running, which is significant because we couldn’t find we went back as far as the online records went and couldn’t find anyone from Berkshire County having ever served on the Governor’s Council. Wow. So, you know, and I think it plays out, too, in terms of there’s no representation for Western Mass on the Supreme Judicial Court. You know, Berkshire County’s seat is vacant on the that bar committee I told you about. It’s our voice is. Really dampened in Boston. And so coming from the Berkshires gives me the perspective that I intend to serve the entire district. And it’s a very large district. It’s fully half the state. It’s 102 cities and towns in District eight, and it’s all four counties of Western Mass and even a few towns in Worcester County as well. And I have been traveling all over this district to towns that have fewer than a thousand people to Springfield, to Northampton, to Amherst to take a seat, literally going everywhere in this district and talking to people, talking to people where they are.

Tara Jacobs: Like literally yesterday I was in Northampton at the Addiction Recovery Center talking to their community meeting about what the governor’s counsel is and why it’s so important, because so many people don’t know what it is, but it impacts their lives. I’ve been doing the work to connect with, listen to share what governor’s counsel is. But even more importantly, I think that’s important for my campaign. But I really think even more importantly, hear what their problems are, what their concerns are, what things are lacking, resources that are lacking, things that we need from Boston. And so the fact that I’m from the Berkshires, I think just increases my the holistic way I’m looking at this region, as opposed to oftentimes it’s someone from Springfield who has the seat. And when they talk about Western Mass, they’re largely talking about Springfield. I’m literally talking about all of Western Mass. And and do it from a standpoint of the people, the people whose lives are impacted. So being that, like I said earlier, being that voice to represent the people I have in terms of qualifications, I largely see the job of the Governor’s Council as similar to other things I have done in terms of recruiting and hiring candidates. And, you know, my work on the school committee, I’ve been on numerous search committees, starting with the superintendent of schools, but also hired to business administrators and other administrative roles.

Tara Jacobs: And I’m the chair of the trustees at the library here in North Adams, and we just hired a library director, and I actively participated in that hiring process. And prior to all of that, in my career in the corporate world, I, I couldn’t even tell you the maybe even into the hundreds of people who I interviewed and hired for various roles in the advertising agencies I worked at as a manager of teams and having hiring authority. So I have experience even in roles that are not my own in in a library setting where I’m not a librarian in the school environment, where I’m not an educator being able to assess the qualifications, but also the merits and the evaluate for candidates who will best serve the communities that we’re hiring for. And I mean, looking back, I have a pretty strong record in terms of hiring candidates who have performed exceptionally well and really done all that we hoped for and more. And so I think that that skill set in terms of evaluating candidates translates directly to the work of the Governor’s Council. And also know I moved to the Berkshires 17 years ago, and from the very first moment that I got here, jumped in on working with organizations to effect positive change and find community wide solutions. The first thing I did, I joined. I served for six years on the Berkshire Commission on the Status of Women and advocated with the Status of Women Massachusetts wide. We all lent our voices and our energy to advocating for the Fair Pay Act successfully and locally.

Tara Jacobs: In Berkshire County, a countywide community solution to successfully decrease our teen pregnancy rates in the county. And so very proud of the work I did there. But it was just the first of many things. I’ve been on our local cultural council. I’ve served in various capacities on other boards and steering committees and and all with an eye to finding opportunities to actually affect positive changes that impact people’s lives and make them better. And I just see Governor’s Council as the next. Steps to go from that more local work to statewide, because as much as you represent a district, they vote on the council as a bloc. So not a bloc, but they. Majority majority vote wins. But you vote on all all of the candidates, not just the ones that will be placed in your local district. The only thing that really changes is when there is a local candidate, for instance, a Western Mass candidate. If I were to successfully become a Governor’s Council member, then I would be chairing the hearings and the meetings for the candidate who comes from my interested. So that’s the only time that it really. Yeah. So. Yeah. So between my educational background that I’ve already alluded to and the work that I’ve been doing, I feel I’m a very strong candidate and it comes down to the choice of the non attorney coming out of the standpoint of representing the people versus what I see more as a status quo.

Top Left Corner: So it seems to me that there are a lot of folks with sort of a progressive mindset that are realizing that they have to sneak in however they can and and affect change as quickly as they can in roles that are not always sexy, you know, that don’t get the the don’t get the attention, the media attention especially. One of the things that I like about what I’m hearing from you is that you seem to understand how the nitty gritty details really are, what affects the big picture. And having that micro and macro focus is not. That’s a rare that’s a rare talent. And look, I would love to say that. That there are a lot of you out there, a lot of Terry Jacobs there are not. And that is why I think the public has to support. The efforts of those people who really do want to see systemic change, especially when the opportunity comes up so infrequently, it is so infrequent that you get an opening. It’s like, you know, it’s like a grueling soccer soccer game that’s high speed for 150 years. You’re waiting for your opening. You’re waiting for your opening. You’re waiting for you. And you finally get the ball and you want to take a shot and you want to make it count. I think that I think that this is one of those times I was recalling that Trump had said with glee that Obama had left him 128 judge seats to fill, and that’s why he was doing that. The actual number apparently is 105, but still, that’s that’s a lot of love.

Tara Jacobs: And he took full advantage. He took full advantage.

Top Left Corner: Right. And I’m looking at the.

Tara Jacobs: Same and appointed.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. He just went on an appointing spree and he had a he had a Senate that was going to go along with him, even though even though they could have pushed back on a number of places and chose not to. We’re not going to get into that right now because it’s beyond the scope of this.

Tara Jacobs: But it’s all day.

Top Left Corner: It ticks me off, though. But here you’ve got Governor Baker. Yeah. You know, I got in touch with you and reconnected with you after I got that press release from Governor Baker’s office saying that they were so proud and pleased to submit his nomination, let’s say, to the governor’s counsel for Lawrence F Army Junior as associate justice of Probate and Family Court. And then today, there’s another one, just as Governor Baker appoints Sarah Tuberville as associate district of Dysart, associate justice of district court. So he’s doing the same thing. He’s you know, his days, you know, are.

Tara Jacobs: Well, that is going through the governor’s counsel though. So they’re his appointments. But they they are the ones to say, oh, sure. You know, those are good examples. But a few I think a month ago, maybe now I’ve lost track of time. The Governor’s Council confirmed an anti-choice judge who it was discussed in their in their meeting and three voted against it, you know, vocally calling out the fact that how uncomfortable they were with that and that it was a bad choice for our state. And five voted to confirm with comments like but she’s a nice person and and one even said, well, this isn’t really a judiciary matter, it’s a legislative matter. It’ll never affect a court case, which is, to me, ridiculous and, and lacking the foresight of what I am sure will become litigation in our state when it comes under attack here. And I’m sure that it will, you know. So while I’m very happy with the legislative supports around reproductive access and rights in Massachusetts, I fully foresee that it’ll be challenged and to have made that choice. It was after the Supreme Court had already undermined Roe, made that choice, and just boggles my mind. And it’s just outrageous. And and it makes me outraged that that happened. But but a comment was even made in that very same meeting, I don’t think, related to that particular candidate, but about another one that they walk into the chamber with their minds made up, really. And these meetings are really just for whatever and they know what they’re going to vote and no one’s minds are ever changed. And that goes back to the open meeting conversation about walking in with your mind made up, having already had whatever deliberations might have happened elsewhere, undercutting the time to actually, as a council, deliberate together and influence, potentially choices that don’t serve our state well don’t really happen. You know, they walk in, they know what they’re going to vote.

Top Left Corner: So it’s it’s frustrating. It’s really frustrating.

Tara Jacobs: And it’s very frustrating. Yeah.

Top Left Corner: No, I cannot.

Tara Jacobs: It is very frustrating.

Top Left Corner: I can’t imagine being in a room and trying to stay civil with people that, you know, are are not they’re not they’re not taking on this role with good faith. I mean, they’re literally they know that that’s not what they’re there to do. They’re there to be impartial and they specifically are taking advantage of that because they know that they have so much quiet power.

Tara Jacobs: It’s true. And. Yeah. I mean, there’s so many aspects to that that are frustrating. It’s funny, though, what you said when you let off with you do this in a civil manner. The majority of articles written about the Governor’s Council is about as about their lack of civility, which sometimes becomes amusing stories of what went on. But but I actually think civility needs to be reintroduced to the Governor’s Council chamber because for a few reasons. First, I just think the work they’re doing is so important, is so responsible in terms of it’s the highest level of our of our of our system that they’re making choices about. And they often, you know, name, call and fight with each other. There was an instance recently literally throwing dimes at each other, really literal, literal, literal. It was a metaphorical. It was a metaphoric dime. It had meaning. The dime had meaning, but literally throwing the physical. Piece of change at each other. Stories like that. So it’s, it’s, it’s, um, you know, I would hope for a level of civility and respect for each other, professionalism and conducting the Governor’s Council work. But also, I have heard from retired judges who have shared with me their insights that it’s actually it’s detrimental to the process because there are candidates who refuse nominations because they don’t want to subject themselves to that behavior and that potential embarrassment for themselves and their families.

Tara Jacobs: And so it narrows our options. Some really great candidates might not be willing to subject themselves to that, and we don’t get the opportunity to have them be nominated and confirmed. And so it actually damages us to have this behavior so prevalent and known. And and and I’ve talked to people who’ve who’ve gone either to support a nominee and so participated in the process or have been nominated themselves. And and they all describe it as a painful process. And I think it should be a process with scrutiny and and deliberation. And and it’s not an easy process like the three the three groups I told you about that ends with Governors Council. That entire process takes 18 months to two years from the time you’re nominated to confirmation. It’s grueling. And and I don’t know that you could ever make it be a fun trip through the wildflowers, but it shouldn’t be that painful where the very dignity of it all is at such a low.

Top Left Corner: Well, okay, so I. I was absolutely making an assumption that a certain level of decorum was in place there, but clearly that the very, very high stakes nature of what they’re doing results in bad behavior. It sounds like a it sounds like it’s ripe for a a reality TV show, maybe. You know, if we could just get the Kardashians in on it somehow, we could really boost public awareness about the importance of this position. But but I’ve often said that about about local politics as well, is that people will sit around and they watch TV sometimes really your selectboard meeting or your city council meeting will provide you all the drama you could ever ask for. And maybe that’s how we need to pitch government and awareness of civic civic life as it’s really good entertainment. Maybe you should. We should be selling popcorn out front and that might get well.

Tara Jacobs: It’s like, remember the show night court? It could turn into the Governor’s Council.

Top Left Corner: Yes, exactly. I do remember the show Night Court and that that kind of that kind of pins me at a certain Gen-X sort of age, too. Thanks for that. Well, what are you going to do? Actually, you know, we Gen-X is we we still have time to save the world. Trying every little bit every little bit helps. And I do want to say this is so, you know, sometimes I’m asking questions and this is a little bit, again, how the sausage is made. I’m asking questions I wouldn’t know the answers to because I need the person I need my guest to say it. But in this case, I will say with all honesty, I’m asking questions because I’m very curious and I don’t know the answers to these things. And I love it when that happens because I feel like like I’m smarter after after this conversation. And that helps. That helps because when when I know that I get fascinated. I know that a lot of the people who are fans of The Greylock Glass, you know, they’re similar in curiosity and they’ll be fascinated too. And that’s basically how I’m going to pitch this episode that this is fascinating stuff, riveting stuff. You know, the sleeper summer box office hit that you didn’t know that you needed to see. And that’s that’s.

Tara Jacobs: I love it.

Top Left Corner: So anyway.

Tara Jacobs: And I embraced the Cheerios community because I am I am one of you.

Top Left Corner: I know you are. And there you are. And and that for that, I thank you. It’s it’s not any secret that certain people find The Greylock Glass and latch on to it, and others do not. And the reason is, I think, because what we do is we we try to do these deep dives because that’s where you learn stuff and that’s where you come to understand your world, everything else. Just about. It’s just pitching you to try to buy something, whether it’s an actual purchase or whether it’s an actual purchase, or they just sort of want to push your buttons so that you make a snap decision. And I won’t have that. I just won’t have it on my on my show or on The Greylock Glass because I really want people to make their political decisions based on the best knowledge that they have available that that that can be available. So I really thank you for taking the time out of this. I know is a going to be a grueling last couple of couple time? How much time do we have left before the election? What are we looking at here?

Tara Jacobs: Oh, I hate it. Two and a half weeks, the final push and it is this that we’re pushing right through the finish line. Hard, hard all the way, getting out there, meeting people and doing what we can to get the word out. Because everything we’ve discussed is such a challenge to be breakthrough on a position people don’t know about.

Top Left Corner: Well, I’m here too.

Tara Jacobs: So every little bit helps. And I appreciate you giving me the time to discuss it because this too, will. We’ll post it, we’ll spread it and and try to get that word out to people of please so many people because they don’t know what the governor’s counsel is. And like I mentioned earlier, because it says the word counselor and not Governor’s Council on the ballot, they tend to skip it. They tend to leave it blank. And so I’m doing everything I can to raise awareness so people even even if they choose to vote for someone else, at least don’t skip it. This is so important. I hope they vote for me. But. But just don’t leave it blank. And so ideally, I want to beat the blame.

Top Left Corner: Let’s put it this way. Okay. So if people know nothing about any candidate, right? These are my listeners in this area. If you don’t know anything about any candidate and you’re going to fill in the blank for some random person, make sure it’s the person from the Berkshires, since we’ve never had at least as far as we can go back and document. Yeah. We’ve not had a Berkshires sort of representative on that Governor’s Council. Again, not the best way to make your decisions, but it would be great to have somebody from the Berkshires there because you’re right, that’s another conversation that we could have one day about how the fact about the fact that the Berkshires doesn’t exist. I mean, people think that we’re a separate another state somewhere between New York and Massachusetts, the state, the 51st state, that mass western mass actually stops at Shelburne Falls. Route two is it’s a cliff. There’s you beyond there. There’d be dragons and.

Tara Jacobs: There be dragons.

Top Left Corner: That’s yeah. I mean, that’s kind of how eastern mass thinks of is even when we had Deval Patrick as governor, we still couldn’t get any respect from for Western Mass. And that goes back all the way to post Revolutionary War times. That goes back to heck. That goes back to, in some ways, the Shays Rebellion. It goes back to the riots that the farmers would wage because there was this price fixing, price fixing going on in Boston. You know, the farmers would would lug their their stuff to Boston to try and sell it. And they’d go to one merchant, he’d say, well, I’ll give you, you know, $0.06 on the on the on the barrel. And they’d say they’d go to the next one. I’ll give you $0.05 on the barrel and then go to the next one. So it was like the entire.

Tara Jacobs: You know.

Top Left Corner: But that’s that’s another conversation. But yeah, western mass.

Tara Jacobs: It’s crazy how many of what goes on in Massachusetts can be traced back to historic roots that just have shifted over time and yet stayed the same.

Top Left Corner: And I think that the way but you’re here to change that one cog in a very complex machine. And I appreciate that. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. And we will put a link to your. Campaign page, if you have one.

Tara Jacobs: Definitely. That’d be wonderful. It’s super easy to remember it’s W.W. Jacobs and that links to everything else and also has a rapidly growing news page that will be putting this on to.

Top Left Corner: We go Tara Jacobs dot com and you’re one of the smart and lucky ones who grabbed that dot com with your name first it’s.

Tara Jacobs: That was actually through luck and the help of a Williamstown friend who has been just so supportive ever since doing some work together to advocate for his son in the North Adams School District. So when I when I announced I was running, he literally immediately, within a day had volunteered to help me with that. So.

Top Left Corner: All right. Well, we’ll talk to you again. I hope to to check back after your victory speech. And and we’ll just wish you the best. I wish you the best of luck, Tara. Thank you.

Tara Jacobs: Thank you so much, Jay. I really appreciate it. I appreciate your time and I appreciate your audience for listening.

Top Left Corner: All right. Take care and we’ll talk to you soon.

Tara Jacobs: Thank you.

That’s it for this episode, so thanks for tuning in Join us next time when we hear from District Attorney Andrea Harrington about the ongoing search for a Bekrshire County keep killer who has evaded justice more than 40 years. Until next time, stay safe, be good to each other, and go easy on yoursself. Bye now.

The post TLC #168: Tara Jacobs — running for the most critical office you haven’t heard of. appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Hey, Greylock Nation!

This is episode #167 of the Top Left Corner, published Tuesday, August 16, 2022, rather late in the evening. I’m your host, Jay Velazquez, also known as the mongrel, and I thank you for tuning in.

I had a different show planned for this episode, but when I heard that the workers at MASS MoCA had plans to walk out this week, I scrapped the original script and got ahold of the MASS MoCA Workers Union, Local 2110 UAW to see if I could get an organizer on the horn and find out where things stand.

If anyone had questions about where I, and by extension The Greylock Glass, stands on the struggle for worker representation, any uncertainty should be cleared up in the next 30 minutes. This is advocacy journalism, and at this point in late stage capitalism, I am proud to confess it. I’m mean, c’mon — you’re either on the side of people being able to afford to eat or you’re not.

Oh, and speaking of being able to afford to eat, The Greylock Glass is expensive to run, not even including the salary I don’t get paid. Want to keep this independent alternative newsthing alive?  Be. our. Sugardaddy. Or sugarmamma. Or, frankly, any kind of benign nonbinary custodial sugar persona that suits you and go to GreylockGlass.com/support and follow the link to membership and one-off contributions options. Thanks. 

Now, on with the show.

NORTH ADAMS — Unionized employees of MASS MoCA voted by a 96% vote to engage in a one-day work stoppage on August 19, 2022. Employees will be picketing the Museum all day and asking visitors to express support for a fair contract for staff.

The employees’ union, part of Local 2110 UAW, was formed in April of 2021 and has been in bargaining for the first union contract since last summer. 

“We have asked our members to strike because MASS MoCA has not bargained in good faith on a fair contract for the employees who make it so successful,” said Maro Elliott, Manager of Institutional Giving and.a member of the Union’s Negotiating Committee. “We want an agreement with MASS MoCA that will create a more accessible, equitable, and just workplace.”

The average wage in the bargaining unit is $17.30 per hour and two thirds of the unit make under $15.50 per hour. According to The Economic Policy Institute’s family budget calculator for a modest living in Berkshire County, a single individual with no children needs to earn $40,000 per year. The Union is seeking a minimum rate of $18 per hour for the first year of the contract and increases in 2023 and 2024 that would raise staff closer to $20 per hour by the end of the contract. The Museum is proposing a $16 per hour minimum and no guaranteed increases in 2023 and 2024. 

“Many of us live locally in North Adams. By raising hourly rates to something more livable, MASS MoCA would not only be supporting its employees, but helping lift the community,” said Isabel Twanmo, a Box Office Representative who has worked at MASS MoCA since 2018 and is on the Union’s Negotiating Committee.

Local 2110 has filed unfair labor practice charges against MASS MoCA with the National Labor Relations Board, citing the Museum’s bad faith bargaining. Earlier this summer, MASS MoCA was forced to settle an initial charge filed by the Union because of its refusal to grant a regularly scheduled annual increase to unionized employees after the union was voted in. The Museum was ultimately forced to grant the increases retroactively and post a public notice about doing so. The Union filed another charge when the Museum promised additional raises to individual employees if they convinced the union to lower its wage demands. 

“Throughout months of bargaining, MASS MoCA’s representatives have been antagonistic toward our union, telling us the arts and artists come first. We all love MASS MoCA but we also have to live,” said Elliott.

In April 2021, the MASS MoCA staff voted overwhelmingly to unionize with UAW Local 2110. The bargaining unit includes approximately one hundred full-time and part-time employees who work as educators, curators, custodians, museum attendants, box office staff, art fabricators, technicians, and other administrative and professional staff. UAW Local 2110 is a technical, office and professional union that represents many museums and cultural institutions in the northeast including the Museum of Modern Art, the MFA, Boston, the Portland Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim, the Jewish Museum, the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and many other non-profit and educational institutions.

Editor’s Note: The Greylock Glass pays to have rough transcripts of interviews produced. We attempt to remain as faithful as possible to the speakers’ original meaning, and apologize for any errors of transcription. That said, even the imperfect transcription we perform is costly. Please support us financially by becoming a member or making a one-time contribution to help us continue to provide this service.

Top Left Corner: With me on the line is Isabel Twanmo, who is going to be joining her brothers and sisters on the picket line on August 19th at MASS MoCA. Thanks for coming on the show, Isabel.

Isabel Twanmo: Thank you so much for having me, Jason. It’s an honor. I’m really happy to be here.

Top Left Corner: Well, the honors all mine and anything we can do to to get the message out, because a lot of people feel like unions are a thing of the past or an anachronism that, you know, we don’t need them anymore. But clearly, that doesn’t seem to be the case with a lot of folks in the museum space, because Mass MOCA is one of many museums that have voted to to organize over the years. Give us a brief history, if you can, Isabel, about how this came to be when the organizing started.

Isabel Twanmo: Yeah, so we started the process actually in the early summer of 2020. We were all laid off from Mass MOCA in March 2020 and that was really jolting. I think that really woke us up and really got us thinking more seriously about the process. We started seeing other museums unionizing or starting the process or have already unionized. And it it really inspired us. And so we started meeting with representatives from Local 2110 part the UAW. And then in, let’s see, April of 2021, we officially voted the union in. It was it was a really positive vote, I think it was. What was it like, 50/50 to 15 nos? Something like that. I could have the numbers a little off, but and then we started bargaining in October of 2021, and we’ve been bargaining ever since. It’s been almost a year now. So it’s come to a time where we’ve started to really see Mass MOCA’s management push back. And so we figured it was we, we felt it was time for a strike.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, well, let’s, let’s, let’s go back to the very beginning and let’s talk a little bit about what was going on as much as you can in a way about the early days of the pandemic and how management at the museum handled that. I know I spoke with some folks who wouldn’t go on the record at the time describing some of management’s tactics to try to get people to keep working in conditions that were not necessarily in line with public health officials directives and and some some kind of shady business there. So what sorts of things really prompted discussions on on the subject of this? These actions are not responsible management behavior. These are the things that we need to to put a stop to. What were those things?

