City Council - Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee Hearing on Docket #0870

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Good afternoon, everyone. For the record, my name is Henry Santana at large city councilor and I'm the chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Public Safety and Criminal Justice. Today's October 26th 2026 and the exact time is 2 18 p.m this hearing is being recorded it's also being live streamed at boston.gov city council tv and broadcasted on infinity channel 8 RCN Channel 82, and Fios Channel 964. Writing comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.ps.boston.gov and will be made part of the record and available to all Councillors. Public testimony will be taken at the end of this hearing. Individuals will be called on in the order in which they signed up and we'll have two minutes to testify. If you are interested in testifying in person, please add your name to the sign-up sheet near the entrance

If you're looking to testify virtually, please email our central staff liaison shanepack at shane.pack at boston.gov for the link and your name will be added to the list Today's hearing is on docket number 0870. Order for a hearing to examine the circumstances surrounding in custody deaths at the Suffolk County House of Correction and systematic Manure, Culpepper, Julia Mejia and Brian Worrell. Today I am joined by my colleagues in order of arrival. Councilor Aaron Murphy, Councillor Ed Flynn, Councillor John Fitzgerald, Councillor Rucy Louie-Jean, Councillor Mejia Culpepper Julia Mejia, and Councilor Ben Weber.

We've also received a letter of absence from council president Liz Breadon Before I'm gonna go to opening statements I'm going to start with myself, and then pass it on to the lead sponsors. And then I'll go to all my other colleagues who will take four people out of public testimony I'd like to thank all of our panelists and members of the public for joining us today alongside thanking Councilor Culpepper and his team for his tireless dedication to this issue. As the chair of this committee, I believe that exercising oversight over our correctional facilities is one of our most important functions. Nelson Mandela who was imprisoned in South Africa for 27 years, once said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.

A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones. We are meeting today to discuss systematic issues and patterns of mistreatment. However, I want to be clear that a single death in custody is unacceptable. One instance of guard brutality is unacceptable One individual lacking adequate food, water or healthcare while inside the Suffolk County House of Correction is unacceptable. I look forward to listening and learning from our panelists and members of the public who came here to educate us and work with the community to identify solutions to not only improve the conditions of Suffolk County, but ensure that there are no further future deaths in custody. With that I'd like to pass it over to the lead sponsors Starting with Councilor Culpepper, you have the floor.

Thank you Chair Santana for holding this important hearing. I also want to thank Councilor Mejia and for joining me as original co-sponsors of this hearing, and thank all the panelists for being here today. I filed this hearing order in April because a number of deaths in Suffolk County custody in recent years raise serious concerns about the safety, treatment and civil rights of individuals detained in these facilities. More than 20 people have died in Suffolk County Correctional Facilities over the past five years We have a responsibility to examine the circumstances surrounding these deaths and the systemic factors that may have contributed to them. These concerns are especially urgent

following the death of Shakobi Kinney on December 7, 2025 whose death was subsequently ruled a homicide by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. According to the medical examiners' findings Mr. Kenney's death following cardiac arrest caused by physical restraint by correctional officers. In August, Prisoners Legal Services released a letter and memorandum documenting deeply troubling allegations of excessive force at South Bay, including the use of prohibited chokeholds. When I think about prohibitive chokehold Think about George Floyd, deeply troubling. And when I look at what's happening and I look

Prisoner Legal Services Release. The allegations that officers in Mr. Kenney's death continue to have contact with detained individuals and participate and subsequent uses of force. And here's what really bothers me, it was my understanding that these officers were placed in positions where they would have no contact with the inmates. Now we learn that not only Do they have contact with inmates, but they're still participating in the subsequent uses of force? And I just think that's... Let me get back to my statement. I also want to express my disappointment with Suffolk County Sheriff's Department lack of cooperation. I thought and was hoping that we have someone here today to answer some questions for the Suffolks County Sheriff Department

My office has made repeated attempts to contact the Sheriff's Department regarding the sheriff's participation opportunities for detained individuals to provide testimony. We have continued those efforts throughout October Receiving little or no response, I myself have called the General Counsel. Still waiting for a call back from the General Council and I'm particularly disappointed that the Sheriff's Department did not work with us to facilitate virtual testimony from the individuals in its custody. According to response received from the Sheriff's General Counsel, whom I have yet to talk The department did not have sufficient time to coordinate this request. However, this hearing order was filed in April and our office has been attempting to coordinate these arrangements for months However, I'm encouraged that the Sheriff's Department has not categorically ruled out allowing detained individuals to testify.

We understand that would be an affront to their constitutional rights And we look forward to those individuals testifying at our next hearing Monday, December 7th.

I don't think anything's been confirmed yet, but yes.

