Derek Cook, the Springfield patrolman who pleaded guilty to two such crimes, will, after a 3-month suspension, continue to work as a gun-carrying police officer.
Springfield Police Patrolman Derek V. Cook pleaded guilty in Hampden District Court to assaulting two police supervisors in a station house fight.SPRINGFIELD - Under Massachusetts gun laws, considered by some to be among the most strict in the nation, a person convicted of assault and battery on a police officer could not obtain a license to carry a firearm.
Unless, the individual is a police officer.
Derek V. Cook, the city patrolman who pleaded guilty to two such crimes on July 21, will, after a three-month suspension, continue to work as a gun-carrying police officer.
State law provides for municipal police chiefs and commissioners to allow their officers to carry weapons - or be “licensed through the badge” - even if they have criminal records. Cook, it turns out, will be the only Springfield police officer who, if he were a civilian, would be prevented from obtaining a pistol permit or purchasing a gun as a result of criminal convictions.
“That’s very ironic,” says James Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owners Action League, a gun rights organization based in Northboro. “They disqualify citizens but let a law enforcement officer with that conviction carry a gun.”
Wallace said the Bay State’s gun laws are very strict, and changes made in 1998 caused a severe drop in the number of people who are allowed to own or carry guns. He said he was surprised to hear a police officer with a conviction for assault and battery on a police officer is being allowed to remain a member of the force.
It is in the hands of Springfield Police Commissioner William J. Fitchet, under state law, to allow members of his department to carry firearms by virtue that they are police officers, said Sgt. John M. Delaney, the commissioner's executive aide.
A civilian who had a conviction for assault and battery on a police officer, however, would not be able to legally carry a firearm, according to David Procopio, director of media communications for the Massachusetts State Police.
Cook began serving a three months’ suspension without pay from the Police Department on July 25 in the wake of his guilty pleas to charges for attacking two superior officers during a station-house fight in 2008. One of the officers was knocked unconscious and suffered a concussion, while the other, who tried to intercede to break up the altercation, sustained a broken tailbone.
In a plea-bargained agreement that spared Cook prosecution on a felony charge of wiretapping, Cook pleaded guilty in District Court to the two assault and battery charges and paid $675 in fines. The wiretapping charge was continued without a finding for six months, meaning it will be dismissed if Cook faces no further encounters in court.
No departmental disciplinary hearing was conducted for Cook because he agreed to serve the three-month suspension, according to Delaney and the patrolman’s lawyer.
Procopio confirmed that some police departments do not require officers to have a firearms license as is required of civilians. Those departments consider officers to be licensed “through the badge,” he said, which means that they carry a gun because they are police officers.
Had Cook been a civilian, his conviction for the assault and battery on a police officer charges would have precluded him from holding a firearms license.
Such a conviction, Procopio said, would fall under two different statutory disqualifications in the state’s firearms licensing laws.
“One is a violent crime,” Procopio said. “The other is (that it is) a misdemeanor punishable by more than two years imprisonment. So a person with that conviction would not be able to get a license to carry (a firearm).”
Massachusetts law, under the chapters on administration of the government, states that a chief and other police officers of all cities and towns “may carry within the commonwealth such weapons as the chief of police or the board or officer having control of the police in a city or town shall determine.”
In early 2010, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the nation’s largest anti-gun violence organization, rated Massachusetts as having the third most effective gun laws, behind only California and New Jersey. On a scale of 1 to 100, Massachusetts merited a 54, according to the ranking.
Wallace said his organization has heard that the city of Springfield - where licenses are approved through Fitchet’s office - makes it difficult for ordinary citizens to get a license to carry a firearm.
Wallace said he thinks if an officer with such a conviction on his record, carrying a gun “through the badge,” were to be involved in an incident in which a suspect were shot, for instance, it could expose the city to possible legal action.
Charles GroceOn Cook’s behalf, his lawyer, Charles W. Groce, said the facts and circumstances the case make it appropriate for him to continue as a police officer and be allowed to carry a gun.
“We’ve had officers who were far more egregious in how they act with the community, and there hasn’t been a public outcry,” Groce said. “This was in all aspects, an in-house set of circumstances.”
Delaney said, however, that no other member of the Springfield department is in the same position as Cook with criminal convictions that would preclude a civilian from being licensed to carry a firearm.
Patrolman Danielo Feliciano, who was acquitted earlier this year of assaulting his niece’s boyfriend with the support of other officers in a 2009 incident, was fired from the force, along with another officer, Pedro R. Mendez, who was alleged to have falsified a report of the incident. Patrolman Jeffrey Asher, who is charged with assault and battery of a drug suspect during an arrest, was fired; the criminal case against him is still pending.
Groce said the Feb. 2, 2008, station-house fight was an isolated incident and has nothing to do with Cook’s performance as a police officer. He said the city will continue to have the benefit of Cook’s “fantastic 19 years” of police work. “Why people would be upset is beyond me,” the lawyer said.
At the court hearing, the prosecutor in the case, assistant district attorney Donna S. Donato, told the court, “We expect our officers to act better. We expect them to respect and honor the law. Especially in their own house. Especially with their coworkers.
Cook apologized to the two senior officers, Lt. Robert Moynihan and Sgt. Dennis O’Connor, who tried to break up the fight when Cook attacked him and who has since retired, stating, “I want to say sorry to them both as a police officer and as a man.” O’Connor, in his victim-impact statement to the court, said Cook’s being allowed to continue as a police officer is “a travesty and tarnishes the reputation and honor of the good men and women of the Springfield Police Department.”