Isabel Twanmo: Yeah, I mean, this was a very unsure, precarious time. No one knew what they were doing. But I think it was very clear that we were in a very dire situation. People are getting sick, people are dying. And so as as a front facing worker, I was sitting at the box office in March feeling very concerned for myself, for my colleagues, for our visitors that were coming through the door. And I think once once it looked like we would have to shut down, there was a lot of question of whether to keep the staff, whether they could. So we were getting a lot of mixed messaging from our management. And first it was we’ll try to keep you for a couple of weeks, oh, maybe longer. Oh, a lot of mixed messaging. And then, you know, a few minutes would go by and we get another message saying, all right, we got to wait. We have to lay you all off. So that was it was it was really frustrating. I think, you know, we have employees that have worked there for 20 years, you know, since the museum’s when it first opened. And so speaking from a front facing side of things, it was just it was startling.

Isabel Twanmo: But, you know, conditions weren’t safe. So. I think we all went into lockdown and we. I think the pandemic really woke people up to not only being laid off and how frustrating that was. We were seeing other museums and friends that other museums, they weren’t being laid off. They were being furloughed or even paid during that time. So I think we started sitting around and wondering like, well, why didn’t why didn’t Mass MOCA do that? Why aren’t we still employed, employed? Why are we in this situation where we don’t feel like we have any protection or any answers yet? And so when they did reopen, first off, they reopened very quickly. And like other institutions, we opened very quickly. But I think we reopened earlier than a lot of places. And so that in itself, we were all looking around thinking, you know, it seems a little too soon. And so we were still really unsure about our safety and still kind of holding this resentment that we were laid off so quickly. And it felt like the the museum panicked and we had to take the hit for it.

Top Left Corner: Now, there was talk originally that people would be able to return to work, but that’s not exactly what happened for everybody. If I recall, people had to sort of audition for the jobs that they had already had, the positions they held. Talk about that.

Isabel Twanmo: Yeah. So I was one of those people. I was laid off and then I was told that I would have to reapply for my job, which. That felt pretty insulting. I’m not going to lie. This was the job that I had been doing for a couple of years. I’d really dedicated myself to this job. I was working in visitor services as a visitor services associate, and I had really I felt like I connected more with the community through this position. And then to be told, you know, even though you carried this position for many years, you have to reapply for that. And there was no guarantee that we would get that job. So that didn’t feel too good. And then when I did come back, I didn’t necessarily get the same position. So, yeah, that that didn’t feel too good.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, it sounds it sounds unnecessarily draconian. It sounds like a power play to me. Yeah. You know, I’m sure that’s probably how it felt on the ground, too. And the thing is, a lot of the public, the the museum going public really was unaware of these these things because let’s face it, it’s MASS MoCA. They’re the good guys, right? I mean, it’s it’s arts and culture. You know, we love arts and culture. This is the Berkshires. And I think that that I heard and again, a lot of people were this is very early on. People were not. They were afraid to talk. They were afraid that there was going to jeopardize their positions, their chances of being rehired. So unfortunately, there was a lot of stuff that people told me that I’ve had to keep under my hat because I you know, they it was all off the record, which is really too bad because if it had been on the record, maybe things would have been improved quicker simply because the public would have heard what kind of behavior was going on in the management conference around the conference table. So this would not happen in a lot of industries where, you know, it’s just a job. Right? And I punch in, I do my work, I punch out, I go home. But the thing is, it isn’t just a job, is it? For most of the people that work at Mass MOCA, it’s more than a job.

Isabel Twanmo: Yeah, I would I would agree with that. And I think what you said earlier about how the outside perception of museums, especially these enormous influential museums like Mass MOCA, you would think they would be paying their workers appropriately. You would think, you know, a lot of people see Mass, MOCA or a lot of larger contemporary institutions as sort of these, for lack of a better word, elite, elitist institutions which have a lot of money. And so you’d think their staff would be paid properly. You think they’d have proper working conditions and they’d feel empowered in their jobs. But unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. So at at Mass MOCA, we do have employees, many of which who live in the community, who contribute to the community, who really love Mass MOCA, who care about Mass MOCA, who aren’t seeing that that love returned to them and aren’t seeing, you know, the the return for, for how much they give.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. It’s it’s the case that people are are dedicated. They’re committed because they believe in the mission. You know, if you go work at a fast food restaurant. It has to be one special fast food restaurant for you to say that you believe in the mission. Right. Right. But the fact of the matter is, you can go work in a fast food restaurant and make more than you would. Doing what you’re doing, you know, at Mass MOCA, in many cases, I’m looking at this. The press release I’m holding says that the average wage in the bargaining unit is 1730 per hour, and yet two thirds of that unit make under $15.50 per hour. That’s for 1550. And I’m glad that you that you link to the Economic Policy Institute’s family budget calculator, which can send into the news a couple years ago, because it it showed that there’s nobody who’s there’s not a single apartment that you can rent that you can afford on minimum wage around here. There’s no way that a a say a single parent with one child can afford to live on these wages. It’s it’s really you know, we think about the arts and culture and we think about them as these sort of liberal, you know, maybe even progressive institutions. And yet they don’t they don’t actually behave that way, at least not when it comes to the help. 1550 an hour. Give us a sense of what I mean. I know what it feels like to live in 15, 15 and 15 averages for those folks in the listening audience who’ve never had to just describe a lifestyle based on 1550 per hour. Just be brutally and be brutally honest.

Isabel Twanmo: So to back things up by a couple of years, when I started at Mass MOCA, I started working part time, but part time and some days I was working five days a week, but with just a shorter shift each day. Within two months of starting my job, I realized I didn’t have to just get a second job. I needed a third job. So for many years I was working six days a week. Sometimes I get pulled in to cover shifts on that one free day a week that I had. So I didn’t feel like I had a social life. I felt a lot of stress and tension all the time, wondering how I’m going to pay my bills. Despite working six days a week, no one should have to feel insecure when they work that much. But of course, I love MASS MoCA. I was so excited to be working at this fantastic renowned institution, and I still love working there. I still love MASS MoCA. But again, we we need to live too. We need to be able to pay our rent. We need to not feel like we’re working. We’re living paycheck to paycheck. Like we don’t know whether we can afford our full grocery list each week and that it doesn’t make you feel good. It doesn’t make you feel secure in your life. And so we are very much pushing for a living wage so that many of my colleagues are on food stamps. We don’t want them to be on food stamps. We want them to feel comfortable that they could feed themselves, that they can treat themselves every so often. And right now we don’t feel like we can do that on the wages that we make currently.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, that’s that’s the thing. I mean, and remember, in America, the greatest sin is being poor. I mean, there is nothing that’s going to get you scorn faster than being poor. And that’s even when you’re working, right. People, they figure that you must be doing something wrong if you’re not getting paid more or, you know, it’s a really it’s this somehow between like 1975 and today, maybe even 1980. And today, we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that workers don’t deserve a living wage, good conditions being treated like human beings. Right. And when the when the museum released its statement, once that vote occurred and the union was brought in, the statement was very rosy. You know, we’re going to work with our our the the local to to make the best possible situation for everybody involved. And we look forward to. And I knew really looking at that that that meant they’re sitting there trying to figure out how they can wiggle out of this. And the way they’ve been doing that, as you say in this press release, is they’ve been stalling. Describe the last 11 months or so of of non progress in the negotiations.

Isabel Twanmo: Yeah. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind in between bargaining sessions, they’ve had us wait all the way up to seven weeks until we’re back at the table. Our last session we had, I believe it was a four or five week window between sessions. That’s that’s too much time in between. And then when they do bring when they do make moves on proposals, it’s very small. They might change a few words here and there. But ultimately, Mass MOCA’s management is not making significant moves on their contracts in the same way that we feel we are. And at this point we’re bargaining against ourselves, which at the end of the day that’s unfair bargaining. And so we don’t really appreciate that. We don’t appreciate being strung along for so long when we want to bargain fairly. We want Mass MOCA to bargain fairly as well. We want this to be a smooth and collaborative process, but we’re not seeing that same energy on their side.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. Yeah, it’s. It’s it’s an old game that they’re playing. And I think, if I recall, I think that when there was a union. When it was long before it was a museum. I think it was I think it was known as a company union, which basically is a sort of a puppet organization. It was a union in name, but it actually worked on at the behest of the company. And I don’t know enough of the history to go into it, but it sort of was a way of a steam valve so that the workers could sort of vent. But at the end of the day, nothing really happened. And it sounds to me like the management of Mass MOCA is kind of wishing for that, sort of let them let them, you know, kick up the heels, let them fuss, let them fume. But at the end of the day, we’re not really going to let anything change that much. What are you asking for that they seemed so reticent to meet you ever?

Isabel Twanmo: I think the biggest thing right now are wages. We’ve been asking for $18 an hour and that was after we came down from $20 an hour. So we have been making significant moves to try to meet Mass MOCA in the middle. But at the end of the day, that wage needs to be a living wage. It needs to support our staff. $15 an hour is not a living wage in this area. I also want to mention North Adams is a lot cheaper than other areas. But with rising inflation, with rising cost of living, we’re making nowhere near what it takes just to get the minimum in Berkshire County. So that’s a huge area that we’ve been trying to work with Mass MOCA on, and it’s an area that they have been most reluctant to move or meet us in the middle. So again, making very minor changes to their proposals, sometimes not at all. And we just feel like we’re making moves on our own contracts and bargaining against ourselves, which doesn’t make any sense.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, it sounds like you are. You’re you’re really I mean, you’re shaving off a little bit by a little bit by a little bit, hoping that they’ll they’ll they’ll eventually sort of, you know, join the game here. And they’re just not they’re just not playing ball. They’re waiting to see how much will you give away before they even have to consider budging. And that’s that is not good faith negotiations whatsoever. That’s that’s I’m not I’m not going to use that. I mean, this is a podcast. I can say whatever I want. But so this action that you’re taking on the 19th, it’s a one day strike. What do you. First of all, what is the what is the the tactical? Sense of a one day strike. What do you hope will achieve and how will you know? How will you measure it? Success.

Isabel Twanmo: That’s a great question. Let’s see. So we really do want to strike because we feel that it is time. We feel like we don’t have a choice at this point. Mass MOCA has not been budging. So we felt like a larger collective action was necessary. Again, the one of the top things that we’re trying to push is for higher wages. So that is something we will be talking about on Friday. And in terms of measuring the success, I’m not quite sure. But we have seen strikes and successful outcomes from these collective actions at the MFA. And so we were really inspired to use this as a tool and to get the community together to show that we need a living wage. We’re not making that. And so that’s what we hope to achieve this weekend.

Top Left Corner: Well, what I hope is that any of my listeners who can make it over there, this is going to be going on all day. I would like you to go to Christos Pizza. There are Christos famous pizza over on Holden Street. They are our official pizza sponsor of The Greylock Glass. And and go buy a cheese pizza and bring it to the strikers at MASS MoCA. You’ll be easy to spot. You’ll be right there and out front, right?

Isabel Twanmo: Yeah. We’ll be right on the sidewalk in front of Mass MOCA on Marshall Street.

Top Left Corner: It’s a no question that you can find them, bring them some pizza. And and, you know, I wish I could say that, you know, I’ll give you a some sort of I don’t know what I’ll give you. I’m giving you free podcasts. I give you free podcast, you bring them pizza, pizza. And maybe because it’s going to be kind of hot out, I’m pretty sure it’s probably 85 or something. So maybe some some iced tea or or just water would be good. Maybe some. I don’t know. Maybe some. I don’t know. What do you what do you like? What do you like when it’s hot outside?

Isabel Twanmo: Oh, I love the idea of pizza. Please bring water. Please bring your voice. Please bring comfortable shoes. And please bring all the support that you can get your friends, your colleagues. I know there’s a lot of past Mass MOCA employees that live and work in town. Please come join us on Friday and be ready to use your voice.

Top Left Corner: Anywhere people can go to find out more besides The Greylock Glass, do you have like a Facebook or a social media, anything like that?

Isabel Twanmo: We have all of the above. We have a website at Mass MOCA union dot org. Let me double check that. That’s correct. Yes. Dot org. We also have an Instagram. It’s at Mass MOCA Union. Please follow that. We post updates, we post frequently asked questions, we post images of support. If you’d like to take a photo that we can post on our Instagram, we have printouts that you can fill out and hold up. We also have posters that you could download on the website. If you’re a local business and want to hang a poster that says We support the Mass MOCA Union, please print those out. Please put them in your windows and show the rest of the community that you support the Mass MOCA Union.

Top Left Corner: I think I’ll put a big honkin, big intrusive pop up on The Greylock Glass.

Isabel Twanmo: With that, please.

Top Left Corner: That everybody who goes The Greylock Glass can see that we support the Mass MOCA union. Well, Sister Isabel, I thank you for taking the time to talk with The Greylock Glass here in the top left corner. I will try to make it down to myself and make sure that you get pizza, even if I have to bring it myself. And and, you know, hey, in solidarity.

Isabel Twanmo: Thank you so much, Jason. This was a pleasure. Thanks for calling and I hope to see you on Friday.

Top Left Corner: Take care. Bye bye.

The post Top Left Corner #167: MASS MoCA workers organize one-day walk-out appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Top Left Corner: This is the top left corner at The Greylock Glass. And this is episode number 166 of the top left corner right here on The Greylock Glass GreylockGlass.com the Berkshires mightiest independent alternative news thing. I’m your host, Jay Velázquez. And as always, I do thank you for tuning in and welcome you to the show. You know, if you appreciate the fact that seven and a half years later, we continue to do this this quirky news program, then let us know with your thanks. You know, send us an email to editor at GreylockGlass.com and just tell us we’re doing a great job and why you listen. And you could even take another step and visit GreylockGlass.com support, read a little spiel, and then click become a member, which will give you a few different membership options. Pick the one that matches your level of commitment to local alternative news and your budget. And if becoming a monthly sustaining member is not your bag or you just can’t do that right now, there are other ways. If you look at the sidebar, there are a couple of other options that allow you to do a one time contribution gifts of of any size, any denomination. Help us keep the lights on here at The Greylock Glass Universal Headquarters. So this show, as I mentioned, 166, that’s a few shows by now. This is as special as all of them because we get to do one of the things that we love best of all, which is put the spotlight on local music. And we do that times, too, in this episode. Don’t cover a lot of car accidents or things like that, but I can’t help but wonder when the sirens go by just what it is that’s going on.

Top Left Corner: Having started my career in journalism, in cops and courts, and I used to actually pretty much chase fire engines and police cars all over town looking for a story. You know, someone’s got to do it. So the what was I saying? All right. I was saying that I get to do one of the things I love to do best, which is shine a spotlight on local, independent music. And I get to do that times, too, in this episode because our first guest. Is Steve Dalton, who is guitarist, vocalist, producer for the band Sample the Cat. He is going to talk about Sample the Cat, the band, his latest music and the main event, which is the first of its kind, taking place Saturday, July, July, Saturday, August 13th at the Berkshire County Fairgrounds. It is a multi. Arts genre performer Mike. I guess we call that on the show a micro festival, which is exactly what it is. Performing arts of all kinds on the same stage. And it’s several hours of of just great, great entertainment and art. So let’s let’s have a listen to that. But first, let me tell you about number two segment. That’s right. Not just one. You get two segments. We speak with local musician and. Drumstick maker, artist and drumstick maker Dave Deming. Dave has been crafting these drumsticks that have made their way all over the world and have been gripped by some of the most famous hands in the percussive world. And so that’s part two. But let’s go right now to our conversation with Steve Dalton of Sample the Cat and now promoter of the event, the main event right here on The Greylock Glass.

Welcome to the Top Left Corner, Steve.

Steve Dalton: Thank you very much. Well, thank you for having me.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, it’s my pleasure. I try to to to boost local music any way I can. And I see that you’re doing the same thing. And and then some I get your press release about the the events that are going on at the Berkshire Forge Fairgrounds this weekend. And I couldn’t be happier. Why don’t you, first of all, just give us. A little bit of a rundown of sample. The cat who you are. How long you’ve been together. And what kind of music you play. We’ll just start from there. Talk to us about Sample the cat.

Steve Dalton: Yeah, well, first of all, I just. I appreciate what you do to Jay. I see you out there pushing the local music scene and and really trying to grow a scene here, and we’re trying to do the same thing. So I just wanted to start off with that. Thank you. But yeah, we’re sample the cat. We I started this project probably about. Well, I started recruiting for it about three years ago. That’s when I met Brian, who’s our keyboardist. We met at Local Community College BC actually in the music program. So we got together, started writing some stuff, just kind of messing around. Just it was the goal of taking our own individual style. I come from a rock and blues type of background with a little bit of jazz. Maybe Brian is way more heavily into the jazz, so we kind of bring those two perspectives together. And that was the goal, just to make some music that kind of blended our two individual sort of musical personalities and see what happens from there. And, you know, but the goal was we wanted to make this a serious thing. You know, we were both in school for it. So, you know, we hooked up with a couple of different musicians and, you know, tried a few different people out with chemistry wise. And eventually about a year or so later, maybe a year. Yeah, probably about a year later. That’s when I met Kendra and her and I dated first.

Steve Dalton: Actually, it was initially that’s what it was. And then I found out she was just an amazing singer. And so I had to I had to bring her into the band too, you know. So that’s kind of the core three piece we do the songwriting and everything and and then we’ve got a new drummer that’s been playing with us for the past couple of shows. She’s really great. Olivia Davis We’re super happy to have her on board with us and hopefully she’ll be sticking around for a while. So, but yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s kind of our backstory a little bit. And like I was saying, we’re all about the music that we create is to be a combination of all our musical styles. Kendra grew up in church. She grew up singing gospel music and soul is her passion. So that’s kind of her the the the flavor that she brings to the mix, too. And she’s a great lyricist. So but yeah, that’s that’s pretty much what we’re about. A little bit of the back story. We’ve been performing in public for a little over a year now. Um, and just really having a lot of fun, like you said, you know, the. The. There’s a lot of opportunity out there for four, for four and for us, and you create your own opportunity. So that’s what we’re doing.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. Yeah. Like we were talking about in our in our digital greenroom there, there’s it’s a big county, right? I mean, it covers a lot of space. But for all that space, the really especially from mid county to North County, there’s just not as much opportunity to play out because the venues have kind of closed up.

Steve Dalton: A lot of the venues have unfortunately.

Top Left Corner: Over the years. I mean, we lost what Jay Allen Main Street, North Street in Pittsfield. I mean, I’m very happy to see that there’s going to be a bodega slash restaurant there. I think it’s going to be great. I heard about that. That’s going to be great. But but that was a good, you know, a good venue for a while there here in North County, Halo North Adams was just getting going when the pandemic hit.

Steve Dalton: And the big Walkmen. What happened? Yeah, the killer battery, too.

Top Left Corner: That was a great venue. And hopefully somebody will. Maybe since it’s I mean, it’s turnkey. I mean, if you’ve got the money, it’s turnkey. You could you could be up and running in a week. So that’s too bad. But I see that what you have done is you have put together essentially this is the first year of it, a sort of a micro festival.

Steve Dalton: Yeah, but more you could call it that.

Top Left Corner: But more than music and hey, you know, there’s room to grow, but more than music, you’ve got some other kinds of performance. Talk to me about why you didn’t want to make this just a music festival.

Steve Dalton: Um, well, I mean, I. I love collaboration, and we all do. And we’re all artists more than just musicians. You know, we are musicians. We are songwriters and whatever other labels you want to put on that. But we’re artists and we love the arts and appreciate the arts. And and, you know, some things don’t get as much highlighted, if you will. But the goal with this was just to kind of bring a bunch of different flavors of performing arts to one location and so that everybody can kind of enjoy a piece of this or a piece of that. And, you know, everybody can go there with something that’s going to be interesting, right?

Top Left Corner: So we start off we start off the day. It’s What time is it? 4 p.m.. This is Saturday, August 13th. If we haven’t said that before, 4 p.m. at the four H Fairgrounds in Pittsfield at Utility Drive in Pittsfield and and tell give us a rundown of the the agenda for the for the evening. What, what’s the what’s the order of operations.

Steve Dalton: Okay. So we’re going to start the night off or the afternoon off the gates open at four tickets at a time or T5, five at the gate, 230. So I’m encouraging everybody to buy tickets ahead of time. That just kind of makes our process a little easier. Starting at around 430, we’re going to be starting the show off with the BMX riders and we’ve got three or four of those guys coming out. Josh Rozier is going to be riding just there. Jesse Posey and Jake Sealy, all three like. Really top notch riders in the community. So I’m really excited to have those guys here. We’re going to build a couple of cool features for them to do, some do some jams on. We’ve got Opal Raven, who is a multitalented performer. She’s a dancer. She dances with swords and with fire and all kinds of cool, incredible stuff.

Top Left Corner: I think she was at the she was the Renaissance fair, wasn’t she? Is last past weekend, I think.

Steve Dalton: Probably.

Top Left Corner: Probably there was a fire dancer and it was probably Opal. Everybody everybody knows the group. Yeah. And then go ahead.

Steve Dalton: After that? Well, she’s going to be doing a sword routine, kind of. At the same time as the bikes are going to complement that and we’re going to have some music playing in the background while they’re doing their thing. Nice. Moving on from that. We’re going to be bringing up the music. Which starts off with Maher Flav, who’s a local hip hop artist songwriter, another incredible lyricist for music’s greats. He’s going to be playing about 45 minutes to an hour. Then we come up, sample the cat. We’re going to be doing a set and Opel’s going to come back out there in our set for a few of the songs to do a fire dance.