Well we're working on it. One year from Sacoby Kinney's death. The individuals most directly affected by the conditions we are examining deserve and opportunity to have their voices heard just like everyone else. They have the same constitutional rights that everyone else, even though they're incarcerated. I also believe we need to examine the October 2023 central booking agreement between the Boston Police Department and Sheriff's Department, which allows individuals arrested by the Boston police to be transferred into Suffolk County custody before their first court appearance. This raises important questions about medical screening Custody Transfers Access Legal Counsel and the responsibilities of both agencies to protect individuals in their custody. Ultimately, this hearing is about transparency, accountability

and ensuring that no individual loses their right to safety, dignity and humane treatment simply because they are detained or awaiting trial. I look forward to hearing from our panelists about the conditions they have observed the reforms they believe are necessary and what steps we can take to prevent further injuries and deaths in custody. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank You, Councillor Culpepper. Councillor Mejia, you have the floor.

Thank you, Chair. And I want to thank Councilor Culpepper and his team for your dedicated sounding the alarm regarding this particular issue I just want to say that thank you to all the advocates who have been emailing us, to the folks who even before Councilor Culpepper took this on. You were holding the city councilors accountable understanding that $150 from what I understand here, Katie, I'm not gonna say your whole testimony but I just wanna draw to everyone's attention here that if the city is going to continue to maintain an arrangement where it pays With city revenue, $150 per person per day of detention before they even see a judge to the Suffolk Sheriff's Department. We all must play a role in oversight regarding the conditions in which the people who live out there and also, the conditions of which the staff works.

And many of them are also our constituents. I think that this is a big document but what I want to note that this is as a city councilor, I think this is what we need to recognize is our own oversight and our commitment to being able to utilize whatever political capital we have to support community And since the passing of Jacobi Kennedy in December 2025 has brought to light many questions about the use of force, staff conduct and the adequacy of emergency response and medical care provided to individuals in custody in Suffolk County. There have been over 20 deaths in custody over the past five years across Suffolks County correctional facilities. Incarceration does not mean that people lose their rights to safety, medical care and their civil rights. There is a serious systemic issue here in Suffolk County correctional facilities and we're looking forward to having this important conversation today

because my belief is the more we know, the better that we do. And I think we've gotten to the point here where we have to recognize that our incarcerated loved ones are our responsibility whether they're in or out and I think this is what I am hoping to learn more, and figure out what as a city we can do. So I'm hoping that you will shed some very specific things that we should be paying attention to so I'm not going to take as long as my Councilor Culpepper colleague did because I want the show to begin. Thank you.

Thank You, Councillor Mejia. We've also been joined by Councillor Ben Weber. I'm gonna go over to Councillor Murphy You have the floor.

Thank you and thank you to the lead sponsors, Council Culpepper who has been bringing this up in many different ways since you've joined the council of this particular issue I'm just happy to be here, to hear and listen. And I am a true believer that when people pay their debt to society we often on this council work Thank you very much. in custody. And I also believe, even though the Suffolk County Jail is somewhat not under our purview as just a resident and elected official it's important that we make sure whatever oversight we can

Put forth that we're treating our inmates respectfully and making sure that nobody's civil rights or legal rights are taken from them. So happy to be here to hear And unfortunately, we had a hearing this morning on the crime lab and nobody showed up from the administration discouraging. I know there was a hearing just a couple weeks ago in the district where nobody showed up from the T and now you're saying that Suffolk County isn't coming. I'm going to take that maybe as a compliment, that they know we're doing our work and really asking the right questions but it's frustrating when they don't want to come in front of us to answer them I just want to thank my lead sponsors and know that I'm here to listen, learn and see how I can support in any way. Thank you.

Thank You Councillor Murphy.

Councillor Flynn you have the floor. Thank-you Mr Chair and I do want to acknowledge Culpepper, Councilor Mejia and Councilor Worrell for bringing this important issue forward in seeking answers and listening to family members We also want to acknowledge that Mr. Kenney's family and we pray for him and the family, but I think what the family is seeking is answers and transparency and accountability.

And I think we have to ask difficult questions and get the answers that we're seeking, certainly Right, certainly the Sheriff's Department is not here but I do believe that we have to be transparent and open to ensure that this type of Violence never happens again. And some people, I was a probation officer for eight years and we have to acknowledge that 99% of the people in prison or the house of correction are coming back to the neighborhood that they're from. And they need to come back to their neighborhood treated with respect, given an opportunity with skills and support I'm here to support the community and hopefully make a difference in terms of welcoming,

and supporting people, our loved ones that are incarcerated in justice for the county family. Thank you Mr. Chair. Thank You Councillor Flynn.

Councillor Fitzgerald you have the floor.

Thank-you chair. Obviously, if someone loses their life in custody then something went awry. And we should look at the process and policies that we have in place of what allowed I do truly believe, I don't think anyone goes to the Suffolk County House of Corrections and says I want to take someone's life today that works there. But when an incident like that occurs it justifies a full review to make sure things are up Out to Snuff and properly, everything is properly done. And so I look forward here to listening to the panel here today to think what changes should be made or if any have been made and what the Suffolk County House of Correction has done since that time as well. I'll be focusing that on my questions but thank you very much to the makers for bringing this forward, for the panel for being here and for all of those in attendance. Thank You Chair. Thank you Councillor Fitzgerald.

Councillor Dewey-Jan you have the floor

Thank you, Mr. Chair and thank you to the sponsors of this docket I want to give my condolences to the Kenney family and all those who have lost their lives while in custody Being in custody does not deprive you of your humanity, and it does not deprived you of dignity even if your freedom is temporarily taken away from you. And so we need to make sure that what's happening at Suffolk County We have an even greater responsibility to someone when they're in government custody because they can't seek their own medical care. They can't Their own services. And so we owe them a greater debt in the last five years, I believe it's 20 people have died in the custody of the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department and

There's work to do here. I want to uplift the work of Senator Moran and calling for an investigation into what is happening, especially Because it is within the purview of the state, I think it's incredibly important to be working in partnership with our legislative leaders on the stateside. So I want to thank Senator Liz Miranda for her work May there be no more Shakobi Kennys, may we make sure that those who are waiting for their right because they're in jail waiting for Their ability to what is promised for them under the Constitution from them for them to have a fair trial. I Thank you to the panel. I've read some of the material already and I think that a lot of it is very well taken. So look forward to hearing from all of you, from the community advocates and for everyone who's showing up for our residents and our people. Thank you.

Thank You Councilor Louijeune. Councilor Weber you have the floor

Thank you, Chair. Thank you to the filers. I look forward to listening today. You know, It's never justifiable to take someone's life, even if they're sentenced to prison. But I do think it's worth highlighting that we're talking about a young man who was in pretrial detention with a $2,500 bail. I mean this is it just makes it even more outrageous if that's you know even possible and then Listening or hearing about the sort of lack of reaction from the sheriff and, you know, intimidation of witnesses by guards. I mean again like just... adds fuel to the fire here. And I think all these things are just, you know, We heard about 20 deaths.

Just focusing on this one just shows how unjust the system is. Again, just to point out these are people in pretrial detention and, you know, they've done nothing under the law. And here's somebody on $2,500 bail is not... Somebody who deserves this kind of treatment, not that anyone does. But I think reading through this it's hard to stomach and I look forward to listening to everyone on the panel. Thank you very much Chair.

Thank you, Councilor Weber. So thank you to all my colleagues for being here and providing opening statements. As mentioned I'm going to take four people out of order for public testimony that should ground us in the conversation I will then introduce today's panel and then we'll go to Councilor's questions. So with those four individuals, please excuse my pronunciation here but I think virtually we have Arianne Morrison Nabil Rabia, Nico Smith and then Melanie Griffiths. I think we only have Arianne in virtual, but those other three individuals can come and testify. I believe you have... I'll give you three minutes of those individuals here So yeah, just again I'm going to repeat the names.

Arianne Morrison which I see you're online, Nibel Rabia, Nico Smith and Melanie Griffiths. Ariaan are you available?

Yes, I am.

Okay and sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name but you have three minutes. You can go ahead.

Thank you. My name is Arian Morrison, I'm a resident of Roxbury and today I am reading the testimony of Kelsey DeVeo someone who is incarcerated in these systems Hi, my name is Kelsey DiBeo. I'm currently housed in Algon at MCI Framingham. I previously spent time at South Bay House of Correction from May 2020 to December 2022 for approximately two years and seven months. I am sharing my experience because the issues being discussed at the Boston City Council hearing affect me personally. My experience at South Bay involved an incident that occurred because of accidental impulsive behavior. One thing led to another and I was being charged at by a man who was swearing at me while running up the stairs. He cuffed me and called the SCRT team on the radio stating that there had been an assault on an officer. The SERT team came in, removed the unit officers' handcuffs and re-cuffed me with theirs.

As my face was against the wall, the SERT Team members were making threats saying you like to assault officers? As they were verbally abusing me, they were also bending and squeezing my wrist all the way forward, almost to the point where my fingers were touching the skin of my wrist. This was around August 2021. During this time, we were mandated to wear masks due to COVID. As I was being escorted to the elevator, I couldn't breathe because I was crying and my nose was stuffed up. All the lieutenant did was lift my mask as it was sliding down my face, ignoring the abuse. As we got into the elevator, the verbal and physical abuse continued causing pressure and pain in my wrist. I still hear the officer's voice in my head five years later saying she's just stupid. She's just I want the Boston City Council to know that this was not the first time abuse occurred at the Suffolk County House of Correction. I also want them to know mental scars last a lot longer than physical abuse and something needs to change.