Top Left Corner: That sounds really cool, Steve. What? I saw that there were a couple of other things I would not have expected going on, such as a someone is going to be doing a on the spot sort of real time painting. Is that so?

Steve Dalton: That’s right. Yeah. Bobbi Diesel, who is another local legend. He’s done tags from here across the state, around the region. Some of the best street art that you see out there is Bobby Diesel’s work. He’s going to be there most of our entire set for sample. The cat is going to be he’s going to be next to the stage on his own little area, doing a live painting that’s going to kind of go along with the theme of the show. If you notice some of a lot of our marketing online, it contains a little bit of that street art vibe, and that’s because Bobby Diesel is going to be there doing a live painting as well.

Top Left Corner: Sweet.

Steve Dalton: Well, that’s kind of the the some of the afternoon we’ll have food truck, one food truck there. We’re going to have drinks and hopefully a merch tent and some other things, too. So there’s a lot going on. It’s going to be, like I said, a little bit of something for everybody.

Top Left Corner: It sounds it sounds fantastic. It sounds like a really well thought out collection of talent. And and the fact that there’s food there, there’s drinks there. And I think it’s we’re not just talking lemonade, right? There’s like beer and stuff.

Steve Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There’s going to be beer and wine.

Top Left Corner: I mean, not that there’s nothing wrong with lemonade. I’m a big fan of lemonade, but, you know.

Steve Dalton: But there’s nothing wrong with lemonade. Maybe there’ll be some of that, too, but. Yeah.

Top Left Corner: All right.

Steve Dalton: Some drinking food.

Top Left Corner: There. So. This. This this micro festival, the main event. And that’s mainly riffing off of sample the cats sort of theme there. Hey, what you didn’t tell us about the name? Sample the cat since I’ve got you on the phone.

Steve Dalton: Yeah. I mean, it’s funny, we were kind of the band. We were all sitting together around the table thinking of a name, and we had, like, written down a whole, like, brainstormed a bunch of ideas, written them all down and made a list. And then we kind of, uh. In the middle of doing this, Bryan, our keyboardist. I have a cat and he’s a very vocal cat, so he’s always walking around meowing and stuff. And Brian was like, Hey, like out of a joke. He was like, Hey, why don’t we sample the cat, you know, and we’ll put that in a song or whatever. So I was like, a little light bulb went off in my head and I was like, Oh, that’s kind of that has a little bit of a ring to it, you know? Let’s write that down.

Top Left Corner: How to feel.

Steve Dalton: Go ahead.

Top Left Corner: Being a cat, a cat lover myself, I had a feeling that that was probably sort of the inspiration for that name. I’ve got a loud.

Steve Dalton: Mouth that’s just kind of loud mouth. Yeah, right.

Top Left Corner: I got a loud mouth at home as well. And if you want to sample him, too, by all means, because he’s he’s not shy about it. So this is this is a great this is a great, as I said, show how and by the way, I got to say, 25 bucks in advance, 30 bucks at the gate. That’s a really good price for this much entertainment. I mean, you’re talking you’re talking a few hours here. That’s a lot of entertainment of, you know, talent for for for that money. Yeah. How many people do you expect this this first time around?

Steve Dalton: I mean, it’s hard to say, but we’re hoping to get around to 50. Yeah. So hopefully, hopefully that will happen. And if it doesn’t, we’ll find out what does happen and we’ll go from there.

Top Left Corner: There you go. Well, we’re going to definitely we’re going to put a link to the tickets and the show notes to this episode. We will boost this on Facebook and probably Instagram and everywhere else you can think of, because this is just I mean, it’s really it’s just a fabulous I guess I called it entrepreneurial, artistic, entrepreneurial ism before. And that’s really what it is. And we need you to keep doing this and we need other people to kind of get inspired, too, so that we can have different, you know, you know, events that you can play at that you don’t have to set up yourself.

Steve Dalton: Yeah, well, that’s true, too. Yeah, there are some other things in the works. I’m not going to say anything about them now, but I’m talking to some friends. There are some things in the works, so I’m.

Top Left Corner: Sure you let The Greylock Glass know first.

Steve Dalton: I certainly will.

Top Left Corner: All right, Steve Dalton. Hey, I got you. I get one more one more favor here to ask. It’s always nice to be able to give people a teaser for the for the for the performance. Is there a song that would be a good representative of Sample to Cat that we can play on the show on this episode?

Steve Dalton: Yes. We’ve got a few songs out there on Spotify. You can check us out there. But I would recommend our most recent release called Lover of Mine. That’s a good that is like kind of that song as the some the picture of kind of what we are what our sound is now. Our sound goes all over the place. But sure, it’s that combination of different ideas that blend together that’s called Lover of mine.

Top Left Corner: Fantastic. All right. Well, Steve Dalton, I thank you. I wish you, I guess, break a leg Saturday and we will have you on the show as soon as you have more information for us about this secret plans that you got going on there.

Steve Dalton: You got it. All right. Take care. I appreciate it, Jason. Thank you.

Top Left Corner: Yep. Bye bye.

Steve Dalton: Bye.

Top Left Corner: That was “Lover of Mine” from Sample the Cat. Another great local group that you should be paying attention to and going to check out whenever you can, such as tomorrow if you’re listing on Friday when this came out. August 13th at the Berkshire County Fairgrounds. It’s going to be, like I said, several few hours of really great entertainment, a lot of bang for your buck. And and you get to enjoy that. Now, let us go let us turn to our second conversation that we had with Dave Deming of domestics right here on the Top Left Corner. And with me on the line now is Dave Deming, who is a Williamstown resident and the founder of Dem’ Sticks, a locally produced drum percussion tool utensil that has found its way all over the world.

Dave, thank you so much for being on the Top Left Corner.

Dave Deming: Before we even begin, Jason I just really, really wanted to thank you for putting together this show. It’s just really, really important to hear levelheaded folks conversing and thinking, and it does a lot for me mentally. It’s very, very important. So thanks for helping to keep me informed and presenting all the politicos. And it’s just it’s just a great source of information. What you do. And thank you very much.

Top Left Corner: That’s great. And I appreciate you being willing to to repeat that because like I said.

Dave Deming: Oh, yeah.

Top Left Corner: You know, there are a number of people out there who have not heard of The Greylock Glass have not heard of the show. And and it’s it’s amazing. But when people do see that testimonial, that that means something to them, it the idea that there could be informed level headed debate is maybe a surprise to some, but we’re going to fight for it. We’re going to fight to keep objective, you know thought here. Yeah in the area.

Dave Deming: Well I really I really like your low key sort of low key persona, if you will, because it’s it’s it kind of keeps the door open. You know, I’m sure the wheels are turning mighty fast back in there. But but your vocal persona, I think, kind of relaxes or maybe lures people into speaking. And, you know, we got to hear from these politicos, these local people who want to be leaders. And I don’t know. I think I think you’ve got some I think you’ve got what it takes to facilitate that. And that is sorely needed in this day and age. It’s a it’s a critical quality of being a human or humanity. It’s a wise position. And but you can you can you can be thinking all kinds of snarky thoughts and all the wheels can turn back there. But yeah, I mean, you’re offering a platform for people to either for themselves or hang themselves with what they say. So, you know, I don’t know. It’s the possibility is good, sincerity is really good. It feels good and it’s important.

Top Left Corner: Well, I try to I try to remember that it’s it’s not a game. I mean, we can have fun, no doubt, but it’s but it’s not a game.

Dave Deming: Jason, what do you what do you do for for real money for a living?

Top Left Corner: Well, I’m currently do writing, editing, other publishing, freelance work whenever I can find it. I have shoveled horse manure. I have washed dishes. I have I have done construction, you name it.

Dave Deming: I’ve been to all of that because that’s what I do for a living. I mean, I’m a building contractor. I remodel homes for 43 years and I’m licensed. And that’s how I make my living in Williamstown. That’s my deal. Is that the sticks?

Top Left Corner: Good.

Dave Deming: Yeah. I was going to say, yeah, the drumsticks are more of a passion. And, I mean, I. I mean, I’ve painted sort of painted myself into a lovely corner with this drumstick thing because it’s it’s an artisan pursuit. And it and artisans oftentimes, you know, guys make these beautiful drum sets. I just posted on Facebook about this because I just raised my prices and I was starting to resent making the sticks because these orders would all come in on PayPal. Got to make so little prepare a sticks that it was pulling me away from carpentry, which pays $60 an hour. And that’s before all the expenses and taxes and all of that, before taxation and all of that. So here I am and these guys all over the world telling me, wow, you know, these are the greatest sticks and all this stuff. And I just, you know, mailing out a pair of sticks costs anywhere from 375 to 5 bucks if they order two pair. So if I sell a pair of sticks for 28 bucks and I’m and five of that is immediately gone to postage and then $9 of it is going to materials. I’m not I’m wasting my time. I mean, I’m just it’s absolutely idiotic to to make these sticks because they’ll go broke.

Top Left Corner: You might as well start a local news organization.

Dave Deming: Right? Yeah. Ah, you know, a path. I mean that’s analogous to so many things, other things that people pursue out of love or you know, and craftsmanship and you go down or being an artist. My girlfriend is a sculptor and a model printmaker and her name is brand engraving and she’s a master printmaker, which is akin to being a producer and having your own recording studio, right? So artists come from all over the world to her shop Gravity Press, experimental print shop in North Adams to create prints. And she facilitates their artistry. But she’s been a she’s an award winning mono print artist all in her own right, the POLLOCK-KRASNER recipient, Joan Mitchell Awards, and has created probably the largest model print ever created by a single artist, exceptionally talented sculptor as well. So so we’ve been together for 14 years or so and so that’s been a pleasure. We go to New York City. We’ll spend half the time schmoozing with big deal musicians and the other half of the time going after other artists and art galleries. So it’s it’s really one one feeds the other. And we’re both makers of things. So it’s it’s fun. We can both talk about tool talk and practical matters of making things. My relationship with Brandon growing has really fed my creative side and I’ve been a carpenter for 43 years and a lot of that time spent right here in Williamstown and I started. After 30 years hiatus, I started drumming again and went to an open mic and I let another drummer up on my drum kit.

Dave Deming: And this is kind of a lemons to lemonade story. So the guy got up in my drum kit and he was really abusive and he broke these bundle rod implements that a lot of drummers play with. It’s just smashed them up and I got really mad and told them to get off of my drum set. And and so the next couple of days I thought, well, I need to go out, buy another pair of these. And and I thought, well, I’m a carpenter. Maybe I could go, maybe I could just make my own. So I went I went looking for of barbecue skewers, you know, and tried to cobble them together. And then I started experimenting with bamboo and and I and they just sounded good, you know, these little reeds of bamboo. And it kind of sounded great. And and I brought them to the open mic and played some a variety of song styles, you know, country boom, macaca sounding stuff and brushy stuff. And and it sounded pretty good. And the other drummers who would show up kind of liked them and wanted to have me make them some. And eventually I thought, wow, you know, is this me? Or do these things really sound good? So I contacted a percussion instructor at Berklee College of Music and I thought, these guys will be the pickiest guys maybe in the world. And I said, Can I send you a sample pair for you to review and tell me what you think? And the guy, Bertram Lehman there at Berkeley said, Yeah, sure, send him along, you know, and I get this email back from him and he goes, Dave, this is the sound that I’ve been looking for.

Dave Deming: You ought to contact these guys and get them some sticks. And I looked down the list on the email. And there’s Antonio Sanchez, who plays with Pat Metheny and Kata Ogawa, who plays with Snarky Puppy. And I just I couldn’t believe my eyes. So I write these guys and send them off Styx and I get the same response back and I thought, Wow, you’re really on to something here. This is weird. So the bamboo reed that I was using was only 13 inches long. Drummers need sticks at or at least 15 inches long, so, oh my God, how am I going to get sticks? So I contacted several people, eventually found a person who imports items from China, asked them for help. And through his help, I brought in a huge head to buy a minimum order from China, a huge quantity of bamboo reeds, all at 16 inches, which is perfect, and these different colors, which is really cool and, and started making them at home and putting them together. And then I started a Facebook page and then hooked that up to PayPal for ordering and it kind of took off. And then through Facebook, I started reaching out to various celebrities, looking for validation and then very, very carefully asking them if I could use their name and generously.

Dave Deming: Many of them said yes. Others said no, I’m endorsing for other big name sticks and I can’t do that, but I’ll buy them from you and use these sticks when the big spotlight isn’t on me. So just this has been the way and carefully navigating the business aspect with the esthetic love of percussion and music, you know, it’s they’re all over the place. But but so so so I learned how to negotiate with these celebrities and how to appeal to the average drummer. And they really took off. And it’s been fun. And the range of sticks that I offer is, is a lot like a restaurant menu. You know, if you’re in this mood or the song calls for this kind of a a mood or a sound, you can use these sticks with that song. Or if you want a softer, real soft, more brushy thing, you can buy the pears that have corn mixed in and they’re really soft. So they’re what I make are sort of akin to paint brushes for painters. And you’re painting. Different strokes of color. If you want really fine, articulate lines, you can you can get these bundles that are all tight together with O-rings to make a defined sound. Or if you want a broader stroke and a more gentle broader sound, then you get brooms, know, corn, hurl and all that.

Top Left Corner: So so yeah, let me let me stop you here and ask some more technical questions. You know, you said that you decided to go with bamboo. You try that out. What is it about the material itself? Is it is it the texture of it? Is it the consistency, the dent, the density of it? I mean.

Dave Deming: All of that. You got it. Exactly. They’re they’re they’re warm, they’re articulate and they’re resilient. So so there is a big, big, big company out there that many years ago, they started making a product that is akin to what I do. Only they use birch birch dowels and they group them together and they shrink wrap a cheap plastic handle on the end. And they they put a cap on the bottom with their company logo on it. And they’ve been selling those to drummers for years. And that’s what that guy at open mic broke. And so birch is a soft hardwood. And so you’re if you’re playing that around the kit, they’ll snap and the shear off. And they also sound very ticky, you know, you hear that ticky sound, you don’t necessarily hear the cymbal or the drum head itself reverberating nicely. So they’re a they’re a kind of a I don’t want to well, they’re kind of a cheapie way of making sticks. Nobody ever has to touch them. They cut down the tree in America, run it through the mills, run it through all of the Sanders, and they’re there, make it all those dowels, and then they it just the machine grips them together, puts a handle on them. They go in the plastic bag and off to the music stores. So but they make lots of money for the big drumstick manufacturer that makes them. But they’re not all that great. Maybe akin to a certain burger chain that cranks out formulaic hamburgers that aren’t really delicious, but they’re quick to make and nobody even has to touch them.

Top Left Corner: So and that Tikki Sound is a very percussive sound that you can’t you can’t get rid of. There’s no way to to not have that sound. Whereas when you say that you’re mixing in other materials, other other organic materials, I mean, and soft when you say soft and you’re talking about things like corn, describe what you mean by soft and describe what the differences as it hits the drumhead, which I assume people are using still both synthetic and natural drumhead. So are they still using skin drumheads or no? Is it most.

Dave Deming: Rare? Yeah. Skin animal skin. Drum has fell out of favor in the 1960s when when plastic drum heads came into vogue. And the main reason for that is longevity. But the temperature really affects the animals can drumheads. So it makes it really kind of maddening to keep them tuned the way you want them to. And then they just started. Remo. Remo, a drum head company, started making drum heads and mass producing them and they were really loved by drummers and they’ve been improving. Drum heads have evolved in many different companies. Make them now and you know, they have double thick layers with sort of a hydraulic fluid between two layers. And you can get all of these beautiful sonic effects, you know, the world of drum sets and drum and cymbals and mallets and hand percussion instruments and shakers and symbols and gongs, all that whole world has just there are so many artisans and companies making beautiful, beautiful instruments. You know, you can get drum sets that are akin to Steinway, you know, and independents and big companies. So drumsticks have come a long way to, you know, bass drum beaters and mallets that you would use on vibraphone and marimbas. You know, it’s a whole you can just nerd out all the way on drumsticks.

Dave Deming: There are so many varieties and lightweight jazz sticks for jazz drummers and then big giant clubs. I, I happen to know through a recording studio in Vermont, I was introduced to Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones Drum Tech. And he he lives actually in western Massachusetts and is a wonderful guy. And we got a pair of several of my sticks to Charlie Watts, and he actually uses some of my sticks on the song Little Rain, which is a blues cover on the Rolling Stones. Lonesome and Blue album. And and so the reason I’m bragging on that is also to tell the story of that Don Don Charlie’s drum tech gave me as a thank you. A pair of Charlie’s used drumsticks with with with little bump marks all on it. And I mean, these things are like baseball bats. They’re really heavy kicks. They’re not jazz sticks, which was my point. And in addition to bragging. So it’s really it’s very interesting all the different weights and how finicky drummers can get. So again, back to the analogy of a painter and which paint brushes, which paint brush they choose to make the marks they want to make.

Dave Deming: And so there’s, there is the visual texture and the texture of the paint itself on a canvas, but there’s also sonic texture. So, so you have these really expensive symbols and your drumheads are tuned just so and you have world class microphones in a studio now. And you’re going to be very, very conscious of sonic texture. You know, what does the song call for also? Drummers want to distinguish themselves from other drummers out there, just like painters do. And artists, they’re always looking for something new. How can I add a sonic texture to the song that other drummers may not be hip to and and add to the song? So enter sticks like mine that have all these unique features to them that weren’t always there in the marketplace. And so it’s a little bit of exotic, something exotic they can add to the sonic texture. And, you know, I’ve heard countless stories of drummers bringing these to a session and the other musicians or the sound engineer, they they just go, what are those? That that’s interesting. And they really fit in and they’re beautiful and surprise everybody. Tell me about the drummers, Chris.

Top Left Corner: Oh, sure, sure. And look, if you’ve got something that nobody else has seen before, something that is is handmade, that’s going to that’s going to be eye catching to the other people who also like to nerd out about such things. Talk a little bit about look, and I don’t want to get too too esoteric here, but there’s a certain element of spirituality in drumming, right? I mean, you can’t deny that they go back together a long, long way. And I’m guessing that the the mass produced very synthetic sounding. Drumsticks and various other, you know, implements utensils of the trade. They don’t necessarily vibrate or resonate the same way that something that’s handmade and built of organic materials. Do you ever think about the sort of, you know, spiritual connection from what you are doing every day?

Dave Deming: Every day. Every time I sit down to do this, I’ll put on a CD in the background and I’m literally channeling that CD into the sticks as I make them. And I know that sounds cornball, but it’s the truth. And, you know, and in terms of like those mass produced sticks that I was sort of talking about earlier, it kind of reminds me of a Van Morrison quote, and I’m not sure that it’s true, but it’s probably true. And Van Morrison said, Music is spiritual. The music business is not.

Top Left Corner: It sounds like.

Dave Deming: A pretty cynical comment, but but it’s kind of true. So I’m trying to I’m trying to go in the opposite direction and and and making these things. There’s just something about it. And I’ve always been a maker of things, being a home remodeler, you know, I’m constantly problem solving and I enjoy that and I enjoy when I can put something together and it just resonates with something very deep inside me, the making of things and, and, and also thinking of Rebecca Solnit book. I think it’s titled Getting Lost, and it’s a very interesting mental process of creativity and thinking. I think about the cliche, you know, I screwed up Homer Simpson. Well, I screwed up or made it better. And to that, I every time I make a mistake while I’m creating these, it almost it almost always turns out to be an improvement on the sixth. It’s hilarious. And I go, Well, what if I made that a thing? It’s it’s just a fun process. So that’s where I’m sure that’s where sous sous chefs, that’s where they have their fun. You know what if I added this ingredient to it and it just turns like, Oh, wow, that’s interesting. So there is all of that and also some of the some of my products like I’ve named the African fans as a nod to Africa. Some of these are not just brand new things that I’ve invented tip my hat to to Africans, you know, from thousands of years playing similar stick like fans on calabash and and all of those fantastic traditions that have come through so much of the music that we enjoy and contemporary, especially American music from the blues into jazz, into pop, you know, that has I think that has to be respected and mentioned. And I think about that a lot. And the spirituality and the continuity of vibration, the enjoyment of sonic vibration. You listen to birds and it’s something about it.

Top Left Corner: Well, some of the people some of the people who I’ve you know, you’ve said that you’ve sent your sticks out and also people have purchased your sticks. Well, your sticks have found their way into the music of many of the people. I suspect probably have similar feelings about the vibrations and the spirituality. People like Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, people like Cyndi Lauper, Steve Winwood, Fiona Apple, the Fleetwood Mac. It goes on and on. Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega. All of these people are people who, you know, certainly could get to get Styx anywhere. But they have chosen, they have discovered that they fall in love with the sound of yours. Where can people go to actually purchase your sticks?

Dave Deming: They can go to dem sticks dot com. It’s a play on my last name Deming. So it’s dem sticks, styx, ask.com. And even if you know, even if you’re not a drummer, you’re not going to buy sticks. I think the video page of that is just a lot of fun because there’s there’s Cajun music on there, both Soleil with Michael Doucet and there’s Bo Conte with Jamie Hadad and the snarky puppy people on there. And there’s just a real variety of musicians on there. Carter McClain’s on there. He’s the drummer from The Lion King on Broadway. He actually plays the sticks in in the booth on a regular basis. And he he helped me develop a couple of the pair style day. So, yeah, Carter’s there and and Kato goes on there and yeah, the videos are fun and I think. You know, another neat aspect of all this is it makes me a little more interesting at parties rather than. What do you do for a living, Dave? Well, I crawled underneath people’s front porches and fixed dry rot. You know, the drumsticks thing, people like to talk about it. It’s just. It’s just fun.

Top Left Corner: Sure. But don’t forget that jury. Don’t forget that you’re a hero when you do some of the things you do. From 8 to 4.