We need to hold those responsible for past and present acts of violence accountable. Correctional officers at the HOC and DOC should have proper channels of education before being accepted as correctional officers. A degree in psychology or sociology is one example of something that can help both them and us inside. As people knew how to handle those who had suffered abuse and trauma before entering the HOC, it would make the environment a safe space for all. A space for healing. My experience at South Bay impacted me in many ways, physically, emotionally and mentally. This was all because of the negative experiences abuse and trauma I've endured or witnessed firsthand. I was already facing a long time in prison, and now they were trying to charge me with assault of an officer. This had me panicked because I knew I didn't assault anyone and would never do so, especially not to an officer Luckily, the charge didn't stick because of a lack of evidence and because the incident was considered accidental.

If anything I was the one who was assaulted and mistreated physically verbally and mentally while under the care and custody of the House of Correction My family was negatively impacted by hearing me over the phone, distraught, clearly upset and explaining why I was in the situation I was then. They were left worrying that my wrist injury would extend for years to come, which it did. I ended up receiving medical care in the DOC once I was sentenced. I got an MRI that determined I had a permanent injury. I may have made an impulsive decision that led to this scenario, but that did not give the CO or SERT team the right to verbally abuse me or physically restrain me forcibly for their own pleasure. I have also witnessed abuse before my incident. There was a fight between three individuals, the SCRT team was called and we were locked in our cells. I could see the abuse from the cell I was in and witnessed one member of the SCRT team pounding his fist repeatedly into the incarcerated person's back.

The abuse went on for a while, and I remember other women and me screaming and pounding on the windows begging them to stop. They didn't. This happened sometime around spring 2021, and it was reported. Another time, I witnessed the SCRT team pile into a woman's cell. I recall them telling her to get off her top bunk. They entered her cell wearing riot gear and carrying shields. They pulled her from the top bunk All I heard were screams and the radios beeping as the buttons were pushed because of all the movement. The COs often covered our windows with a magnetic strip so we couldn't see certain instances of abuse. Another incarcerated person, Carla DeRosa shared her experience at South Bay with me. She had a lot of negative encounters. In one incident, a CO slammed the heavy door on her finger while verbally abusing her. Her finger was purple and is now permanently altered Meaningful policy change looks like officers having morals and working ethically.

If they are going to be correctional officers, they should at least have a degree in psychology before entering training. A high school diploma is not good enough. I believe correctional officers should have a passion for keeping individuals safe and secure. You can do your job and be successful as an officer without abusing people. I've experienced such positive change since entering the DOC. I have come across great officers who take the time to get to know people and talk to us like we're human. I did not see this often at the HOC. People who get jobs at the hoc are doing it to get easy money they have no true passion for the work they are doing there is no growth and there is Instead of continuing practices that harm incarcerated people, we need to figure out a solution that will help heal communities inside and out. There needs to be a change in the hiring process altogether. Maybe we could put a program in place for COs that build leadership skills. I am part of a program the DOC called Another Way to Go. It's an end violence program that promotes leadership.

This coursework teaches individuals to take a different route when faced with a difficult situation and teaches people how to determine facts and interpretations, and how to diminish negative self-talk. This is a life-changing program, and I know it has helped me and so many others. Some staff members throughout the DOC have previously taken this course as it is something that can be utilized by everyone not just incarcerated individuals. I think this is a good conversation starter to help people understand who they are, how others think and how to communicate and solve problems in a healthy way. I want to thank you for your time and your work. I hope my testimony made a difference, and that my voice can help others and create safer laws and policies. Kelsey DiBeo Awesome.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate you testifying Hi, I'm sorry.

I was a little late. Nibal Rabia, I was on the list for testimony. Can I testify?

Absolutely. Thank you for being here.

Thank You for the space to speak So my name's Nibal Rubia. I'm a Boston resident, Absolutely. So I'm going to be reading on behalf of Abby Owen Sharp, who's W9846 MCI gardener. who speak on visiting their older brother. who was 17 and serving time for his first offense on a firearms charge due to Massachusetts minimum mandatory laws. My mother and sister walked beside me, and I was the youngest of all my mother's children. My mother carried herself like a shield, and my sister moved like one too. I too, with my small stature at the time believed I was a protector. My mother being a single black woman living in what was considered one of the most racist cities in the US unfortunately fell victim

to the plight and fear of so many other marginalized women raising black boys to men, also trying to teach them what it means to be a black man in society. In this instance, it was to be tough to be a protector. My neighborhood I was often taught to my crowd of friends and I had to match the feeling and energy of the room so I squared my shoulders to the walls and performed bravery even when I felt scared. In that moment, underneath it all my heart was pounding out of my chest. The jail greeted us with gray walls and the tired paint that seemed to drain the life from everyone who had touched. A stale smell clung to the air and followed me home and through life. The visiting room was vast and bare, filled with... Round Deflective Park Tables. As tables were washed out white, some dulled to gray with age, others with marked engravings of past victims saying free or rest in peace of names that I was estranged to As we waited for my brother to appear, I found myself counting all the names to calm my nerves.

I eventually lost track of the number. The visiting room was a space built to strip people down to a number. And the, and... Was not I can still feel how enormous it was and how small it made us. At that moment, my juvenile mind couldn't comprehend how this made my mother feel. I could not fathom how traumatic this was for a parent imagining a mother stepping into a space trying to protect her vulnerable babies against a giant system Nevermind giant grown men while seeing one of her babies in a place and in a position she can't protect him from so many microaggressions no matter how much he tried. I had always believed a guard was someone who protected us. I was wrong. The guard, also known as correction officers were hulking muscled men and their eyes carried a coldness as if our presence were an inconvenience. The tension in the room was so palpable you could cut it with a knife.

What confused and shames me still is who they aimed it at, my mother's sister women whether grandmothers mothers aunties and children treated as treats by grown men built So I could just imagine what was happening to the vulnerable men inside the prison, such as my brother. Then I saw my brother. I was so glad to see him. I wanted to tell him about my first experiences of high school, Sitting across the table that felt like a barricade, I wanted to hold his hand. But even the smallest gesture of love was met with an objection and shouting, Don't touch! Their voice cracked across the room like whips. On this particular visit, an officer said something to my family. I don't recall the words, only the sting. My mother observed it quietly, but my sister protected her argued back and the moment came within a breath of turning physical. And I was ready to jump like I was taught. Instead our visit was suspended

The punishment felt hardest on my mother who only wanted to see her child. Prior to the visit, I had watched popular shows where visitors were treated with contempt and I quickly hoped it was scripted the way everyone knew other popular shows were. Like most shows at the time filled with disrespect dehumanization and disregard Yet we still watched because it was captivating. Walking into the South Bay Jail, I sadly learned through this visit that a lot of it was true. I was too young to understand the timing, 2004 and 2005 a class action lawsuit over guard brutality was moving forward with dozens of incarcerated men named as victims. as one can imagine this caused increased antagonism, agitation to inmates and loved ones suing the people who held the keys. And there were whispers around the jail had even reached the ears of teens like myself that men had been beaten to death in the elevator, also known as The Hellevator.

that this was the elevator with the broken camera where there were no witnesses and no proof of abuse. Years later, I was visiting one of the unforgiving buildings. Unfortunately as a result of trauma incurred from the experience of visiting South Bay it was hard for my family to visit me Surprisingly, my mother was the only consistent person to visit while I served 16 years, while others could not. They told me about the nightmares, the anxiety attacks, how the sound of locked doors, uniforms and disrespect and anxiety lived in their bodies The trauma of the South Bay Jail planted in them while visiting my brother handicapped them from seeing me. Although I understood and yet still, This didn't minimize how I felt abandoned, feelings I'm still working on processing two decades later. Unfortunately a place that was meant to correct a 14-year old

that love couldn't be treated as a violation and that power could answer to no one. I wrote this so people might see what happened and tragically continues to happen inside South Bay such as the case with Jacobi and what it does to those waiting outside, such as grandmothers, mothers, daughters, wives, and little brothers who learn to hold their breath. I walked out of that visiting room still performing bravery. I carry it with me still." It's Abby on sharp. Can I also read testimony?

You're reading for another individual as well?

I'm reading for myself.

Okay, go ahead.

Thank you. I'm heartbroken for Shakopee, Kenney and the 20 other people who have died under Suffolk County Sheriff Department's custody since 2020. And I'm here today to call for action. My partner's brother suffers from mental illness that has led to his arrest and incarceration on several occasions. On top of the many worries that come with caring for a loved one that is suffering from mental illnesses, my partner lives with fear that their brother will be abused or killed and Pretrial Detention. This is an unacceptable condition for any person. Pretrial detention is a dangerous and unnecessary tactic that weighs deep on our communities. Many of the unhoused people who I see every day down the street from my apartment on Mass and Cass also suffer from mental illness. And instead of funding for support and treatment, Mayor Wu is expanding central booking and disappearing people into the system. The Suffolk County Sheriff's Department is dangerous.

I ask the City Council to call for an end to central booking and any contracts with their department, and call for a full examination of the misconduct that has occurred under their supervision. and also I will say it is shameful that people who are incarcerated were not able to testify because I just got this one second ago and was cold reading it. Thank you.

Thank for being here, thank you for testifying and thank you for testifying on behalf of others as well.

I will just... Councilor Santana, I do have three written testimonies here from people on the inside that should be read out loud. Nico Smith is late and he's not going to arrive in time I'm wondering if either the people that have volunteered to speak can speak again and read these testimonies or if someone else can.

Yes, absolutely.

Okay, great. Linnea Amina?

State your name and then the people.

Hi, I'm Linnea Barron. I'll be reading the testimony of Ava Najafi My name is Ava Najafi and I am currently housed on the Algon unit of MCI Framingham. I was sent to South Bay House of Correction on January 31st, 2022 and remained there until my sentencing in 2024. I am sharing my experience because I believe the Boston City Council needs to understand what incarcerated people have experienced inside South Bay. During my time there, I witnessed and experienced several disturbing incidents involving correctional officers, medical staff, and the treatment of incarcerated women. Some of these experiences continue to affect me to this day An elderly woman denied proper care. One of the first horrific situations I witnessed involved an elderly woman housed in a cell next to mine, She was incarcerated in connection to an OUI manslaughter case involving the death of a four-year-old boy.