Dave Deming: Yeah. You’re saving that need. Yeah. How’s this need? Repair and taking. Taking good care of. So I do that too. So the. And also you can go to if you’re on Instagram, you can go to at Dave Deming Denim, IMG and on the Instagram page, there are a lot of really lovely pictures and and there’s some great videos on there, too. Billy Martin of Medeski, Martin and Wood is playing the Styx on there. Carter McLean again is on there and plays a couple of fun things. And there’s neat pictures, too. There’s a picture of Fritz Lee Walk, who plays for Jackson Browne, and he’s holding up one of the sticks during a concert on Austin City Limits. By the way, if folks are if they if you’re paying for PBS on TV, you can go to Austin City Limits on PBS and type in Jackson Brown. And on the first two songs of Jackson Browne at Austin City Limits, you can watch Fritz Lee walk playing sticks. Nice on. Long way around. Yeah. Hmm. So it’s a beautiful concert, and it’s a lot of fun to watch. Watch him play.

Top Left Corner: I’m sure. I’m sure. Well, Dave, I want to say thank you so much for coming on the top left corner and for being sort of the re inauguration of the solopreneur spotlight here at The Greylock Glass, which is celebrating people who have great, you know, great vision, great dreams, great craftsmanship, all sorts of things who are sort of doing it on their own, their own way. And you definitely doing it your own way and it’s getting noticed. So thank you so much for being on the show.

Dave Deming: Thanks for having me on. It’s been a real pleasure. Thank you.

Top Left Corner: Take care.

Dave Deming: All right. You too.

Top Left Corner: Well, I have had the. The luxury of having a drum set kicking around that I got to jam on with some frequency, but never with drumsticks or or dem sticks. I guess you’d call them. That sound like they yield such a unique tone. So who knows? Maybe if I come across a good trap, set a good five piece kit, I’ll make it. I’ll make an investment in Dem sticks and I’ll get that sound that has been showcased on many an album and in many live events. Well, that is our show for the day again. Today is Friday, August 12th, 2022. And I look forward to speaking with you next week. Again, probably getting back into some of the serious legal kind of stuff, legal reporting, because it just it’s I’m not satisfied that we’re we’re done. That’s basically what it is. I’m just I am not satisfied that we’re done with the job of reporting out what is going on in the in the DA’s office and or Pittsfield Police Department. So we’ll continue our. Our study of that and kind of conversation about that. In the meantime, as always, stay safe. Be good to each other and go easy on yourself by now.

The post Top Left Corner #166: NTRVW x2 “The Mane Event” — microfestival & Dem’ Sticks appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

On Friday afternoon, Berkshire County District Attorney Andrea Harrington hosted a press conference in her office to reveal her office’s findings of the criminal investigation into the March 25 fatal shooting of Pittsfield resident Miguel Estrella by Pittsfield Police Department officer, Nicholas Sondrini. Almost the entirety of the event was dedicated to recreating the timeline of events that ended any chance of Estrella getting the mental health treatment he so desperately needed that night.

The five-month investigation was deeply and structurally flawed from the beginning, a fact that the Greylock Glass will examine in an upcoming piece. The presentation of the report of the D.A.’s findings was, however, exceedingly well-crafted in one regard — fairly superfluous and redundant bits of evidence were cycled through, slowly, with lengthy explanations in between to stretch the press conference to almost an hour and a half on a Friday afternoon. An hour and a half to explain the crucial 109 seconds between the arrival of Officer Sondrini and the firing of two rounds into Miguel Estrella’s torso.

According to Harrington’s report, Officer Christopher Coffey, first to arrive on the scene, immediately “stepped out of his cruiser, drew his taser, turned it on and pointed it at Estrella,” shouting “commands to Mr. Estrella to drop the knife.”

Already, any hope of de-escalation had been shattered. In fact, experts believe sending in uniformed officers may have been the departments first mistake, knowing that Estrella’s family believed him to be suffering a mental health lapse.

We speak in this episode with Bob Fleischner, former police officer and now Senior Consultant to the Massachusetts Association for Mental Health. Since 1913, the MAM has worked to improve understanding of mental health conditions and combat disparities in health services access. And the organization is at the forefront of study into best practices for law enforcement personal when assisting individuals in the midst of mental health crises.

Thanks so much for taking time to speak with the Top Left Corner today.

Bob Fleischner: You’re welcome.

Top Left Corner: Now be here. It’s it’s it’s. I wish I wish that we had not such tragic circumstances to bring you on the show. Clearly, our community is is shaken by the death of Miguel Estrada. And Pittsfield is asking a lot of questions right now. And I’m hoping not to, you know, chase the details. The play by play of how this case is is turning out. But to kind of get to the to as you pointed out in the the mentioned in the green room, the digital green room, the foundational drivers. First, before we get to the details, just do me a favor and explain a little bit what your organization is all about.

Bob Fleischner: The Massachusetts Association for Mental Health is the oldest mental health advocacy organization in Massachusetts, founded over 100 years ago and one of the oldest in the United States. And Mama is committed to ensuring access to people with experiencing mental health and emotional difficulties to services on an equitable basis, and to ensure that work to ensure that that people in this state are able to get services that they want in settings that are appropriate.

Top Left Corner: Excellent. So this is this is interesting because obviously, when things are the oldest in Massachusetts that just by by default often makes them the oldest in the country or close to give us some background. Obviously, you weren’t you weren’t around in 1920 or so. But what are what are some of the stigmas attached to mental health that have been around and that still pervade the thinking of both the public and and responders like such as the police and maybe even medical care.

Bob Fleischner: Well, the stigmas have been the same for hundreds of years. And in the context of what we’re talking about today, probably the most. A serious thing that attaches to people who are experiencing difficulties or emotional difficulties is that they are somehow dangerous to themselves or others. And there is an aura and a belief, I think generally among people in the population and probably among first responders and law enforcement people, that if a person has a mental illness, that they are likely to be dangerous. The evidence is quite the contrary. The evidence is that people with mental health difficulties are more likely to be victims of crime. Hmm. So that’s that’s one of the stigmas. The other stigma is that we don’t, as a society, talk much about mental health issues. I think things have opened up a lot recently, particularly as value people in our society like professional athletes and entertainers, and talked about mental health conditions and the difficulties that they experience in stressful situations. There’s a growing willingness to discuss problems with them, but as a general matter, it’s one of the things we don’t talk about much. If you read the old literature, the mentally ill wife was hidden away in the attic. Or people. People considered mentally or. Put on boats loaded down the Seine River to get them out of Paris. And all of these treatments and responses have changed a lot since then. The stigmas of dangerousness and just this is a problem that we want to keep hidden and embarrassed by are still very prevalent in our in our society. Yeah. In part, folks. And we don’t know how to respond to it.

Top Left Corner: What do you suppose I mean, if you have a heart condition? You know, nobody moralized. Well, I suppose if you’re, you know, smoking and drinking and eating a double bacon, double cheeseburger every day, people might moralize about your heart condition. But generally speaking, if you have a physical ailment, people don’t. Saddle that with this this this. Blame that they do mental illness. What do you think that comes from?

Bob Fleischner: Well, I think it’s I think it’s in part. What I what I discussed or what I labeled as sort of the embarrassment of it. And the people who have different perceptions or who see the world differently or may behave differently than what’s considered the average person are are considered are people we often are uncomfortable with or we may be embarrassed by. And so the both our societal system and our medical system treat people differently. One of the things that MH has been working on for many years in which despite legislation hasn’t been resolved, is that insurance companies and public insurance like Medicare and Medicaid, should cover mental health treatment to the same extent that they cover physical health treatment. And it’s taken actions by Massachusetts legislature in Congress to try to equalize the treatment and the insurance system. And I think that’s that’s sort of what you’re talking about. There’s a there’s a moral or willful implication to this, too, I think. And that is that if people were stronger, they just wouldn’t be having these problems or if if. If the guy would just man up. And he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t be so stressed or he wouldn’t be behaving this way. Right. And that it’s an intentional, willful kind of reaction to something rather than something that may or may not be an illness. You can debate that for a long time, but it is a manifestation of of something that’s a little different than what we’re used to as what we call normal.

Top Left Corner: Right. Yeah. I would say that if you look at the consequences of succumbing to to mental illness, nobody be hard to convince. Hard to argue that anyone wants that. It would be very difficult to say. Well, yeah, I mean, he was just faking it or he wasn’t strong enough or she was she was just looking for attention. But nobody really wants the the consequences of of mental illness, which, as you’ve pointed out in years past, would be being shut up or sent away. And unfortunately, today, in an increasingly militarized, militarized police environment, it can mean that the police shoot you to death within moments of arrival. This particular case is challenging to me to understand, because the police did show up to respond to a911 call. Miguel had apparently cut his face intentionally. The fiancee and others were there and said they think they’ve got it. They’ve got him under control. He’s coming down. The police left. Only to be called back later. Some hour, hour and some later. And he’s now got the knife back and he’s he’s distraught. In a perfect world, what would have happened the first time? They showed up at the scene.

Bob Fleischner: Well, there’s a real changing view nationally and internationally, for that matter, on how best to respond to to a crisis and the. The growing sense is that. The less that police and law enforcement are involved in behavioral health or mental health crises, the more likely the outcome will be, the more likely it is that the outcome will be a better, safer outcome for everyone, not just the individual, him or herself, but also for the police who sometimes are injured in these interactions, too.

Top Left Corner: Hmm.

Bob Fleischner: So the. The. In the best possible situation an individual be presented by someone who is not threatening, probably who’s not not armed or heavily armed, or even for that matter, uniformed with options and choices that the person can make himself or herself, that they can make themselves, and that can be made voluntarily, without coercion and without force and without the threat of hospitalization or institutionalization. And usually the best people to present those options are either clinicians who are trained in crisis support and intervention, or people who’ve been through the experience themselves or in this context are called peers, people with lived experience, with mental illness or with psychiatric system or with hospitalization when they have been through a crisis and can relate relate to the person going through it on a very, very personal level and. In. The hope is that in the majority of circumstances that can de-escalate the situation, can provide options for the person, that they can select themselves, maybe with the help of their family if they’re there and they want that help, or in this case, the fiancee and the and the situation can be defuzed and the crisis passed. But that can’t be the end of it. Because one of the things that the police and law enforcement can’t do unless they’re supported by Human Services supports in some way, is they can’t follow up and they can’t provide the kinds of supports that the person may need and want after the crisis passes. And for many people in this situation, those situations, those are pretty basic needs. It’s housing, income, work. Maybe therapy, maybe mental health supports of some kind. And the end of the crisis can’t be the end of the engagement.

Top Left Corner: Well said. I think, you know, to most thinking people, that that doesn’t require a lot of parsing to to understand the value of that. But in fact, I think that, as you point out, the law enforcement, they just don’t have any sort of infrastructure to enable them to. And even if they were an appropriate agent in this situation. Now, when you’re talking about after effects, let’s say, for example, there is there’s follow up the person perhaps they they are provided with therapy or if the situation is that they need stable housing, maybe they need to be out of the situation they’re in. Maybe it’s dangerous or abusive. What do we get as a society? Other than being able to sleep at night and look at ourselves in the mirror. What do we get as a society by providing those follow up measures?

Bob Fleischner: So on a pretty crass level, if we keep people out of prison and out of jail, we save a lot of money because it’s expensive to maintain people in prison and jail. And it’s even more expensive to maintain a person in a prison or jail if they need medical or psychological assistance and support while we’re there. Secondly, we keep people out of a criminal justice system. That is. Is it difficult system for anyone to navigate and which is also expensive to run? On a more humane level, looking less at cost and more at the morality of it. We get people who are more likely to be better integrated into our communities, to be citizens who are not frightened by the prospect of being involuntarily arrested or involuntarily placed in a mental hospital. Who can work? Who do work? Who contribute as taxpayers and citizens? And we may be able to avoid some of the situations in terms of public safety that increase. Increase. Violence and that produce dangers to public safety. So there’s a lot of benefits not only for the individuals, but for society as a whole.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I, I hate to steer the conversation toward, as you say, the crass considerations of finance. But the fact of the matter is, for some people, the humanist concerns are never going to be enough to persuade them. You have to you have to take it down to the dollars and cents or the the sort of prurient shock value of of of, you know, of eliminating these these violent episodes or at least reducing the the occurrence. And I think that it has been shown many, many for many decades that it’s a lot less expensive to educate people than it is to incarcerate them. And yet, still, it’s very difficult to get lawmakers to to side on the side of of funding. Do you think that legislatures, both here in Massachusetts and probably across the country, are afraid of their constituents backlash?

Bob Fleischner: Well, I think there’s been a I think there’s been a mistake in messaging about some of these things by calling us with broad brush terms like defunding the police. So I think that that’s created a backlash against innovation and against new kinds of programs or expanding existing programs so that everybody benefits at. I looked at a study recently that showed in some community where it showed something like 10% of the police responses to 911 calls had to do with mental health problems or mental health was part of that part of what the response was to. But yet, in terms of the amount of time that it took the police to respond to this 10%, it was 50 or 60% of their time spent on emergency calls. So we’re asking police departments to fulfill and law enforcement people to fulfill a role in our society that they are neither trained for nor equipped for, and which takes them away from other things that they could be doing that are more public directly, public safety related. Same thing is true with our prisons and jails, which are juvenile facilities for that matter, which are which are filled with people with mental health diagnoses. And we’re asking the Corrections Department to fulfill the role of mental health services and rising police departments to respond to mental health crises. And in both cases, it’s the wrong. They’re not the people. We should be asking to do this. We should be asking we should be finding other ways to approach people so that so that it’s not approached in a criminal justice response, but rather in a helping supportive response.

Top Left Corner: Now, that’s that’s well said. And I think that I think that. The public is getting closer to being on board, I think. I know that these days, if you just take social media as a barometer, as a, you know, sort of weather vane, when people post online, at least in my circles, you know, that it’s National Suicide Prevention Awareness Week or it’s mental health. That gets a lot of shares and likes and it’ll often get even people commenting and saying, you know, I’m, you know, they’ll even tell their own personal stories or stories of people they know. And it’s becoming less of a you got to keep it in those skeletons in the closet. What kinds of public policy? We mentioned the word messaging a moment ago when it comes to defunding the police. And I think that it is unfortunate that that immediately was tarred with negative connotations. But what sorts of sort of. Efforts can we make to create an even more accepting welcoming. Sort of perception of of mental health care in the public. Is it is it something that we can do with with public service announcements, with. With education in the schools? What do you think is a good way to to kind of get us on the right foot?

Bob Fleischner: Well, I think. The single most important messaging has to come from people who have experienced the mental health system and have had experience with either emotional or mental health problems or have been labeled as having those experiences, whether they’ve actually had them or not. And their experiences and their views are often overlooked in discussions among medical people and psychiatrists and lawyers and journalists. I think that often the last people who are turned to for some kind of comment about what’s this look like or what did it feel like to have the police at your door when you were when you were feeling particularly distraught? What’s your life? What’s your life been like? What things have worked for you? What kinds of support is help? Is it family or friends or professionals? Is it medication or has medication? These are all kinds of questions that ought to be more often addressed by the people who have experienced these systems. And. In many ways because almost all of us have some experience in our families or among our friends with people who have been in in difficult places. We tend to respect that. I think we would tend to respect that more and that their messaging is really important. I think it’s also important to get the message out that programs that are alternatives to law enforcement engagement in crises, either through peers or through crisis intervention teams, or through ride along or responder programs. Many of these have been successful, and those successes need to be need to become better known. And trials of those efforts at implementing those need to be more more front and center, both the legislators and the citizens that these work.

Bob Fleischner: Most people is an example of how the messaging is bad. Most people who find themselves or a family member or a loved one in a crisis, in an emotional and mental health crisis, call 911. And that is probably, unfortunately, the worst place to call, because it leads to an intervention that is by people who are trained in the use of force, no matter how well trained they are in de-escalation, no matter how well trained they are in working with people in emotional difficulties, no matter how caring and compassionate they are, and bringing forth, bringing, bringing their interaction to the situation. There still is a level of certainly a level of fear from the individual who was experiencing the crisis in seeing someone in a uniform with a weapon showing up. So I think that there needs to be better and better sense in the public about where to call. Beginning next year, there will be a national call in number equivalent to 911988, which will be a national implemented state by state, but will be a suicide suicide, an emergency mental health services line. So people need to be told and informed that beginning next year that they can call nine, eight, eight, not 911, and that the response is more likely to be a not a law enforcement response. I think this field has a corresponding program through the brain center. So these programs need to be expanded. They need to be on every shift. And there actually needs to be a movement away from the police involvement entirely.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. Yeah.

Bob Fleischner: So responder is not the last step. The last step is is mental health response, not police response.

Top Left Corner: Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, the the mental health or alternative responder, they can still call 911 if they have to. I mean, you know, that’s that’s always going to be an option. But, you know, the the the hope here is that the stigma will be lifted. And, of course, that if you call nine, eight, eight, or rather, if there is nine, eight, eight available, you will be more likely to get help because for every time the police are called, we don’t know how many crises end up. Tragically, that could have been prevented had somebody known that there was somebody besides the police to call. Basically, you’ve got a lot of different constituencies who don’t trust the police to begin with and will choose not to call the police and sort of wing it and hope for the best. And that, I’m sure, ends in tragedy more times than we know. Tragedy that’s that stems from mental health issues then than we can know, because it shows up as a as an abuse case or as a suicide or as a as a a violent some sort of violent act. But perhaps there was mental health at the core of that, but people were too afraid to reach out anywhere.

Bob Fleischner: Yeah. There’s a most most people who’ve had any experience. Many people with that experience with the mental health system are afraid to reach out for help because they’re one consequence of being seen either by by a police officer or a clinician, is that you’re taken in voluntarily to a hospital. And there are many people who just do not want that kind of intervention in their lives. And and. Even the statistics on the number of people who have a mental health diagnosis were shot and killed by police are stunning. The Washington Post did did an examination and came up with 25%. The Boston Globe said that 50% of the people shot and killed by police in Massachusetts, 50% had a mental illness. That can’t be a good thing.

Top Left Corner: It’s heart wrenching is what it is. It’s absolutely gut wrenching. Last question that I’ve got is it’s challenging because, you know, there are the the mental health there’s the mental health dimension. But in this particular case, you know, this is a family. He was Dominican. And so he’s he’s coming from the Latino community here in Pittsfield. They trusted. 911. They trusted the police to help them. Do you find that when incidences like this occur and they end up in a police involved shooting, a fatal shooting in this case? Describe, if you would, the the damage to the relationship between the police and communities of color, whether they be Asian or black or Latino.

Bob Fleischner: You know, it’s a good question. Unfortunately, the studies on police interventions with people with mental illness and shootings and harm that’s done through the use of force are shown, not surprisingly, that disproportionately fall on people of color. And I think in a in a society where people of color have a distrust of police to begin with, using police, whether it’s justified or not, using police to intervene in very fraught emotional situations only raises the risk. And I think that people just will not be called or the police just won’t be called in these situations. That’s something you referred to earlier. Now, that’s not to say that people with experience in the mental health system always trust their clinicians, either or their lawyers or journalists if they’re talking to journalists. But there is I think there’s at the very least, there is an appearance of something potentially more benign if the person who is responding is not is not a law enforcement officer. The consequences would be the same. It’s not going to be a killing, but it could be hospitalization or something like that. But there is likely to be more trust there. There’s also I think it’s only fair to point out that there are studies that show that among people of color trusts, there’s a there is less trust of. Lots of mental health professionals and clinicians than than in other communities, too. So there’s a pervasive lack of trust in this system. And some of it has to do with the fact that there are involuntary responses, hospitalization now, force treatment and so on.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I guess we could actually go back into some pretty dark history when it comes to mental health. Research, I guess, would be putting it kindly. And and the African American community that has suffered real, real egregious harm from from not obviously not across the board, but there have been some pretty, pretty awful, awful history there. And you can understand why, gosh, you know, the last person you want to be calling is somebody who can force medical care on you.

Bob Fleischner: Yeah.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. I guess that’s probably the main body of of questioning that I had. Tell me something. What? What is the MAMH? What what are they up to when it comes to advocacy, policy, promotion? What what’s the what are the priorities right now for your organization?

Bob Fleischner: Well, in this area, there’s a couple. One is the implementation. Mhm. Is supporting legislation for the implementation of the 98 call center. Also the mama which is President and Executive Director, Chief Operating Officer, is the Chairman of a co-chairperson of a commission in Middlesex County called the Restoration Center Commission, established by the Legislature to look at establishing a system in Middlesex County, which is which is, I think, probably our most populated or most populous county of an intervention and crisis response program that would be largely voluntary, that would help eliminate some of the need, if not a lot of the need for police calls and for involuntary hospitalization of people. So those are two of two of the big areas that it’s working on that Mama is working on. And it’s also working in prisons or advocacy to to improve improve conditions for people with mental health diagnoses in prisons, to remove Bridgewater State Hospital from the Department of Correction and put it in the Department of Mental Health where it belongs. And to help eliminate the use of inappropriate use of of what’s called suicide watch in prisons and of solitary confinement. And the Department of Corrections making some pretty good strides, certainly on the solitary confinement, restrictive housing elimination. So those are some of the priorities that that we’re working on in the criminal justice writ large area.

Top Left Corner: Great. How could people find out more about the organization? Get involved, get newsletters, what’s what’s the best point of contact there?

Bob Fleischner: Probably the website. Easy to remember m a mh dot org. And one of the things that MH supports and you can find a link to on the website is the state’s most comprehensive. Manner way of connecting people to services. So there is there is a very robust program that Mama works on with a number of other agencies and partners that help that helps people find services. So I think that that may be a place if you’re if you’re someone who is looking for mental health assistance or are looking for services and not able to find them at a statewide service. So it includes everything from from the Berkshires to the Cape. And it is very complete. And it’s you’re able to sort of drill down to find the kinds of services and providers that that could be that could be available. I think it’s quite helpful.

Top Left Corner: Excellent. We will include links obviously to that in the show notes. Bob Leshner, I want to thank you so much. This has been really these this is exactly the kind of conversation that I was hoping to have and getting to some of the important, as I said, foundational questions, which they don’t always make for quick soundbites, good, you know, easy to to digest. But I think those are the conversations we have to have.

Bob Fleischner: Yeah, I agree. Well, thank you for your interest on this. I think it’s really important that these kinds of things get covered in a comprehensive way. And it’s it’s a shame that it takes the kind of incident that gets Fielden and Mikhail’s family and friends who are going through to to provoke this kind of conversation. That seems to be what.

Top Left Corner: Thank you for your time and and stay well.

Bob Fleischner: Okay. You, too. Thank you.

We’re going to continue to follow up on this story as it develops. On an upcoming episode of the Top Left Corner, we’ll look at best practices for conducting an independent investigation following fatalities or serious injury as a result police officer behavior. Hint, the Berkshire D.A.’s office fell far short.

For now, stay safe, be good to each other, and go easy on yourself. Peace.

The post Top Left Corner #165: Right ways and wrong ways to respond to mental health crisis calls. appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

The following is a recording of the proceedings of the press conference held Friday, August 5, 2:00 p.m. in the offices of Berkshire District Attorney Andrea Harrington, who released the findings of her office concerning the fatal shooting of 22 year old Pittsfield resident Miguel Estrella by Officer Nicholas Sondrini of the Pittsfield Police Department. The audio has been edited to improve sound quality and to remove silences during which silent video footage was shown. That video footage is available on the shownotes of this episode of the Top Left Corner at greylockglass.com. A rough transcript of the event is also available. We apologize for the imperfections and will revise the text as soon as possible. 

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Good afternoon. And I want to thank members of the media for attending today. My name is Berkshire District Attorney Andrea Harrington. I am joined today by Detective Lieutenant Ryan Dickinson, the commander of the State Police Detective Unit. Assistant District Attorney Jocelyn McGrath. And we also have with us today Elina Estrella. She’s here with her counsel, Mayor Tyer, Pittsfield Police Chief Mike Wynne. Lisa McHugh, the director of the Victim Witness Advocate Program here in the district attorney’s office. And Sadie Woolstenhulme, who is our media digital media evidence assistant who is helping me put on a presentation today for you.

Today, my office is releasing our findings of fact, conclusions of law and our complete investigation into the shooting death of Miguel Estrella by Pittsfield Police Officer Nicholas Sondrini. I once again send my deep condolences to Mr. Estrella’s mother Marisol, his sister Elena, his brother Sean Carlos, his extended family and friends with a terrible loss. It is important to acknowledge the trauma that Miguel’s death inflicted, not only on his loved ones and those who witnessed the shooting, but on the larger community, particularly on black and brown people, those struggling with mental health and on the West Side community. I set two goals for this investigation to establish the facts necessary to determine the police officers involved in Mr. Estrella shooting acted criminally and to provide Mr. Estrella family and community with a comprehensive and independent accounting of the events that occurred on March 25th that led to Mr. Estrella’s tragic death.

The State Police Detective unit assigned to my office conducted an independent, objective and thorough investigation. The detectives canvased the neighborhood multiple times and conducted dozens of witnesses reviews. The state police obtained video footage, reports on Tasers and ShotSpotter data. Hospital and autopsy records. Crime scene photos and videos. They reviewed radio transmissions and dispatches and analyze ballistics. We released our findings of fact legal conclusions and our complete investigation to the Estrella family yesterday at a meeting here in my office. We released the same information to Mayor Tire and to Chief Wayne yesterday, and we met with them after we met with the family chief when they shared the findings of investigation with his officers yesterday.

My name is Elina Estrella. And I am Miguel’ sister. I have a short statement on the behalf of the family, and I won’t be taking any questions today. You can contact David Guarino at SurvivorsSay.org, number (617) 548-4981 for future contact with media. We’re feeling so much hurt and pain, but we want to thank the people in the community for their support, the D.A. for allowing me to stand up here and speak, and the state police for their findings. Miguel died because there’s something wrong with the way that we deal with mental health crises. He was cutting his face with a box cutter. That’s why the police were called the first time. The person who called 911 said he had been cutting himself and he had mental health issues.

About the first encounter, I cannot help but wonder whether the police should have taken him to the psychiatric ward. Why wasn’t the mental health professional who works with the police department there? How can calls for help during a mental health crisis end up in the person needing help getting shot and killed. The calls went out not because Miguel was threatening anyone else or because others were scared for their own safety, but because others were concerned that Miguel was hurting himself. Clearly this was a mental health crisis.

Every day we still think about the what ifs. What if Miguel had been assisted by a mental health professional who was trained in de-escalation? What if the police had been more proactive in getting Miguel the medical help that he needed that night during the first encounter, even if he had denied cutting himself or wanting to hurt himself? We need to do better. We need to answer these questions so that this doesn’t happen to anyone else.

Miguel was a kind, big hearted, complicated son, brother, and more so to many of us. He loved his friends. He loved his family, his girlfriend and his mother very much. Miguel cared about us and his community. He did work for Habitat for Humanity and encouraged those to do better. He had stumbled, but he tried to stay positive. Miguel was becoming the change he wanted to see in his community. This loss didn’t just affect his family and friends. It affected his colleagues, his community. And this is how we want him to be remembered. Thank you for your time.

Today, we are releasing a comprehensive report on our findings and our complete investigation to the public. I thank Detective Lieutenant Dickinson and his team for their work on this investigation. I thank my team for their assistance in putting all of the pieces together. I especially want to thank the witnesses who shared their memories and perspectives with the state police. We would not be able to provide these critical facts without the willingness to speak to detectives. You will see when you review their statements that the witnesses were traumatized by their experiences and all appear to be sincere and committed to sharing their memories to the best of their abilities in order to protect the privacy of the civilian witnesses who assisted in the investigation.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: We address them only by their initials. I’m going to walk through an overview of the events of that evening, and then I will present our legal conclusions. I ask that you please rely on the written materials that my office has provided to you as the definitive facts. I’m providing an overview just to give you an idea of what to look for, because it is a voluminous investigation. I also ask that you hold your questions until the end. So when we purchased our courtroom technology, we got this software called Crime Lines to use for jury presentations. So this is the first time that we’ve used this software. So we thought that this was a good opportunity to use it. And also to share with you an overview of our investigation. Mr. Estrada’s girlfriend described Miguel as a motivating person and a good person who worked for Habitat for Humanity, and that he would talk to half the police at the gym in the morning and that he was cool with them. On Friday, March 25th, Miguel picked his girlfriend up from work at approximately 9:00 pm. They returned to their apartment at 279 Oak Street. Miguel began cutting himself on the face with a box cutter. He cut his face multiple times. He had cuts all over his face that were bloody with little cuts that seem like he was scraping.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Miguel’s girlfriend asked her friend to call an ambulance because she felt that he needs someone in crisis with someone. The sister of Miguel’s girlfriend described an incident about a month and a half prior to the March 25th crisis. When Miguel was drinking. He broke a bottle off his head and he cut himself. At the time, Miguel objected to the girlfriend’s sister calling the police and saying something along the lines of they were going to have to kill him. Miguel’s girlfriend was able to calm him down during the prior incident and brought him to a friend’s house to spend the night. So we’re going to play the first nine on one call that came into the night of March 25th. Pittsfield police then received a second 911 emergency call from a different person at approximately. And next, we’re going to play for you the initial dispatch radio. The gals girlfriend sister left the apartment and while waiting for an ambulance, Miguel’s girlfriend attempted to call Miguel down. Miguel let her take a box cutter from him, but then later grabbed a small kitchen knife. The girlfriend said that she believed that he was ready to take himself. When officers on duty arrived, the couple had left the apartment, were in a car on their way to see a friend of the girls who they thought could help him. Officers on duty arrived at 951.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Mr. Estrella got out of the car to speak with the officer. Sandrine described Estrella as being originally apprehensive. He said that Estrella, who was holding a bottle of liquor, said that he was not driving and was not doing anything wrong. So Drini told him he was just there to make sure that he was okay and to see if he needed help. Officer Coffey arrived after some training. He believed that the 911 call caller had said that an individual was making statements. This is shorthand for section 12 statements or threats of suicide, which give an officer legal authority to take an individual into custody for medical treatment. He understood the dispatch to mean that the individual was having some type of mental health issue. Coffee arrived and saw Sandrine Estrella and the girlfriend in the middle of the parking lot parked his cruiser on the curb and walked up to them. This is a clip from Officer Saunders’s video and audio recorded statement. Sandrine said he asked Mr. Estrella about the cut on his face and coffee said that Miguel responded that he got it at work. Sandrine said that Miguel refused medical aid. At about this time, the girlfriend’s sister returned Sandrine impression that was that Mr. Estrella appeared to be really intoxicated. He appeared to be using a car to lean on, non slow to move, and seemed unsteady on his feet. Coffey Estrella appeared intoxicated, but not to the point where he was incapable of taking care of himself.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: He was very coherent. Estrella knew who he was, where he was. He was able to walk on his own, talk on his own situation, assess his rights, and determine what he wanted and what he didn’t want. We have a clip from Officer Kelsey’s statement to play. As part of our investigation, the state police interviewed the sister of Mr. Miguel Estrella girlfriend who was on scene. We have a clip to play from her statement. At 10 p.m., two EMTs arrived at the scene. They understood that the call was to assist the officers in the evaluation of an individual with a facial laceration. Estrella ultimately agreed to let them out of the cut. The EMTs describe the cut as superficial and pretty minor and noted that the bleeding was controlled. The EMTs did take a photo of Mr. Estrella with his injury. One EMT said that he asked him if he wanted to go down to the hospital to get it checked out. And Mr. Estrella said no. As EMS was examining Estrella on duty, notice that Estrella had a knife in his pocket. The Court Estrellas I who saw him noticing it and some drini reached over and removed the knife. When asked about Estrella apparent level of intoxication, one EMT thought that he may have seen a little intoxicated from his view. Estrella seemed calm, and he just wanted to get this over with.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Coffee said that Miguel’s girlfriend told him that Miguel was drunk and having a hard time, but that he was fine. Coffey told them, If anything happens, just give us a call and we’ll come back and we’ll reassess and we’ll help you from there. At the end of the assessment, EMS instructed Estrella on how to care for his cut, took his information and asked if he would like to go to the hospital. Estrella said no. At 1004, 4 minutes after their arrival, EMS left the scene. Coffey’s understanding was that they did not find any reason that force Mr. Estrella to go to the hospital. He said that Estrella did not mention any statements of wanting to hurt himself and said he had just been drinking and wanted to go to bed. The officers did not see any other injuries or blood anywhere else on Mr. Estrella, his body or clothes. They said they did not hear any outward statements and they did not have a name. 911 College. Sandrine thought that the women appeared comfortable with the plan to leave Miguel in his girlfriend’s care. Miguel’s girlfriend stated in her statement. Coffee and sun. Judy left the scene at 1006, 15 minutes after arriving. The two women said they went back inside with Miguel and approximately 10:10 p.m. another call came into PD. And we have a compilation of dispatch from that evening that we’re going to play for you.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: So as you can hear, that was a compilation of the dispatch calls from the entire second visit to Portland Avenue when the officers were initially dispatched for their second call. Officer Coffey asked dispatch if there were any EMS units available. Coffey believe that a Section 12, if a Section 12 was warranted to avoid de-escalation, it would be better to transport Mr. Estrella in an ambulance rather than in a police cruiser in handcuffs. Officer Coffey was the first officer to return to the scene at 1017. We have a clip from. This is from Miguel Estrella, his girlfriend. When Officer Coffey arrived, he saw Estrella and his girlfriend in the street. They were on the far side of Woodbine Avenue, on the left hand side of the road to Coffey. It looked like Estrella was in a pushing match with her. He did not actually see him push her or create distance, but it seemed like they were pushing back and forth. He could also see what appeared to be a large knife in his right hand. Along his forearm, Coffey radioed Sandrine and told him to step it up. So he understood step it up as a direction to go. Lights and sirens because something bad was happening. So Audrina arrived a second later. Coffey stepped out of his cruiser, drew his taser, turned it on and pointed it at Estrella.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: He started giving commands to Mr. Estrella to drop the knife. Sandrine turned onto Woodbine and pulled up behind Coffey’s cruiser in front of the Bartlett house. He saw Coffey standing near his cruiser, pointing his taser at Estrella. He also saw Miguel’s girlfriend, who was yelling at Estrella to stop and put the knife down. Coffey was also telling him to drop the knife, so he got out of his cruiser, drew his handgun and approached a neighbor who witnessed this, said that both of Estella’s hands were clenched as he held the knife. Coffey described as well as posture, as very aggressive. Both officers described him as having a boxing stance, hands up and fists, palms down with the handle of the knife in his hand and the blade of the knife pointing down. Coffey said that like a boxer, he was bobbing and weaving and moving his head. Sandrine said that Estrella was yelling that he could not understand him. The girlfriend described Estrella as unstable and was only walking forward because he was drunk and the sister described him as unsteady and that he was moving because he kind of couldn’t stand still. We have some photos of the street just to give you a sense of the layout. The apartment apartment building is over here. This is Woodbine Avenue, and that’s another street. These are lines from where the tasers were. We don’t know exactly where they were when they were.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Sandrine believed believe that Estrella and Coffey were approximately 15 to 20 feet away from each other. Sandra said he positioned himself about five feet to the right of coffee in front of the cruisers. The neighbor said that at the beginning Estrella was arguing with the officers. He said the officers were telling him to put the knife down, trying to help calm him down, but that Mr. Estrella did not want to listen to them. He said Miguel’s girlfriend was on the other sidewalk, telling Estrella to calm down and relax and to stop doing this, but that he was not listening at all. As he moved, Mr. Estrada had begun closing the gap between him and the officers. The girlfriend got between them and tried to stop him, but he kept moving. The girlfriend was now positioned right in front of Coffey and he kept pulling her back with him. Coffee said Miguel raised his posture and had the knife a little higher than before. Coffee pulled the girlfriend back again and deployed his taser. He estimated his distance to Mr. Estrella as 12 to 15 feet did recover the knife at the scene. It was recovered in front of that house at the end of the street. That’s the knife in the street. That’s a close up of the nine. After firing coffee, Santorini on his right side, approximately five or ten feet away. Coffey’s first teaser deployment caused only a little bit of tensing of the body, some shaking of the arms, but not a full muscle lock.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Sondra saw coffee deploy his Taser. He said Miguel was shaking, but he was still standing. So Andre wanted to try again in order to get him to go down so we could move in on them. As Mr. Estrella crouched down to pull the probes out, some drini holstered his handgun, drew his Taser and fired his taser deployment had no effect and he did not know if he had hit or miss. When Coffey saw that Sandrine, his Taser deployment had no effect. He pulled the trigger on his Taser for another five second cycle, but also without effect. We have a quote for you to take in from a neighbor who was a civilian witness who spoke to the state police detectives. After the Taser deployments, Coffey transitioned to his firearm and the officers back down would bind to a.A. The officers were keeping approximately 15 to 20 feet of distance of space from Mr. Estrella. Sandrine was in the process of reloading his taser when he saw Mr. Estrada’s girlfriend run up to Miguel on the left side of the road. Miguel stood up, resumed his stance, and started walking towards her. Sandra attempted to holster his Taser and drew his firearm again. Sandrine said that when the girlfriend got within five or six feet of Estrella, Miguel raised the knife.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Sandrine thought that he was about to hit her and was ready to fire and started yelling commands. Don’t do it, just drop it. Then she backed up out of his view and he did not know if she had retreated or Coffey had pulled her back. There was a witness who was out walking her dog at the time who made a statement to the state police. We have a clip from her statement for you. The neighbor told a similar story to the dog walker, saying that Estrella started walking towards the cop down to the intersection of Woodbine and a.A. He said Estrella and the officers were dispersed like a triangle with Mr. Estrella in the middle. He said Mr. Estrella was pretty much telling them to back up and he was backing up and the officers got into the intersection area so he couldn’t back up anymore. The girlfriend sister said that after the officers tased Mr. Estrella twice, her sister begged the officers not to shoot Estrella. She heard Coffey telling Mr. Estrella to just give him the knife, to put the knife down, and he repeatedly said, You don’t want to do this. She said Coffey was trying hard to actually talk to him and try to get him to calm down. Sandra said that Estrella was yelling and advancing not fast, but zigzagging between him and coffee. Estrella would walk and stop and start yelling.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Kind of like psyching himself up, then appear to stab himself in the thigh. Then Miguel moved toward the officers again. The girlfriend was near copy, pleading with the officers not to shoot. Estrella Coffee said that she was constantly engaging with him verbally and physically. Sandrine saw that Coffey was trying to hold her back with one arm and he had his handgun out with the other on the coffee cup, telling her to just please stay behind him so that he could try to help Estrella. But she kept coming in front of him and he had to keep pulling her backwards. We have some additional scene photos. So this photo was taken. This is a notice street. And then that’s goodbye. Apartment apartments right there. And there’s the apartment at the apartment building. The witness who was walking the dog heard one of the officers say, we just want to get you some help or there’s help for you. Estrella was on the edge of a note and the officers were in the middle of the street right at the double yellow divider. Coffee said that as they were in the road, continuing to try to back up the car, drove by us at a very high rate of speed, going north in the right lane of a street. He thought that all three of them almost got hit. The girlfriend was on Corky’s left and some Trini approximately five or ten feet to his right.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Sandra said that Estrella stepped on the side of the soda and for the first time started talking directly to coffee. He said to coffee that this is what the officers wanted. The officers wanted to shoot people like him. Coffee felt that Estrella addressed him specifically as a minority and also a man of ethnic background. Coffee begged him to put the knife down and told him that EMS was on its way and any minute and that he could get the help that he needed. While Estrella was talking to coffee, Sandra saw that he was engaged and not moving, and he thought he might be able to reload his Taser and attempt another deployment. When he reached for his Taser, he realized he was not in his holder. Coffee said that at this point that they were just begging him to please drop the weapon. Sandra said that after Estrella talked directly to Coffey, Miguel then attempted to stab himself in the stomach. Coffee said that he raised the 9 to 4 head level and he then over did the whole motion and stopped. Then Estrella very quickly shot up, return to a fighting posture based on Drini and advanced on him rapidly. Miguel took quick steps faster than before and held the knife in his boxing stance with the palm down grip. So Drini said he thought that they were ten feet apart. When Estrella started walking towards him.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Estrella took a step towards him and then another step. And that is when he fired twice. He thought that Estrella was about six feet away from him when he fired that state police ballistics unit did testing. And based on the gunshot residue on Mr. Estrella clothing, they determined that they were up to 84 inches apart, which is 70. The neighbor also said he heard Sondra say, don’t make me do this. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m trying to help you. The State Police obtain video surveillance from Jojo’s hair salon. It’s not the best angle, but it provides some verification of the facts and the timeline shared by the witnesses. So this video we had enhanced by the FBI, so the pieces of the video that are important that we want to see are clearer. It makes the rest of the video a little bit cloudy. It’s going to be difficult for you all to see back there. We do have that on the flash drive that we provided. But we can dim the lights if you want. For you to come up closer. If you want to be able to do the video. I. So that’s we find that the car is turning on to. We can see some figures standing in the street. This is a motor street. You can see the dog walker that’s across the street. This is the first police car arriving. Was the second cruiser. The.

Matt Martinez, The Berkshire Eagle: But.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: It’s. That’s. So Indrani said that when you shot him, Mr. Estrella was really close and fell on the ground at his feet. Face down. Sondra holstered his gun to two steps back, forward and kneel down. He rolled Mr. Estrella over, who was kind of face down on the side. He pulled up his shirt and started administrating, administering first aid from supplies he kept on the pouch on his belt. He put a clotting agent on the visible gunshot wound and applied pressure. Coffey radioed in that shots were fired, holstered his firearm and ran and shot. Coffey saw the knife near his hand and he kicked it up and threw it behind him. Toward the southwest quarter of Arizona, Sandra administered aid until Lieutenant Bradford instructed another officer to take over. Sergeant Parisi and Coffey delivered aid to Estrella until EMS arrived. Ems arrived and saw two officers tending to Mr. Estrella lying on the ground and were informed that he had been shot. They saw that he was unresponsive, but that he had some chest movement suggesting that he was breathing. Mr. Estrella had two gunshot wounds in his upper right chest area, and the officers were holding pressure to the wounds. Ems moved him onto a stretcher, but while he was being loaded into the ambulance, he stopped breathing. They performed CPR on Mr. Estrella while we were driving to the hospital. Despite attempted emergency surgery at the hospital, Mr. Estrella died as a result of a gunshot wound around 11:20 p.m..