I remember officers treating her poorly and her struggling to receive medical care and medication she needed while in pain A few nights later, a code was called for an unresponsive inmate on our floor. It was the elderly woman next to me. Nurses, sergeants and officers entered her cell and I heard screaming and banging. While standing at my cell window, I observed Nurse Joseph laughing during the incident. The following morning, I checked on the woman. When I asked what had happened she moved to a blind spot and showed me bruises covering her body and blood in her underwear. She told me that officers had beaten her lifted her by her underwear and slammed her onto her bunk I reported what she told me to Lieutenant Brown who said she would look into it. I do not know what investigation, if any followed What I do know is that I witnessed a vulnerable elderly woman struggling to receive care and afterward, I saw the injuries she showed me. Physical and sexual abuse by an officer

Several months later, I experienced a dangerous situation myself while housed on Unit 161. From my cell, I saw Officer Zhao kissing and touching an incarcerated woman near a cell doorway. He would not let me leave my cell to do my detail job, so I told him to focus on his job and stop being a pervert. The woman began arguing with me, telling me to mind my business. When the cells opened at 630 she ran towards the stairs to fight me. We began fighting and Officer Zhao was present and witnessed what was happening without intervening. When he saw that she was not beating me, he grabbed me and pushed me towards a blind spot near cell 24. The woman followed and began choking me. I managed to get free but Officer Zhao then restrained me near the blind spot, bent my wrist and repeatedly smashed my head against the metal bars by the street window. During this incident, he made sexually abusive comments towards me including threatening to choke me with his penis until I could not breathe and saying he would teach me how to act.

Knowing how things work inside a jail, I eventually cooperated with the SRT team who took me to the hole. There we were strip searched with male captains standing outside the door watching. While I was in the hole, my friend at the time Denise Rivera was also housed there. One night around 10 p.m., we were talking through the crack in our doors. Officers called a disruptive inmate code because someone was talking. The captain took Denise out of her cell in handcuffs. He then went inside, removed her blankets, bed clothing and towel, and threw everything into the day room. He unzipped his pants and urinated on her cell floor before sending her back inside. After the officers left, another officer working the ship felt bad for Denise and passed her napkins and toilet paper. She had to clean the floor herself and sleep on a cold bunk that night. No incarcerated person should be subjected to that kind of humiliation and degradation.

Violence against a pregnant woman. A few months later, I was back on Unit 161 and had a roommate who was four months pregnant. She also struggled with her mental health and from what I observed, was not receiving the help she needed. One day she experienced what appeared to be a psychotic episode and threw the unit phone onto the floor near the officer's station. A code was called, and officers rushed in and slammed her to the ground. I screamed because she was pregnant. I saw Officer Exam slam her onto her back and knee her in the stomach. Officer Francis yelled at me to return to my cell, and threatened that I would be loved. He also told me he would make sure she was fine. About a month later, I saw her again and she was no longer pregnant. I do not know what happened or what medical care she received and she did not tell me. I cannot say what caused the pregnancy to end, but I have never forgotten what I witnessed that day or the fear I felt watching a pregnant woman being handled that way.

Sexual activity between an officer and an incarcerated woman Another experience has stayed with me because of my own history as a childhood rape victim. I later had a different roommate who was flirting with an officer working the night shift. One night, I woke up to moaning sounds. From my top bunk, I turned toward the mirror and saw an officer having sexual intercourse with my cellmate inside our cell. The situation was deeply triggering because of what I had experienced as a child. I stayed under my covers, put my headphones on and turned my music up as tears ran down my face. I prayed and begged God keep me safe. I was afraid the officer might try to sexually assault me next. Eventually, the officer left. A few minutes later he returned with a tray of food I should never have had to lie in my bed terrified that a person employed to maintain safety could become a threat to my own safety The impact and the changes I want to see.

These are only some of the incidents I witnessed or experienced at South Bay. There were many more, and these are situations I still think about often. Sometimes I find myself in disbelief that I lived through and witnessed these things. I want the Boston City Council to understand that incarcerated people are human beings, We deserve medical care, dignity, protection from violence and the ability to report misconduct without feeling powerless. Being incarcerated should never mean surrendering our basic human rights. I believe meaningful change must include independent investigations into allegations of staff misconduct, accountability when wrongdoing is substantiated. Proper medical and mental health care, protection from sexual abuse and exploitation, and safeguards against retaliation. Reports of abuse must be taken seriously, documented and investigated rather than dismissed or ignored.