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: As part of police policy, both officers were taken to the hospital from the scene for a full assessment. Neither had any injuries. So Andre’s firearm injury belt was secured by another officer at the hospital, Coffey’s firearm and in his possession until they were inspected by a trooper from ballistics. Later that evening. My office has placed a high priority on providing a detailed and objective criminal investigation as this is a matter of public trust. And I’m confident that we’ve exhausted all investigatory avenues to ensure full transparency. As to the events of that evening, the facts that we have gathered demonstrate that officers saw Drini acted in self defense when he shot Miguel Estrella. Massachusetts General Law states that officers are within their lawful authority to use lethal force when they have exhausted as many attempts at de-escalation is feasible. When lethal force is necessary to prevent death or serious bodily harm and the force is proportional to the threat and harm the third party. Eyewitness reports demonstrate that the officers provided numerous verbal warnings, created distance and called for additional resources to help resolve the incident. In attempts to de-escalate the Taser, evidence shows they attempted less lethal force. The video shows that Mr. Estrella is movement toward the officers and the knife found on the scene is a proportional threat to officer safety. These elements are well established in law. The facts discovered during the course of this investigation do not establish probable cause to charge the officer, nor would the Commonwealth be able to meet its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt required for a criminal prosecution.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: These are sad and tragic circumstances, but they are not criminal. Mr. Estrella and his family have suffered an injustice. Many systems failed. Miguel Estrella. He did not receive the mental health services that he needed. This is the result of decades of failure to invest in basic health care at the federal and state level. And people here in Berkshire County are suffering due to that failure. Tragedies like these create distrust between law enforcement and the community, especially in historically oppressed communities suffering disproportionate rates of police violence. Mr. Straw, his death reflects the dire and urgent need for culturally competent resources to address mental health and wellness. And calling on the Legislature to provide this community with resources for mental health treatment that recognize cultural differences and attitudes towards mental health. Communicates effectively and understands the complexity of how someone interacts with others based on their experiences. I hope that my office is investigation supports stakeholders to come together to identify procedural and systemic reforms that promote the health and well-being of our community and prevent tragedies. I would like to use this opportunity to highlight the availability of the newly launched 988 hotline. It offers long term hope to transform mental response. The 988 Lifeline is a national network of over 200 local, independent crisis centers equipped to help people in mental health related distress or experiencing suicidal crisis via call, text or chat.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: The 98 Lifeline provides free and confidential support to people in suicidal crisis or mental health related distress 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Numerous studies have shown that most callers are significantly more likely to feel less depressed, less suicidal, less overwhelmed and more hopeful after speaking to a nine, eight, eight lifeline crisis. I want to express my thanks and appreciation to the staff here at the Berkshire District Attorney’s Office, to the Berkshire State Police Detective Unit, the State Police, Crime Scene Services Section, Firearms Identification section, as well as the forensic scientist attached to the state police crime lab. I thank the police department for their full cooperation with this investigation, as well as the Berkshire Special Response Team, the Berkshire Sheriff’s Office, other EMS and public safety agencies who responded to the scene and assisted in this investigation. Finally, to the Estrellas family. I’m very sorry for your loss. Did not receive justice, but he will not be forgotten. My hope is that our community uses memory and these shared set of facts to lead us to solutions that will ensure that every person in our community gets the help that they need when they need it. Olina. Estrella would like to make a statement. She went off questions, but when she is done, I will take questions. Okay. I can take questions. I’m sorry. I don’t know your name, sir. Blue Shirt and.

Matt Martinez, The Berkshire Eagle: Matt Martinez, the Berkshire Eagle. Wanted to find out when exactly the district attorney’s office made the determination that Sandra acted in self-defense.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Well, I mean, this is we conducted our investigation over the course of months. And as we develop the facts and we the laws, then we came to our legal conclusions. I don’t know that I could give you an exact date on that. Brittany.

Brittany Polito iBerkshires: Brittany Polito iBerkshires. So I just have a question in regards to the preliminary report.That came out. That stated that Miguel did not meet the criteria of a person in crisis. Is that still the determination with the final report?

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: So that particular determination was a report that came from the Pittsfield Police Department, and that is based on Pittsfield Police Department policies. That is not an issue that my office considers or looks at, because those are not our policies, our legal conclusions to determine whether or not this was a crime and if we can charge the officers. So that was our analysis. We did want to provide a full accounting and complete details so that the police department, the city, the community, mental health providers can look at these facts and determine what is the best course of action forward.

Brittany Polito iBerkshires: Thank you.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Nancy

Nancy Eve Cohen, New England Public Media: Two questions about the police and one about your report about the police. Do you feel that the police should have 24, seven co responders?

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Well, I definitely believe that we need to provide a different system for responding to people in crisis. And whether or not that means 24, seven co responders then or if it means some other model or avenue, I can’t say definitively, but I have been on ride alongs with the police department and with the responders, and I was on a ride along and I did see somebody involved. And it does seem like a very effective program.

Nancy Eve Cohen, New England Public Media: Another question on the police do feel that. They should be there, body cameras.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: I am fully in support of police wearing body cameras. As a prosecutor, we appreciate the evidence that we receive when police are doing body cameras. There are departments that we receive body cam footage from and we always want more evidence and we believe that they’re very helpful. So we encourage all of our law enforcement partners that we work with to wear body cameras.

Nancy Eve Cohen, New England Public Media: And about the report, this is very significant report. Why was it released on a Friday afternoon?

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: We really wanted wanted to get the information out to the public. And this was just the best day that worked for everybody schedule. It was not any other reason than that. Yes, sir.

Jason Velázquez, The Greylock Glass: The initial report was sent back by chief when the internal investigation, the brochure reported that for a week they continued to work on the report to make it compliant with the 2020 Justice Reform Act. What exactly changed and why? Between the initial report and the revised report? Was it the facts that were augmented or what what exactly happened?

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Well, I appreciate the question, but my office didn’t prepare the Pittsfield Police Report. And we had we really have nothing to do.

Jason Velázquez, The Greylock Glass: Did you have access to the initial report, as well?.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: So what I provided to you today is the information from my office. I did not provide anything.

Jason Velázquez, The Greylock Glass: Did you see the initial investigation, the initial or the original internal affairs report?

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: I did receive a detailed report from the police department with exhibits, but I’m I’m sorry. I’m not sure if it was the initial report or a second report. It was not something that really was all that significant to me because we were doing our own investigation. I can tell you what we did rely on from the police report was the Taser report, but all of the other pieces of the investigation we developed on our own. Brittany.

Brittany Polito iBerkshires: I have two more questions. So the first one is, was there a determination of how many times Miguel was hit with the Taser

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Well, he did have a probe in his neck. So we know that he was hit at least once in his neck. Yes. Yes. But he could have been hit an additional time as well.

Brittany Polito iBerkshires: Okay. And my second question, I’m sure it’s in the binder, but how long did it take for the ambulance to get there after the two shots were fired?

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: I’m sorry. I don’t know exactly the amount of time, but you could see on the video that’s that video is in real time. It’s not in clips like the dispatch are in clips. So you can see that on the video. And so it feels like a long time when you’re watching it, but it’s isn’t as long as it feels. I’m sorry, what was.Your name again?

Matt Martinez, The Berkshire Eagle: Matt Martinez. I wanted to find out a little bit more about the length of this investigation, especially as it relates to the police department’s report as well, and why it’s taken this long to arrive at these conclusions.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Well, you know, I wouldn’t say that this report has taken an unusually long time, especially given how thorough our report is. And you’ll see when we give you the statement of facts that we have really been very thorough in a comprehensive review. We assemble facts from multiple hours of interviews and police reports and forensic reports. So it is a very detailed recitation of an overview of the facts. And we also provide our conclusions of law that are sophisticated analysis. If you look at prior investigations conducted by the district attorney’s office into police shootings, you will see that the timeline for for our investigation is basically equal to other investigations conducted by this office. I think Andy might know the exact time. And did you know? Do you remember how long the prior investigations took?

Matt Martinez, The Berkshire Eagle: Yes. So the last one was it was five months, 20 days since the incident to the public release of it. We’re a little over ten months right now. So. Pretty much. Pretty much.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Any further questions? Yes. Mr. Martinez

Matt Martinez, The Berkshire Eagle: I wanted to find out if the district attorney’s office is going to be making any recommendations to the police department in terms of responding to mental health calls in the future.

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: Well, I am not an expert in responding to crises or in responding to mental health situations. But I certainly am a partner in ensuring the health and the safety and well-being of people here in the community. And I would like to be helpful in the process of determining and making sure that we improve our responses. So I regard myself as a partner and a convener and certainly want to support the police department and the community. The community on the West Side, the Estrella family in moving forward and we have started to make contact with health care providers here in the county to get a sense of what kind of resources are available and what kind of resources can be made specifically for culturally competent mental health care in the west side of Pittsfield. And we will continue doing that work. Yes.

Matt Martinez, The Berkshire Eagle: Again, probably my last question for you, but I wanted to talk a little bit more about proportionality of force. I know we saw a close up of the knife that was used and used to justify essentially the self-defense. I wanted to ask a little bit more about how that determination is made in the investigation, as well as, for example, if Mr. Austria still had the box cutter on his person instead of that kitchen knife. What there a similar ruling in terms of proportionality of force?

Andrea Harrington, D.A. Berkshire County: I’m not going to answer theoretical questions, but what I will say is that it’s you review case law, which we did, an individual who was armed with a knife in the case law that is considered a deadly weapon and a response with a firearm is considered appropriate proportional force under the law. Okay. No further questions. Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.

The post Top Left Corner #164: No Justice for Miguel appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Hey, Greylock Nation —

This episode, #163, is a special edition of the Top Left Corner. It begins a short series examining the March 25 killing of Miguel Estrella by Officer Nicholas Sondrini of the Pittsfield Police Department. I’m not going to go over the known facts of the incident in great detail, since local reporting in The Berkshire Eagle and other outlets have covered the basics. Already reported:

A 911 call was placed by Estrella’s domestic partner, Daneya Falwell, stating that he had been engaged in self-harm.

Police arrived and determined, according to the report of an internal police department investigation, that Estrella could not be subjected to involuntary medical or psychiatric detention per Massachusetts law.

Estrella refused medical assistance when EMTs arrived, and police left the residence.

Minutes later, police returned to the scene, encountered Estrella, now in possession of a knife, and they say, after attempts to de-escalate the situation were unsuccessful, fired Tasers at Estrella when he allegedly approached them at a fast pace in a fighting stance, knife raised.

Officer Sondrini fired twice into Estrella’s torso, resulting in Estrella’s death later that night in the hospital.

According to Pittsfield Police Chief Michael Wynn, the department opened an internal investigation the day after the shooting, which produced a report on April 8.

According to reporting by The Eagle, Wynn read the investigation’s report and, on April 14, sent the investigators back to work on it further, he claimed, to better align with the Criminal Justice Reform Act of 2020. The revised preliminary report showed up on the chief’s desk a week later.

Conclusion? Officer Sondrini’s actions were correct, and, based on the facts of the incident, Estrella’s death was nearly unavoidable, if tragic.

Estrella’s family and the community at large roundly reject this assessment. The Berkshire District Attorney’s office has been conducting its own review of the officers’ actions, relying on investigators from the Massachusetts State Police.

Pittsfield police do not wear body cameras, and the initial report interviewed only the responding officers, so parsing the events of the evening of March 25 to come up with an accurate picture requires work, and more than a little faith truth will triumph in the end. 

Some in the community have pointed out the police typically separate suspects soon after arrest for participating in the same crime to ensure that they don’t have an opportunity to “get their stories straight.” They ask what the Justice Reform Act of 2020 has to do with the Pittsfield PD’s simple explanation of the facts as they happened, and wonder if the report has been altered to protect the officers involved by ensuring the removal or editing of any description of actions that don’t pass muster.

In case after case, in both Massachusetts and nationwide, police received desperate calls for help from families of persons suffering mental health crises. In case after case, the consequences of the calls are the death of the sufferer, often within scant minutes of the police arriving at the scene.

Investigations, both internal and independent, typically yield the judgements, as heartbreaking as they are predictable, that the police did no wrong. In a chilling bit of coincidence, just this past Friday, Police in Pittsfield, New Hampshire were cleared by their state’s Attorney General of any and all wrongdoing in the shooting death of 52-year-old Tony Hannon, a man suffering a mental health crisis, whose wife called 911, begging for help as Hannon threatened self-harm.

Much as military leaders chasten the press and public for questioning decisions made in the convenient “fog of war,” police departments are quick to criticize their critics for ignorance about how limited their options are in the high-pressure atmosphere typical of mental health crises. If only the public realized how any delay in the use of force might endanger the lives of officers and bystanders.

Except it’s a lie. For decades, a handful of other communities across the country have instituted programs specifically engineered to de-fuse mental health crises centered around methods that aren’t coercive, law-enforcement models. When the subject of these visits isn’t confronted with lights and sirens, followed by weapons drawn by men in paramilitary outfits, compliance rates leading to peaceful outcomes are, according these programs, unsurprisingly higher.

The public will never have a transcript of exactly what Officers Sondrini and Christopher Coffey said, nor any proof of how commanding or calming their de-escalation efforts were. The community wants to know how much of the officers’ response to the situation was based on Estrella’s presence as a large, muscular person of color. We know only that a man who was loved by many is now mourned after a call for help turned into an execution order.

The Greylock Glass has always sought to shed light on potential solutions, rather than painful details. In this vein, while we wait for the results of the District Attorney’s criminal investigation, we’re going to be hearing from a few individuals who may be able to explain how we can make sure tragedies like the killing of Miguel Estrella are less likely to happen again.

Editor’s Note: The Greylock Glass pays to have rough transcripts of interviews produced. We attempt to remain as faithful as possible to the speakers’ original meaning, and apologize for any errors of transcription. That said, even the imperfect transcription we perform is costly. Please support us financially by becoming a member or making a one-time contribution to help us continue to provide this service.

Top Left Corner: And with me on the line is Ivy Moody, staff attorney at the Mental Health Legal Advisers Committee. Ivey, thanks so much for being on the Top Left Corner.

Ivy Moody: Wonderful to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Top Left Corner: Well, this is I wish the circumstances were better. This is a tragedy that we’re talking about today. And the question of whether it was a preventable tragedy is up in the air right now. I do want to, as I mentioned in the green room, the digital green room. I try to focus on the underlying questions, the foundational issues, rather than the play by play, because just focusing on, you know, the details can sometimes leave you a little bit lost when it comes to looking for solutions. Tell me what the Mental Health Legal Advisers Committee does.

Ivy Moody: Absolutely. So we are an independent state agency, so we are funded by the state. And our role is to advocate for advancing the rights of individuals with mental health challenges across the Commonwealth. We do both specific litigation around mostly class actions for individuals who are not receiving the right accommodations or appropriate mental health care. And then we also do a lot of legislative advocacy. Specifically right now, our organization is doing a lot within school programing, family law areas and policing with mental health.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. So it sounds like I got the right person on the on the line. The the issue of and this is something that I’ve talked about with a number of people at different shows over the last few years is the lack of access to care, to mental health care, because for some reason, you know, even if you have insurance, they don’t treat mental health as just plain old health. I guess they decide it’s like dental. You kind of don’t really need it as much. But the the truth really starts with organizations like yours. It’s advocacy and education that gets people sort of on board. What would you say the public’s perception is about mental health today? Has it improved over the last couple of decades? I hope maybe.

Ivy Moody: I think we have to have hope that it has improved. When we look at mental health, we have to go back to the fact that we have inherently an institutionalization history and a carceral approach to mental health. And we still see and have the remnants of this idea that people with mental health conditions are dangerous and have to be removed from community, or it’s something that you just solve and it goes away and the person reenters our, quote unquote, normal society and everything’s fine. What I think we’re seeing now, especially coming out of COVID, is a recognition that mental health is ebbs and flows for all of us. It’s something that most people at some point in their life will face more challenges and then less or maybe more and more. So I think that we as a society are seeing a turning point away from that and carceral approach, but we’re still working on it. And I think when we start to talk about these issues and we see the approach, especially around policing, it’s that remnants of that history of institutionalization that’s really still there.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. You know, I think the idea that the pandemic is I mean, if if if if you can find silver linings, it’s that it has changed our our attitudes about a number of things, including things like mental health. I can’t tell you the number of people who have admitted that they’ve experienced real depression for the first time, or at least they’ve they’ve noticed it. They’ve they’ve, you know, identified it. But of course, of course, mental health is not perceived the same in all circles. It is not the same for women as it is for men. Historically, women have been really have borne the brunt of of victimization because of anything that resembled mental health issues, women who used to be locked up and sort of shipped away. The the perception of mental health is different among between Caucasians and communities of color, among the wealthy and among low income groups. What do you think is the danger? I know this is a leading question. It should be is there a danger? But what is the what is the ramifications of having different standards when it comes to assessing the impact of mental health concerns?

Ivy Moody: I think any time that there is a disparity in how we’re approaching. Mental health. You’re going to have an issue or really anything. You’re going to have dangers and concerns with that. I think that what we’re seeing right now specifically, especially in the state of Massachusetts, is, as you mentioned, a complete lack of resources. And when you don’t have the resources to identify and address mental health, you start to see mental health come up and be labeled as other things. You see it as this person just doesn’t want to work. Or this person is, you know, doesn’t is unhoused and it’s because of something else they did or it’s a substance abuse issue or myriad of things that can happen and can get mislabeled around mental health. Ultimately, though, it is a resource issue and when we don’t have the resources other than it comes up in other things, but it also starts to become a broader and broader issue for all of us and can harm the whole community. So I don’t know if that answers your question specifically, but we absolutely need to be addressing it and recognizing the differences that are coming up. It’s a little outside the scope of our conversation, but if you look at the Department of Correction numbers of those with mental health diagnoses in our institutions and our prisons, the women’s side is about 70% by different statistics, and that’s enormous. And I think we start to see it happening as we just put people in jail, in prison, and that’s not a solution. And unfortunately, that’s the direction a lot of it heads. And we don’t have those community resources.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, no, I think that’s not to too far afield of this conversation. I think when we’re talking about, you know, lack of parity in treatment in in assessments and as you said, resource allocation, you’re talking about people’s lives here and and how the outcomes can be just so vastly different. Somebody in one cohort ends up getting the help they need. Maybe it’s a matter of talk therapy, maybe it’s a matter of medication or a combination of the two. And they go on to lead a productive life. Another person spirals. Into an abyss and ends up in the legal system. Maybe they have the same exact diagnosis or would have the same exact diagnosis. But the the environmental factors are cause profoundly different results. And, of course, this is the case for Miguel Estrella in Pittsfield. Who. I don’t I didn’t get a chance to speak to the family yet. I don’t know how long he was aware or that his family was aware that he was suffering from a mental health crisis or was one was coming down the pike. But I if if we would assume at least and maybe this is wrong to assume, but if we assume that they had some idea that, you know, he was in need of mental health resources and couldn’t get them. We he would be one of many, many people of color who are not getting these resources and end up. The subject of a911 call such as he was, you know, his fiancee, his I guess his family were concerned he’d cut himself in the face with a knife. The police showed up. The the situation de-escalated. I guess his fiancee said that she thought that he’d be okay and she could handle him. But then, you know, a little I think an hour or 2 hours later, they’re making a trip to the same address. And now he has the knife in his hand and is shot and killed. What sort of. What sort of numbers or what sort of experience has Mitchell Lacey had confronting these really tragic outcomes?

Ivy Moody: So I wouldn’t say that I don’t want to speak specifically to the Australia case because obviously our hearts go out to their to their family and to the community and we don’t have direct contact with them either. What I will say is that even The Washington Post as recently as 2020, put out statistics on their databases that one in four people who are fatally shot by police have a mental health illness. So we know that this is happening over and over again across our communities. What it starts with is, as we’ve mentioned, is the resources in the community. And one thing I see is really a big proponent of and we’re working with a lot of different organizations to create our peer run programs and community run programs so that when an individual starts to feel that maybe things are escalating or they’re not in a great place, they may or may not have the insurance options or a provider per se to reach out to. But there is a community based organization that is non carceral. It’s not. We talk about interplays of power here and it’s a peer run organization or a place where they can go and receive the care that they need and maybe even just the support that they need.

Ivy Moody: Because when we’re talking about the intersections of all of our different, whether it’s our race or ethnicity or our socioeconomic status, where we have our mental health crises is really going to determine what our outcome is. And creating these living room environments is often what they’re called. The Wildfire Allowance has a handful of them on Western Mass, gives people a place to go. It gives a place for communities, neighbors, families, friends, someone to call this, not the police. And I think this ties really well into the 1988 bill, which there’s a bill in the state of Massachusetts. There’s a House bill 2692 Senate bill 2065, and then obviously the federal legislation to roll out the 1980 number. And I think this is sort of the situation that 98 is thinking about. It’s a growth out of the National Suicide Hotline prevention, but it’s also supposed to be a resource line. It’s there’s no promoting there’s no geotagging attached to the numbers. It’s just supposed to be a place to have resource and sort of trying to help people where they are. Before we get to a crisis and I can I can jump a little bit more into the alternative community response teams as well, if you want to go there.

Top Left Corner: I wish yeah. No, I wish you would, because this ultimately I mean, these are where the answers lie. These these these topics here. So. Yeah, please continue.

Ivy Moody: So right now, I would say nationally and I you start out saying I’m an expert, I will say I am heavily involved in the conversation. I think that we’re as a country grappling with these issues and we’re all discussing things around the phrase the most promising practices. Right. We don’t necessarily know what the best practice is. And inherently, pretty much anyone who’s dealing with these issues and grappling with them will say it is community by community. It is community building what works best for them. But generally, there are two models that are coming out to sort of be the the options or the ways people are thinking about this. The first is a co responder model, and it sounds like Pittsfield Police Department may have something like this. And I’m not as familiar with their program specifically, but co responder is the idea that there are social workers embedded in the police force who respond with law enforcement to situations where an individual may be in mental health crisis? The alternative to that is what’s called the alternative crisis response model. Specifically in Massachusetts. It’s all surrounding a bill called Aces, which is an act to create alternatives to community emergency services. And the alternative response model is non-law enforcement. So it may come out of 911, it may come out of 98, it may come out of another line in the community. But it is a team of community members.

Ivy Moody: Usually it’s an EMT, a social worker, or a mental health provider, and then a peer specialist or a peer trained peer responder. And they respond to calls. Just as you’ve seen, we’ve seen in Star out of Denver, Colorado, in cahoots out of Eugene, Oregon, to meet people where they are. They’re not in law enforcement. They are trained to address these situations. They have the tools to do so and they have the tools to truly de-escalate. And so between the two models I see is strongly endorsing the alternative crisis response model because it’s a non law enforcement. The concerns around the co responder model continue to be that it is still inherently a law enforcement response. And when we talk about de-escalation, which really is the the baseline to these these sort of conversations, anytime you have law enforcement showing up with a badge and the gun and the Taser and the handcuffs, they’re an inherent, escalating force. And we know that when someone’s in mental health crisis, anything that you’re doing to add to that fight or flight situation, it can be really dangerous. And so those are sort of the two ideas that are coming around right now. And just for your listeners, the alternative crisis response model Bill in the state of Massachusetts, the ACS bill is House Bill 2519 and Senate Bill 1552.

Top Left Corner: Okay. This is this is a lot of really interesting, interesting information about something that I, I did dabble. I did find out about the the cahoots program. Now, I had thought that sort of this alternative response model was a new idea, but cahoots has been going on over three decades, three decades now. So they have and they have, you know, numbers. I mean, by now they have the statistics to show and they do show that they’ve had a lot of success. What has taken so long for the rest of the country to catch up to? Eugene, Oregon.

Ivy Moody: I don’t have an answer for you on that.

Top Left Corner: I mean, it’s Eugene, you know? I mean, come on.

Ivy Moody: I think that what we’ve seen really in the last two years is a real. Reframing and rethinking about policing generally. And I want to stress that the conversations we’re having, at least in Massachusetts with Lacey, we’re having these conversations with law enforcement. This is not a US versus law enforcement in any way. This is a group conversation about how to help our communities, because this is a this is a health crisis at the end of the day. And I think when we start rethinking about police and what we want their roles to be and what we don’t, we see that the police also are saying we don’t we’re not equipped for this. This isn’t really part of our this is health. This is not community safety. And so I think that there’s been a catalyst to a conversation around it. And we’re starting to see also a focus on what is community health look like, what is public health. And we’re fortunate that mental health has started to really be part of that conversation as well. So, as you said, if anything good can come out of COVID, it does seem to be that it really catalyzed this conversation.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, now it is. And I know that many of my listeners are they are less generous when it comes to how we frame police involvement in these issues. I personally am not a an abolitionist. I have some friends who are they believe that the goal should be to abolish law enforcement, you know, or at least as it’s known today entirely. And I I’m not there yet because I do think that there’s always going to be some. Well, just some reality that, you know, a police officer is, in fact, sometimes what you need. You know, it’s just until until so many socioeconomic factors are fixed and fixed for good. I mean, we’re talking, you know, science fiction, utopian levels of good. I think you’re always going to have a need for that. I don’t know. I’m going to I’m going to catch a lot of hell from my friends. But but I don’t believe that that most officers show up at a situation hoping or intending to and to use their firearm as as a solution. I mean, I have to believe that I really do. I may be naive, but I really think that that police officers in general get into the job, you know, other than the fact that it’s generally a pretty good, secure job because they do care about the community. And if you start at that point, you have to ask, well, what is it that? Police officers what is and you know, from a legal stand, I realize you’re not a clinician. You’re you know, you’re an attorney. But from your experience, what has been the response of police officers and departments as to why things went sideways so quickly in some of these cases? Do we have any data on that?

Ivy Moody: I don’t have the data on that. I think one thing we do have, as you said, out of cahoots. They their numbers and I would have to double check, but I think it’s close to less than 1% of their calls have required backup from law enforcement. So what we do see is that. Appropriate responders who are the right people and the right tool for the job don’t result in those outcomes, basically.

Top Left Corner: Good.

Ivy Moody: So when we talk about police responding to mental health, I think that when you’re a police officer, your lived experience and your repeated interactions with the public are very much that you’re very cautious and you’re very worried and you are reactive inherently. And so your training is that when you see a weapon to react and. We have to acknowledge that there’s also a lot of mental health crisis going on within police department and the when you shoot and kill someone, I can’t imagine that that is not something that you have to deal with in your own mental health as well. And so I think we we have to recognize that they’re just not the tool for this. And the tools that they have and their toolkits are for suppression and to hold someone down and to secure everyone else. And so when we talk about these alternative community response teams, their tools are totally different. Their tools are that they can sit and have a conversation and they don’t have to be worrying about all the other calls going on on the radio. They just can sit and be there. They know the resources in the community. They know the different medications that someone might be on or the different ways medications interact with other substances or environmental issues. And so you’re really just talking about not having the right tools. And when we talk about also the funding for these programs, we’re not talking about pulling funding from the public safety budgets. These the funding is coming from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Mental Health. So it really is a separate thing. And just like when we talk about fire departments respond to fires and EMTs respond to heart attacks, you know, we already have these sort of delineations of who is the best tool for each situation in many other circumstances. And so we’re just trying to do that same thing here, if that makes sense.

Top Left Corner: It makes perfect it makes perfect sense to me. The and yes, I think if anyone who’s ever listened to a scanner on a especially on like a Friday night, the police scanner knows it’s it’s busy and we don’t like to think about I mean, we’d like to think that the police will have all the time that they need to resolve whatever the situation and what might be without pressure of having to get to the next, you know, the next task, the next emergency, the next, you know, address. But the pressure to resolve, say, a mental health crisis in 15 or 20 minutes or less. I mean, that’s that’s absurd. I mean, that’s just absurd to think that they have a backlog of things that they have to get to. And they just they really want to just get this when it when it could be somebody’s life. That that that that quota that that, you know, that backlog of of cases that they have to get through could cause outcomes that are irreversible. It’s just horrifying. And yeah, so, but I do want to I do want to draw this delineation and this notion of co responders is, in fact, what Pittsfield has. There are two problems that I have seen. Based on what has come out of the the department’s communications since Mr. Estrella was was killed. Number one, the co responder was supposed to be off duty at 830. Ended up staying on until about 940. So the person is already if they’re putting in an hour of overtime, they’re overworked, period. You know that they’re putting in overtime and they’re staying later than they intended to. They left, according to the police department, about 5 minutes before that call came in and they weren’t able to get anybody. Secondly, the police chief, Chief Wynne, says that the way it works is that the police officers respond first and then determine whether or not they need to call a co responder. Does that sound problematic on its face?

Ivy Moody: Yes. That’s what my answer is. Yes. And I think that one thing that we want to be careful of when we’re having these conversations is that any involvement of people who are better equipped and have better training around mental health is a step in the right direction. And the National Association of Social Workers for the Massachusetts chapter is heavily involved, including the black social workers in the ACS bills. And so social workers are very engaged in this conversation. What I think that it sounds like Pittsfield model and similar models really struggle with is the idea that it is a police force, a police first model. And the reality is when you’re walking into a situation, any time that you have law enforcement, they have the power in that situation. And yes, you have a social worker there. But the concern is always going to be that the law enforcement rules the day and they get to make the calls. And that’s not really meeting people where they are and it is escalating. And the other part of the conversation that we don’t have to go too far down but is that police are often working on a model where they are hoping to transport someone. And part of the ACS mentality is really to say that we don’t always need to bring someone to an emergency room.

Ivy Moody: We don’t always need to put someone under what is called sectioning and in a non involuntary hold. There are many other tools involved and law enforcement are usually in the mindset of if someone’s in crisis, we need to take them somewhere and they don’t have the ability to stay, like you said with that social worker for long periods of time. Additionally, we know that people who struggle with mental health often struggle at night. And so not having a 24 hour, seven days a week availability really doesn’t address the needs of the community in most situations. I also don’t have all of the information on Pittsburgh or on Pittsfield, but I will mention that on their website, when you go to their special response teams, they do list responding to emotionally disturbed persons as a part of their SWAT team. Skill set. So I would encourage, if I could, Pittsfield to consider some of the language that I’ve been using in their own marketing. When it comes to building trust and community with those in mental health, we don’t use the term emotionally disturbed persons. That’s a little.

Top Left Corner: Outdated. Yeah. Yeah. You know, sometimes trying too hard can can get you in trouble when it comes to messaging. The the last thing I want to bring up, and this is a really touchy subject because it has the communities of color in Pittsfield on edge right now. You know, there’s going to be protests, there’s going to be marches. It’s going to be challenging to just get through the conversations that we have to get through as as a community. But the numbers don’t lie. More people of color who are experiencing mental health crisis and end up shot than Caucasians. How do we. How do we try to do both things at one time? How do we address the. The color bias or the cultural bias and the mental health stigma and and bias at the same time. Is that too much to ask or are they part of the same thing or what?

Ivy Moody: I think they have to be a part of the same conversation. We can’t get away from that. And I should acknowledge I am a white woman. I have a degree. I have a lot of privilege myself. And so I can’t even begin to understand or really get on the same level as some of the communities that are walking through this right now. And I hope that we can continue to be a support system to them. But really, I think that’s why when we talk about these programs, even the bills in the state of Massachusetts federally, it’s about communities building programs that work for themselves. It’s community led because communities know what they need best, and we know that it’s not what they’re getting right now. And it is a matter of trying to address subconscious biases across the system. We know that subconscious biases don’t just come up with law enforcement. They also come up with medical personnel and trying to engage in broader conversations and really have services in the community of peers to meet people where they are and really rethinking what we what we mean when we say someone is engaged in, quote unquote, criminal activity. Because I do think we we we perceive threat very differently based on our subconscious biases. And that’s all part of this conversation.

Top Left Corner: Mm. That is a really important piece of this, this, this puzzle and a great place to leave off. Ivy, where can people go to find out more about the Laci?

Ivy Moody: So we we do have a website. If you Google Mitch Lacy, we are the first to come up and actually see that word. We also do have on that website our own intake line, which people are always welcome to reach out to. I would also encourage people to talk to their representatives about these issues. It is coming up for various votes soon and we are also happy to point people in that direction as well.

Top Left Corner: Fantastic. Well, Ivy Moody, it’s been a pleasure and a real educational experience as I knew it would be. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Ivy Moody: Thank you so much for having me and have a wonderful day.

Top Left Corner: Take care. Bye bye.

Hey, again Greylock Nation, 

If you think the kind of long-form journalism you just heard is important, please pay it forward if you can. Look for the link in the show notes of this episode that will make it easy for you to make a one-time or monthly contributions to support our work. If you’re listening through a podcast app, then go to greylockglass.com and look for the “support us” link at the top of the homepage that will take you to our membership page. Either way, your transaction is secure, easy, and very, very much appreciated. Thanks, and as always, stay safe, be good to each other, and go easy on yourself.

The post Top Left Corner #163: Justice for Miguel? appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Top Left Corner: And with me on the line is Berkshire District Attorney Andrea Harrington. Andrea, thanks so much for coming on the Top Left Corner. It’s been too long.

Andrea Harrington: It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Top Left Corner: So we have we have a number of things that I have wanted to catch up on. And I know that that you probably have plenty to say about them. Firstly, though, let’s let’s talk about the most. Recent items that have come out of your office, the issue of drugs being laced with chemicals that are genuinely dangerous or deadly. Talk to us about. There was, I think a little bit earlier this summer, there was a fentanyl warning that there was increased levels of fentanyl. But then there was just this past week there was a Xylazine advisory. Talk to us about what? What you know and how the public should react to this.

Andrea Harrington: Yeah. Thank you for asking me about the Xylazine issue. And this is a new well, new to me and I think new to a lot of other people. Drug that they’re finding within other substances so people might think that they have heroin or cocaine and in lab tests it’s turning out that heroin and cocaine are also being mixed with this Xylazine, which is a veterinary sedative. And it can be very dangerous for people in particular and can contribute to fatal overdoses. So we did put out a warning letting people know about the psilocybin. And in particular, it’s important to know about because Narcan does not work on psilocybin, but it is important for people if they believe that somebody is overdosing to administer Narcan because Narcan can work if there are other opioids present.

Top Left Corner: Right.

The Berkshire District Attorney’s Office cautions the community about the presence of Xylazine in the drug supply.

Massachusetts Drug Supply Data Stream (MADDS) at Brandeis University noted a significant percentage of opioid samples testing positive for the presence of Xylazine, especially in Western Massachusetts. MADDS found the drug in both powder and counterfeit pain pills. The Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab finds Xylazine frequently used as a cutting agent.

In 2021, 12 out of 33 samples MADDS tested in Berkshire County contained Xylazine. As of June 2022, 10 out of 42 samples tested positive for Xylazine. Statewide MADDS reports that 28 percent of samples tested positive for Xylazine.

“I thank MADDS for testing and alerting our community to changes in the drug supply. I urge people who use drugs to be cautious with their intake and never use alone,” District Attorney Andrea Harrington said.

“Sharing and raising awareness about what is in the local drug supply is a proven harm reduction measure to prevent tragedy.”

Implementing harm reduction strategies across the county and treating people with compassion is an evidence-based solution to the opioid and overdose epidemic.

The Berkshire District Attorney’s Office signed a Memorandum of Agreement with MADDS to allow them to operate in Berkshire County as part of a statewide effort to supply the community and first responders with data to prevent fatal overdoses.

The District Attorney asks that everyone learn the signs of overdose and act immediately – call 911, administer Naloxone, perform rescue breathing, and stay with the person until help arrives. While Narcan will not reverse the effects of Xylazine, Narcan will reverse the effects of the opioid present, so always administer Narcan.

The Good Samaritan Law protects those who report an overdose from arrest and prosecution for drug possession.

Xylazine can cause over-sedation, decreased consciousness, low blood pressure, slowed heart rate, and reduced breathing. In combination with opioids, Xylazine increases the risk for overdose, and over-sedation for long periods of time can cause damage to muscles, nerves, and kidneys.

The Massachusetts Drug Supply DATA Stream website provides health bulletins and alerts to assist in identifying changes to the drug supply.Berkshire Harm Reduction provides safer use supplies, advice, medical care, and more. For additional resources in Berkshire County, please see the Berkshire Overdose Addiction Prevention Collaborative website.  

Berkshire District Attorney Andrea Harrington’s office serves all 32 cities and towns in Berkshire County. The office represents the Commonwealth in more than 7,500 criminal cases per year in Berkshire Superior Court, three district courts, three juvenile courts, Massachusetts Appeals Court, and Supreme Judicial Court. The office works closely with the State Police Detective Unit assigned to the Berkshire District Attorney’s Office, the Berkshire Law Enforcement Task Force, and collaborates with local police departments across the county. A dedicated staff of more than 50 prioritizes public safety, empowering victims and witnesses through services and support, and building a safe community for everyone and especially the most vulnerable.

Berkshire District Attorney Andrea Harrington’s office serves all 32 cities and towns in Berkshire County. The office represents the Commonwealth in more than 7,500 criminal cases per year in Berkshire Superior Court, three district courts, three juvenile courts, Massachusetts Appeals Court, and Supreme Judicial Court. The office works closely with the State Police Detective Unit assigned to the Berkshire District Attorney’s Office, the Berkshire Law Enforcement Task Force, and collaborates with local police departments across the county. A dedicated staff of more than 50 prioritizes public safety, empowering victims and witnesses through services and support, and building a safe community for everyone and especially the most vulnerable.

Andrea Harrington: Yeah. So Xylazine can cause over sedation, decreased consciousness, low blood pressure, slowed heart rate and reduced breathing. So it does increase the risk for overdose when it’s used in combination with opioids.

Top Left Corner: So essentially this is a cheap chemical that’s being cut into an expensive drug so that dealers can make the maximum profits. And I’m guessing that the expectation is that they can do this and get away with it because it has an effect that is drug, like you said, it can increase the sedation, slows down the heart rate. So, I mean, it’ll have sort of the feeling of a maybe a euphoria or at least sort of pumps up the euphoria. But are they. And I know this is going to be different from one chemical, one drug to the next, but are these people at all typically aware of the dangers or are they aware of the the proper ratios that the. Well, not proper, but the ratios that can lead to death? I’m just I’m just trying to get inside the head of the people who are manufacturing this crap.

Andrea Harrington: I don’t have the sense that the people that are putting out these substances are particularly concerned about the safety of the user. So I don’t know that there’s really a lot of thought or care that goes into the drug preparation. What I can say is that the fact that we are starting to have a better understanding of what is in the drug supply is critical to addressing the problem of substances in our community through a lens of harm reduction, because we’re able to better warn people about what it is that they’re consuming. Right. The reason we know about this is because my office has a partnership with researchers from Brandeis University that are operating in sites all over Massachusetts. So they’re operating in Berkshire County because we have a memorandum of understanding with them. They’re testing the leftovers of what is left over after people use drugs and they’re testing small amounts of drugs. So because of their testing, we know that there are these increased levels of psilocybin now seen in the drug supply. We did contact the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab, and they are finding that Xylazine is also very frequently used as a cutting agent. So this helps us to to the communication I found is the most important public safety tool. And so being able to communicate with people what are in the substances that they’re using does make people think and help people to protect themselves from fatal overdose.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, that that’s you know, I’m glad that I’m looking at the the information that you sent out to the Massachusetts drug supply data stream. Mads, I’m glad that they’re out there. The thing about it is, if you’ve got users out there on the street buying legitimate drugs that have not been cut with rat poison, basically, then every one of those users has a chance to make the next fix their last one in a good way. They can potentially get treatment. They can potentially kick in their own if possible. But this prevalence of of deadly chemicals in the drug supply, it really limits a person’s chance to to finally kick and get clean because, you know, one bad batch and they’re in the morgue instead of a treatment facility.

Andrea Harrington: We I’m my office is responsible for all of the unattended death investigations. So meeting with parents in particular of people that have died of fatal overdoses and other loved ones, I mean, those are really hard conversations when somebody lost to a fatal overdose. You know, there are somebodies, child, parent, brother, sister. And I mean, these are the it’s there’s just too much tragedy that has occurred. So from my perspective, we need to do everything that we can to keep people in our community safe from fatal overdose. And a lot so often the parents that I that I talked to say that the reason why the big barrier to their loved one getting help was the stigma that comes around having a substance use issue. So I think it’s important to reduce that stigma. And I think treating people who use drugs like human beings and like people that we care about is an important component of helping people to get help and just to be healthier.

Top Left Corner: Now, I’m not going to ask you to commit to one way or another to this this concept, but I want you to think about it for a moment. When I was I was probably 16 and. Pot. Cannabis was not legal, obviously, back in the Stone Age, but I. I got my weed. Everybody else did. If you didn’t happen to have a friend or a steady supplier, you. You went searching. And on a Friday night and you were looking for weed for a dime bag or whatever, for five bucks, ten bucks, 15 bucks, whatever it was back then. And and usually you could find somebody hanging out near the arcade or the Burger King or the various other places that people hung out. And I scored one night feeling pretty good about myself because I was a pretty big fat bag of weed for little money. And a friend and I smoked a normal amount, you know, probably a bowlful. And spiteful, and I lost three days of my life. I cannot remember what happened for the next 2 to 3 days. Don’t know how I got home. Don’t know anything.

Top Left Corner: All I know is that as soon as it kicked in, you know, I mean, we’re talking couple of hits and then something is definitely wrong. I don’t know what was sprayed on it or what it was soaked in. I have no idea. But I was terrified for a minute and then I can’t remember what happened. Somehow I made it home. But who the hell knows how? So. I wonder now that, you know, cannabis is legal. That’s not going to happen. Right? I mean, because you have stores that are backed by large companies, they have testing laboratories that have quality control that would never, ever, ever do that because they wouldn’t want to be shut down. Portugal recently decided to decriminalize all weed or all drugs, and they are noticing, at least in the beginning, I don’t know if it remains the same. Vast decreases in overdoses and increases in people seeking seeking help in seeking cessation. Help. Do you think that there is any appetite in this country for a legalize at all, spend no money on prosecution and direct all the money towards towards therapy?

Andrea Harrington: Well, I did have an opportunity to visit Portugal to study their approach to drug policy so they have decriminalized the personal use amounts of drugs. I don’t believe that unless something has happened since I visited, I don’t believe that they’d like legalize in a way that ensures that there’s a safe drug supply. But, I mean, I can definitely attest that there are decriminalization efforts have been hugely successful in terms of helping people to be healthier. And they have a much, much, much decreased the the incidence of opioid addiction in Portugal, here in our community and across Massachusetts, I’m starting to see the public health experts start to call for a safe drug supply. And this is a big topic of conversation. I’m very close with Stephen Murray, who was on the northern Berkshire EMS and is now working for Boston Medical Center in Public Health. And he’s leading this conversation around the safe drug supply. I follow the evidence and I follow data in terms of what’s going to help make people healthy and safe. So but, yeah, as you as you mentioned, like all of these kinds of changes need to have support from the community in order to be successful. I think in the case of the drug supply, I really think that we need leadership from the federal government in terms of changing the the drug policy in this country. I do think that there is an appetite for harm reduction. In particular, I noticed just being out in the community talking to people. I think that that people are really ready to see new solutions because we’ve just been so, so devastated by issues with drugs in our own community. And the response is clear that the arrest and prosecution response just hasn’t worked to make our community healthy.

Top Left Corner: Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? I mean, the thing is, it’s got to be you know, let’s look at the numbers. If if if the sort of carceral approach was was working, we would not be seeing these things. And I feel like, you know, there’s a it’s a it’s a big engine with a lot of moving parts this this drug situation. But the thing is, I think that there are probably a lot of people who if you could snap your fingers and Bibbidi bobbidi boo, they’re clean, they would do that in a heartbeat. They want to get off, you know, whether it’s meth or whether it’s heroin, they want to get off this or even prescription opioids, which are extremely expensive on the on the street. And and they are, you know, usually a first person’s first gateway into into opioids. So I just feel like there’s got to be a a way to break the cycle. And, you know, I don’t I don’t think there’s ever going to come a time where we’re going to have heroin shops like we do cannabis shops. I’m not sure that’s a good idea, but it does seem to me that as long as there’s money to be made, big money to be made, you’re going to have people dying of these, you know, fentanyl and psilocybin laced product. You’re going to have people dying of just standard overdose. You’re going to have people just sort of disappearing through addiction. They disappear. They disappear from their families. They disappear from their friends. They just sort of slowly fade away until they just are not there anymore. I mean, that’s a description that I heard somebody say that addiction makes you slowly disappear. And I think that it’s it’s one of those things where if the prosecution of these things doesn’t doesn’t help, then we’ve got to find something else because, you know, we’re done. I think having the conversation let’s study this problem. We’ve been studying this problem for 20 years now.