I am sharing these experiences because what happens inside a correctional facility should not remain hidden simply because the people affected are incarcerated. People on the outside deserve to know what is happening and the people inside deserve to be safe. I hope the Council will listen to the people who have lived through these experiences and push for changes that protect incarcerated people from further harm. Thank you for taking the time to hear my testimony

I'm reading on behalf of an anonymous incarcerated community member. I was in South Bay from 2022 to 2025, and I've been in Nashua Street. from 2022 to 2025. I've seen numerous abuses of authority by officers at South Bay, Please tell me how society expects the people who they entrust to show inmates, how to follow rules and laws. Be the same people who break the laws and rules Kill, rape, abuse, torment, distribute drugs. These are the acts of criminals not of people who are there for care and custody. of people who are in need of help. To abuse the very people who will return to society makes no sense. Hurt people continue to hurt people, who continue to heart people is what's called insanity. How and when will the powers that be take notice and act?

Why is it so hard to see that most Why is it so hard to see what must be done to stop the inevitable outcome of years of abuse? Please, please help. Save a father's or mother's life before another group of South Bay officers take it and leave another child without a parent.

Thank you.

I'm reading on behalf of Joseph R. Dyer. I've never been treated so abusive by COs, the officers talk to inmates as Nazi would to Jews who have been sent to their deaths in gas chambers. I've seen officers spit upon inmates. My name is Joseph R. Dyer, I'm currently at SBCC and have been abused by the Suffolk County House of Horrors In 1999, the feds arrested and persecuted officers at Suffolk County due to abuses of officers at South Bay. Yet that hasn't stopped the killings, rapes, drug dealings of Suffolks County officers. Please tell me why don't South Bay officers wear body cams? Hasn't enough happened at South Bay to warrant officers to be forced to wear bodycams? Excuse me. The CERT team are those who have experienced what they do to hurt teams should have to wear body cams.

I need you to know what happened to me in South Bay in 2024. I was injured by an officer when he put leg restraints upon my left leg. He cut me because he put the restraints on too tight when I complained to medical staff They disregarded my concerns about it getting infected. The reason I'm bringing this up is because the medical providers are also abusive towards inmates. And to cover for officers' misconduct, there's a code of silence at South Bay. I'm currently suing because the medical providers refused to send me to an outside hospital for over two months knowing my leg had gone cephas. The deliberate indifference to my serious medical needs caused the infection to infect my intestines, which caused me to undergo five surgeries and be hospitalized for over 40 days without being able to eat.

For those days in the hospital, I was not allowed phone calls to my loved ones to tell them I love them. I was no allowed visitors. The only one who ever even knew I was at that hospital was Pastor Hobbs. They didn't have the decency to even let my family know I was alive. I've been looking for an attorney to take my case, but it's harder for incarcerated people to gain representation Please let Congress know about these horrors that are all too frequent at South Bay. I thank you for the hard work you do on our behalf.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you.

Melanie Griffiths is ready on virtual to provide incarcerated person's testimony.

Okay great and then do you have?

Yes, I'm providing testimony.

Are you testifying on behalf of someone?

No, it's just for myself.

I would prefer... Yeah, we're prioritizing people inside first and then we'll have him on.

Okay, so Melanie are you on? Pardon me, virtually. Is there a different name? Do you know? We'll just give it a second.

Hello?

Hello, we can hear you.

Okay, I'm sorry, I couldn't... To get on before, thank you for the time. I'm here to read the testimony of my son who is incarcerated in Nashua Street now but has formerly been incarcerated at Suffolk County House of Corrections. So he says, never in my life have I been as afraid as I've been inside of the South Bay House of Correction and at times Nashua Street Jail in Boston. I've experienced what I believe is unjust treatment, fear, and humiliation. at the hands of correction officers. I've been placed in solitary confinement, sometimes without even understanding why and beaten while being taken there. These experiences have stayed with me and have made it harder to focus on the very thing the system claims to promote, rehabilitation.

I feel that profiling by the Boston Police was deeply connected to my incarceration and also resulted in me being targeted while inside of South Bay. I dealt with a lot of intimidation that caused me to spend many months in solitary confinement. I believe that they're working together, and I'm fighting every day to build a better life for myself to grow and move forward But how can a person focus on reform when they feel they must constantly fight to protect their own dignity and safety? It's time for change. It's Time for accountability. It is time to reform our system. My voice will not be silenced. Being incarcerated should never mean being treated like an animal, Every person deserves basic human dignity, accountability and protection from abuse regardless of their past or their circumstances.