Andrea Harrington: It’s so interesting to hear you say that because there are evidence based, well researched, successful strategies for combating the problem of problem drug use. And I’ve worked to educate the community about that. We had a harm reduction expert who’s a professor and a doctor from San Francisco Speaks. About his research around harm reduction. Maya Savage has a great book out. We had her come to like a virtual lecture in my office about harm reduction. I mean, these it’s connection. It’s treating people’s underlying mental health issues, right? It’s all the social determinants of health that keep people healthy and help people find other ways of coping, then turning to drug use. So these strategies do work in communities. They’ve been successful and we’re working to educate people about those.

Top Left Corner: Oh, sure. And Andrea, I don’t want to suggest that you are not trying to use all of the tools, you know, that are that are productive. When I say we excuse me, I’m talking about the sort of the national we because.

Andrea Harrington: Yeah, no, I took I took it.

Top Left Corner: There are there are a lot of a lot of counties across the country that are not Berkshire County that do not have the good fortune of having a sort of a forward thinking da. So I think that we’re lucky in that regard. Let’s I guess the last point of this and this is probably longer than I wanted to talk about it, but organized crime. How much of a role does organized crime play in the drug supply in Berkshire County?

Andrea Harrington: Oh, well, just a massive roll. Although the drugs that get here get who get here through very well-organized drug distribution networks. And we have put the focus from the law enforcement side in terms of investigation and prosecution into those larger sophisticated networks. So we have a lot of drugs that come into this community from spring from like Springfield, Holyoke area. And then a lot that comes up through New York State from the Bronx in particular. We had an investigation where we had basically the biggest, largest drug bust that we’ve had, I think, since 2013. So we very much do investigate and prosecute those drug networks and work to disrupt those and get them out of our county.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, there was a pretty big haul in a while ago. That was how much how much heroin was that?

Andrea Harrington: Oh, boy. I don’t know. I don’t have the number.

Top Left Corner: It was it was a lot. I was like.

Andrea Harrington: I thought I saw a photo. I saw a photo. It was it was a lot. It was a lot. So we do we do disrupt those networks we’re working to get to always working to try to get more help from the federal government. Some things that I want to work on. We had previously applied for this high to designation, high intensity drug traffic area, which would allow for more federal resources and more cross jurisdictional investigations. We have not been successful in that yet, but we’re going to try again this year. We’re also working to get Project Safe Neighborhood status. With that would be something that we would do with our U.S. attorney’s office and that would also make more federal resources available.

Top Left Corner: So that’s that’s a pretty good wrap up. We’ll keep watching out for that. And I’ll be sure to to add these Elysian information to sort of the the regular news feed coming out of The Greylock Glass because I’m really hoping that really hoping that if users are listening to any of the any news that they’re listening to The Greylock Glass because we care and I’m talking to you out there, we actually really do care about your life. We care about your life. We care about your future. And we want you to live and and be as healthy and successful as you can be. So please be careful about your supply. Let’s talk about let’s talk about some of the violence. I asked a question or suggest that I wanted to ask you the question about levels of violent crime. I see it on social media all the time, people saying that there’s just more violent crime these days. What’s your what are your numbers say? What’s your take on it? And explain why you think the public has this perception.

Andrea Harrington: Well, first, whatever it is in terms of whatever the data is or whatever the numbers say, really when you’re talking about crime and when you’re talking about safety, the most important thing is how people feel. Do people feel safe? Because we see things happening on the news and we see a lot of violence and it has a big impact on us and how safe we feel. So I haven’t seen any data that that actually does indicate that violent crime is up. And crime data is it’s it’s somewhat problematic in terms of how it’s gathered and collected. But I have not seen any data that indicates violent crime is up. And we also have I do have a little bit of data here in terms of cases filed that I can I’m sorry, I have to pull back here. But from from my perspective, you know, any violence in Berkshire County is is unacceptable, right? So we take every every shooting, every homicide, every domestic assault, every sexual assault. We take all of those with seriousness. And we also we work every day like our life depends on making this county safer. So for me, whatever the stats are, they are.

Andrea Harrington: But we’re going to work as hard as we can to make this a safer community. So according to the Massachusetts trial court, the lead charges filed in district courts in Berkshire County are down. So in 2019, there were 4414 lead charges filed in district courts across Berkshire County in 2021. That was down to 3736. So the number of district court cases are down. The number of superior court cases, I would say are probably pretty have stayed pretty even. And I would have to go dig out some numbers to really look at that. But from my perspective, the gender based violence in county really has been off the charts and we’ve had a big focus on addressing that kind of violence. And I would say, if you ask me like, what are some of my proud accomplishments as district attorney, it really has been to change, I think, the culture of law enforcement in terms of focusing on violent crime and getting people that are more non nonviolent, low level offenses, getting those people into kind of more public health type programs, but putting our law enforcement resources into addressing violent crime.

Top Left Corner: Sure, sure. No, I think that it obviously was years overdue, that violent crime, when people think of that phrase, that they also connected to to domestic abuse, to sexual assault, all of these things really have been overlooked for a long time. The I guess when it comes to things like, oh, there was the. There was a shooting in State Street in in North Adams. What’s the name of that bar? Key West. Key West Bar. Yeah, it’s it’s kind of a hard hat bar. It’s a rough and tumble place to begin with. But people drive by that. They drive by by that on the way to, you know, Walmart, ocean state job lot. So part of it, I think is that you it’s visible. You know, some of the the crime that has occurred has been sort of either visible or at locations that people are aware of. And that does tend to increase people’s uneasiness. And any time there’s this shooting that happens out on the street, I think that tends to shake people a bit because they think, hmm, I could have been standing there. I was I was there. You know. Go ahead.

Andrea Harrington: Now 100%. And having people shooting firearms and shooting people out on our streets and in our neighborhoods and in our community is unacceptable. And we are prosecute those cases to the fullest extent of the law. We work with our local law enforcement to support their investigations in those cases. So in all of the cases of any recent shootings. Or any shootings since I’ve been the district attorney across Berkshire County, we react appropriately in order to protect public safety. So we’ve requested that the courts hold any individual who is charged with discharging firearms and shooting shot, firing shots in our community. So we’ve been largely successful in that. Of course, judges make the ultimate decision in those cases, but the individuals from the case that you’re talking about have been held pretrial, and that’s to protect public safety.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, you know, when when the shootings are typically behind closed doors, people can pretend that they don’t happen. But when they happen, you know, out in places that people are frequenting, it kind of freaks them out. But let’s you’ve brought up domestic violence. You have made that a cornerstone of your policy in a policy structure. It has been a. Disappointing time these last two years, as we have seen people who are struggling with the pandemic, in many cases not necessarily locked in, but sort of forced into close quarters with people that are dangerous to them. People who are in their family. What? What this is what people suspected in the very, very beginning. And you actually put out a PSA that I ran about that with information on how people can get help. That was at the beginning of the pandemic. Did we were we right to be concerned now that the pandemic is kind of sort of receding? Was there the increase in in in violence, in the homes, in the relationships that we feared? And how did you deal with with the last two years?

Andrea Harrington: Well, what was reported was that the incidents that law enforcement that Elizabeth Freeman Center was seeing were more serious because people were less likely to reach out for help earlier on as the violence started to escalate because of a lack of, I think, contacts with other people not seeing, not being out and about and seeing people as much and kind of being in stuck situations. So we definitely saw very, very serious incidents of violence. I don’t believe the numbers support that. There were necessarily a higher number of victims, but the cases that we were seeing were more serious. Got it. Over the past two years, how we’ve been dealing with that is we’ve well, we started our high risk team. This is a domestic violence high risk team, and that is domestic violence, homicide prevention. That is the goal of that initiative. And it brings together people that are working in different parts of the system law enforcement, police departments, probation, Dxf Elizabeth Freeman Center and breaks down silos so that we’re all communicating about high risk cases so that we can prevent any potential tragedies from occurring. And these have been shown to be very effective in other communities. So that has been in existence for just over a year now here in Berkshire County. I think it’s been hugely successful. We’re going to be putting out our annual report in the very near future, so I will make sure that you have access.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I’d like to see that it’s. Yeah, it makes sense. What you say makes sense. The pandemic isn’t going to necessarily create new dynamics of crime, but they are going to intensify them. I mean, domestic violence, but they are going to intensify them because what else they’re going to do? You know, you are all of a sudden now spending three or four times as much time with with well together as you would and and you’re not happy about the circumstances to begin with. The other thing, which is. I think it’s connected, but that might be a stretch because I’m kind of a leftist media organization, but I kind of feel like there is a national. Sexual assault going on or certainly sexual violence going on with the recent Supreme Court decision about Roe v Wade? I feel like it is a a federally approved continuation of a sexual assault that. Now you’ve got states where you can’t even get an abortion if you have been raped or if you are a victim of incest. It’s horrifying. It is saddening. I have not written about it because I don’t know that I can add anything to the conversation myself, but I have wanted to talk about it and I’ve wanted to to hear about it. And and I was really excited that you were that you put out a statement on it because I think people locally. I believe that our rights are secure. And I think they need to understand that our rights are only as secure as we fight for and as we keep vigilant about.

Top Left Corner: There’s nothing inherently different about Massachusetts that makes us so much more immune to right wing extremist policy making. You know, we did we did put witches to accused witches to death just a few hundred years ago. And, you know, we don’t evolve that quickly. So let’s you know, it’s just just saying. So the point here is, is that you’ve put out a statement of real outrage. I connect, connect the Supreme Court decision to sort of the same the same sort of underlying worldview that allows for the continuation of domestic violence. That’s my take on it. And I’d love to hear what you think, and I’d like to hear what your concerns are for not just our own women here, but in surrounding states who could you know, I can see things changing in places not too far from us. I could see things changing in Maine. I could see things changing in New Hampshire. You know, there’s some pretty strong, you know, right wing factions in those areas. We could end up having people crossing the borders to Massachusetts to get, you know, abortion care. So what do you say? What where do you think we are in Massachusetts? What do you think we have to offer the rest of the country in terms of message and in terms of maybe hope?

Andrea Harrington: Well, I certainly agree with you that the the underlying basis for this decision is that women are lesser and are not deserving of equal protection under the law and are not deserving of basic human rights and really the most fundamental right of determining our destinies and our health care and our own lives. So I do think that that kind of base attitude is what motivates violence against women, whether it’s a form of political violence or actual violence. So I totally appreciate the parallel that you’re drawing there. For me, this is a personal issue, and I’ve been very outspoken about it. And I do think that it’s critical for people to be speaking out at all levels, whether we live in Massachusetts or we live in Texas or we live in Alabama, we need to be speaking out to protect reproductive rights and health care for women everywhere. And this matter is important to women that live in Berkshire County. So, first of all, I’ve wanted to be very clear and to get the message out that abortion is legal here in Berkshire County and in Massachusetts. And I know that maybe this seems obvious to us, but what I’ve found in trying to empower and serve the most vulnerable people in our community is that they don’t necessarily get the same those messages because people see what’s happening on the national news and they are fearful and things like maybe their local prosecutor is going to prosecute them for getting an abortion.

Andrea Harrington: And we see that kind of like with ice, right? So Massachusetts has been a sanctuary state. I’ve been very clear we don’t cooperate with ICE. But still, you know, the immigrant community is very fearful of law enforcement. And this whole you know, this idea of criminalizing abortion really undermines public safety at a very basic level because it breaks down trust between people and the legal system and with the government and with authorities in general. So we put so much work into trying to build that trust, and this just undermines it. So as a as a prosecutor, it’s just so disheartening. I also see this as fueling the next wave of mass incarceration across this country. And it is very scary. And we were talking about the kind of tools and resources that we put into our investigations are our drug investigations, homicides. We have we have these are hard cases to solve, but we do have pretty powerful resources. And the idea of other places using those resources to investigate women and their providers for for seeking health care is really frightening. So I do believe that Massachusetts has an important role to play in terms of being a sanctuary where people can come and safely receive medical care.

Andrea Harrington: But also, we have to be vigilant because we know there is a potential for a federal ban on abortions. So as a state, we need to prepare for that and we need to make sure that we can continue to respect people’s basic rights and dignity. Here in Massachusetts, there is a system where if there’s a warrant for an individual’s arrest and it’s entered into a national system that will be honored in other states. So very early on, Governor Baker stated in Massachusetts, we are not going to honor warrants that are based on people seeking reproductive health care. That was a really important step. But I think that this highlights for people how important their local prosecutors are in the way that we use our discretion. So I am part of a group that has been vocal about this issue since October of 2020, when in Georgia there was some legislation that was passed that was criminalizing abortion. And we put out a statement in October of 2020 saying, as local prosecutors, we will never, ever enforce abortion bans. And then in the Dodds case, I was part of a about a hundred prosecutors from across the country that submitted an amicus brief in that case, really highlighting how criminalizing a. Abortion will undermine public safety.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I think really, you know, the the and I don’t want to draw too much of a connection because these are very different things. But the fugitive slave law should come immediately to mind. Any time people start talking about tracking people across state lines to try to prosecute them for something that isn’t isn’t illegal at the destination. You know what I mean? We have precedent on this. We we’ve we have as a nation, we have aired I mean, we have fallen down. And, you know, when it comes to things like the fugitive slave law, we don’t need to make those mistakes again. You know, we we can be better.

Andrea Harrington: Did you see Jamal Lewis column? No, about. Yeah, he had a column in The New York Times. I think I read it over the weekend, drawing that comparison. I think you’re talking about. I think that was Plessy versus Ferguson. Yeah. Maybe with the SCOTUS case, I applied to the ability of people who were enslaved to travel.

Top Left Corner: Okay, so I’m not way out of line here.

Andrea Harrington: This has been. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should. You should check that out. Yeah, you.

Top Left Corner: Should. I’ll read that. I’ll read that because I hesitate to make connections like that. But but yeah, I mean, it’s we have precedent. I mean, we have a lot of there’s a lot of things about, you know, about data that scare me, the fact that sometimes it’s not even that the law enforcement needs to get a warrant for some of the data that they’d seek. They can buy it. A lot of it’s for sale. You know, anytime you have a private corporation doing, you know, doing some sort of data service for for the government, sometimes part of the deal is that they get to sell that data. And we you know, that started with the Postal Service selling customer, you know, user data. People are not aware of how pervasive it is with the Postal Service. But, you know, license plate readers, there’s an article in Wired magazine right now about how much of that data is accessible without a warrant. And if you can put together just a few data points on a woman who travels to a state that, you know, still allows abortion, you know, you’ve you’ve basically have this this really nasty web that a woman can’t escape from no matter how careful she thinks she is because of something as simple as a as a data, as a license plate reader, which might originally have been put in installed so that they can do away with tollbooths, as we have on the mass pike. They have license plate readers now, which it’s a convenience, but it makes you think, yikes, that that stuff, that data is out there for anybody to to find. So yeah, that’s I think it’s important the work that you’ve been doing, getting the word out that this is it’s still Massachusetts.

Top Left Corner: You still don’t have anything to fear. If you have any questions, there are places to go to get answers. But but I think that it’s going to take a combined push of we’ll just use taxes, you know, the people in Texas are going to fighting for to try to, you know, either reverse or roll back some of the the restrictions on abortion there. But I think they need our help. I think that it’s going to require a nationwide effort to try to roll back these these restrictions in every state. I don’t see I don’t see how the people of Texas who were against this can do it on their own. I really feel like they need and I don’t know what that support might entail, but I think it definitely entails support. That’s. That’s pretty much what I wanted to ask about that. I think. I don’t have any other notes on it, but I do want to I did promise that I wanted to ask about, you know, this has been a crazy term for you. You know, an entry into the the DA’s office could not have been more weird than it has been during the pandemic and all the attendant issues. It hasn’t been easy on you, and certainly your detractors haven’t made it easy on you. I you know, I read the editorials, too, and I’m like, oh, my God, they’re going after her again. What fools with clowns. But the the truth is that you surely have learned some things. What would you say are some of the things that you learned that you would change in the future? And what are some of the things that you’re proud of that you’ve you’ve succeeded with?

Andrea Harrington: Well, thank you for the question and for noticing some of those things. I. I think the biggest thing that I learned is that to make fundamental change, it is critical, even when you’re the district attorney and when you have a lot of power and you have a lot of say in terms of who gets charged with what and and a lot of influence over how certain things are disposed of through a plea process that it still is critical to have. Alignment across systems to build support for fundamental change and certainly have learned a lot about when it is that you work to bring people together and when it is that you stand out on your own and just take a position. And those are always choices that I think are determined by people’s own kind of personal moral code and also strategy. So I’ve definitely learned how important it is to bring people together around big issues, and I’m looking forward to being able to do that, I think, in a more significant way, post-pandemic. I think the pandemic, definitely the nature of the crisis kind of did lead to people kind of just being in their own camp and trying to just get through.

Andrea Harrington: So I do see a lot of opportunity to bring people together around big issues, like addressing the the opioid issues and the drug problems and making our community safer. You know, I’m very my focus for the past three and a half years has been around the things that my office can control because we can make huge changes just on what we can do ourselves. I would like to do more of like codifying those policies and getting them written down, getting them published on our website. That’s a big goal for me. But looking forward, I think that the key to where I want to go in terms of public safety is having more community collaboration. I really want to bring a restorative justice program here to Berkshire County. We need community partners to be able to do that. I really would love to see more like social workers, like kind of street outreach workers working in our communities. And I don’t have control necessarily over that. So that takes buy in from our local municipalities. Those are the things that I really see as being game changers in terms of making our county safer and more just.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. Yeah. I mean, those are you know, those are goals that are going to require a lot of people to to get it. And I guess that’s that’s the best role that you can have, is being the person who can explain why you have this this view of excuse me, of justice locally. I think that it’s. I don’t I don’t have anything against any other candidates. But I do know that when you get a progressive foothold, it doesn’t always go as quickly or as easily as you might like it to. I mean, the change doesn’t happen overnight, but I do know that it can be rolled back almost overnight if a candidate who does not support those positions gets in. Things take time to take root. You know, it’s kind of like when you when you transplant a house plant, right? I mean, you know, something needs bigger roots. You you know, you get some more soil, you get a bigger pot, you transplant it. And then you have to sort of let it sit for a bit. You can’t go messing with it for a while because it is it is in a tender, is in a gentle state. And I feel like the reforms that we need to make. On a societal level have to start locally. And they have to spread. They have to spread like I like. Let’s use a good analogy rather than the obvious to spread like dandelions. But they have to spread like dandelions. They really do. They they have to you know, people have to see them working. And I really feel like there is a. There is a.

Top Left Corner: Choosing my words carefully again. There is there are things to be gained by going back to the bad old days of just lock them up. There are things to begin. People make money that way. I mean, you know, we’re not going to have time to get to that. But there is a huge industry around around criminality that is is happy to see the status quo firmly in place. And so I think that there is a lot on the line and there’s a lot of money and a lot of interest being put into keeping things just the way they are. So any time there is a a chance that progressive change can take root and prosper, I really want to give it that chance. I know that you have some detractors on the left who feel like you have not gone far enough. And and I can understand their points of view, too, though I do know that being part of government and being sort of an outsider and being somebody who has new ideas, that’s a challenging position. So I appreciate the the courage that you’ve shown in sticking to your guns as much as you can. So thank you for that and thank you for taking quite a bit of time. This is more time than we intended, but that’s why the Top Left Corner is still an hour long show because this happens with frequency. I get these interesting people on like yourself and I. I don’t want to let them go. Any closing thoughts on your work that you’re doing now? Anything that people should do to keep track of what you’re doing?

Andrea Harrington: Well, thank you. I mean, I could talk all day. Thanks for giving me the time and for such an interesting conversation. People can can keep track of the brochure district attorney’s office work. You can follow us on social media. We’re on Facebook, we’re on Twitter, and I think we’re on Instagram. But don’t quote me on that.

Top Left Corner: I’ll put the link in the show. You.

Andrea Harrington: Yeah, we have a monthly newsletter that we put out every month that gives some of the highlights from what happened over the past month. Please, please sign up for our newsletter. We have a lot of great information to share about our work and there’s so much information that comes at people constantly. It’s hard to keep track of everything that’s going on, but we are doing really important work that goes beyond just the individual cases, but really working towards structural change and to take to make people safer. And I. Prioritize public safety. That is the most critical part, I think of my job. But public safety and fairness and equity and justice, they go together. You cannot have one without the other. What I’ve learned over the past three and a half years is that my commitment to racial justice in particular is critical to public safety, because when we want to solve cases, we need help from the community and people are not going to come forward and provide information to an oppressive system. So we’ve got to get the focus away from penalizing people for minor stuff and really get it on helping people where they need it and holding perpetrators who have committed violent crime accountable and protecting the public by getting dangerous people where they belong. But those two those two goals very much go hand in hand. And I don’t ever let anybody trick you into thinking that they are counterproductive.

Top Left Corner: So this was really great, Andrea. I will make sure I have the links to everything we talked about in the show notes and that we can they can sign up for the newsletter. They can just follow you on social media. And until next time, I just want to say thanks so much for being on the show and take care.

Andrea Harrington: Okay. Thanks for having me. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you.

The post Top Left Corner #162
NTRVW: Berkshire D.A. Andrea Harrington on drug deaths, Roe v. Wade, more. appeared first on The Greylock Glass.