Speaking out does feel frightening. I worry about what could happen when I tell my story, especially when I hear about others who have suffered or even died after experiences involving the CERT team. But fear will not silence me. I'm speaking out because I want change. I am speaking for myself, for those who feel they cannot speak and for those may one day find themselves in the same position Our jail system needs accountability, transparency and meaningful reform. Allegations of abuse must be taken seriously Incarcerated people must be subject to proper oversight and must be treated as human beings. I will not let fear stop me from telling my story. I want to thank you for listening to his testimony today and also thank

Culpepper, and the other Councilors that are here today listening to these testimonies and hearing this It should not necessarily be that we should have to even do this. And I just want to say that as a constituent, completely disregarded by the Suffolk County House of Correction in the way that they've handled this hearing today, not even having the dignity to show up For Jacobi's parents, this is disgusting. And the last thing that I received from my son, the last written communication I received for him was this testimony that he wrote. He had a court date today, and I just got a call from someone inside that's worried about him. They said he randomly had a search of his cell today while he wasn't even there.

They claim they found Contra Brand, removed his stuff and they're taking him to seg without him even knowing. He's still being transported back from court. This person called me because they're worried about his safety. And this is the type of intimidation, it wasn't even by accident that had happened on this day right before I get a chance to talk This is the type of intimidation and abuse that our folks inside have to deal with on a regular basis, so regular that they're getting used to this. And we have to sit home and worry about their safety. You know, I want everything that he asked for and everybody else asked for. But at the end of the day you all know what we need. We need leadership in our city that is not going to continue to turn a blind eye to the abuses of policing. Look at how many counselors are even here today. We need people that are willing to stand up to the corporal systems that are killing us.

And so I can't even name exactly what I want you guys to do, we just need this to end. People should not have to feel this level of intimidation. And the power of the system, the fact that they could blatantly not show up for us today just shows not only the right that people have inside to be afraid because it shows how powerful they are. Even when the city council calls, it's like look how long it took to even get them here today and they're still not here. So I just want to say thank you for calling this hearing. It would have felt a lot more meaningful if at least the folks that we're trying to hold accountable were here with us today. And I want to just show my regard to Jacoby's family for being here amongst that disrespect today.

Thank you, thank you so much for testifying and testifying on behalf of your son. I hope he's safe and appreciate you again testifying. We're gonna now move On to, I'm going to introduce today's panelists. I appreciate you all being here and your patience. We're gonna introduce these panelists we're gonna then go to counselors questions And then we're going to do public testimony at the end as well. So with us today, we have Drusilla Brown who's a community advocate. We have Jasmine Borges director of organizing for the Masters Research Bail Fund, Katie Naples Mitchell with the Justice Policy Council, with the ACLU of Massachusetts. We have David Rini, Executive Director of Personals Legal Services Mallory Onoda, Executive Director of Families for Justice as Healing.

Giovanni Madabushi who is the executive director for the Massachusetts Bail Fund and we have Casey Hurd, the Executive Director for Material Aid and Advocacy Program. So I'm going to turn it over to you all. I know we also folks virtually but for any Opening remarks, opening statements. And then we're going to go to counselors for questions. And it looks like they're pointing at you, Drusilla. So I think you're gonna kick us off.

Well good morning, good afternoon. To everyone here, thank you for taking time out to hear the concerns. I am Sokobe Kenny's mother. I heard you say advocate. I'm a mother first and my son is no longer here with us. My son is gone. He was murdered. Yeah, he was murdered His life was taken from him I could bear this if he died of cancer I could bare it If he got hit by a car, what I can't bear here today and right now is that his life was taken by the CEOs. It was taken from him. He didn't get an opportunity to grow. My son was 32 years old, he just turned 32 September 17th which he didn't leave behind a child, a wife

Anything. He didn't get opportunity for that my son started having these mental illnesses coming up he suffered as a child with it and he was in South Bay prison I'm gonna bring that back right where I was I'm going to start right here. Yes, Jacoby DeAndre Kenny. I want to keep saying his name so people don't forget what happened to him and to realize he was a human being He was my son. I bore him. I brought him into this world. I was a single mother, I did what I could do to get him the help that he needed. When he got older the illnesses started taking even a little more He had no reason to be in Nash Street, South Bay Jail or all those other places. But I tell you when he hit South Bay jail

I cried more than I ever cried in my life praying for my son. Right now, he should not be dead if they say that the guards there are trained to do their job. I can't see where that is true. I can't see where it's true. If it was, he'll be sitting at home or on the job working someplace but he's not, he's dead. He's gone because those same guards that have been running rampant in South Bay for years. Abusing, taking lives. Yes I'll say it taking lives rather they go there with murder on their mind some people just cannot have authority over anybody else and to me What they did to my son

I can't take it. I can bear it. And for them guards, the same very guards that have been running rampant in that prison and they're still there? They're still sitting on their throne? They're still there. But our boys in blue, if there's an officer involved Killing or something. They're taking it, put aside. Sit aside till we figure out what happened. No, the sheriff's office is an island. The sheriffs has the right to keep moving on the guards. They're beyond touchable. My son died, and then even in the fact that they called it a homicide, they're still working taking taxpayers' money. Going home to their children, kissing them, bringing them home, getting them married, sending them off to college where I can't do any of that.

I can and never will be able to because they took his life. If they were trained like we say, why is my son dead today? If they would train to subdue or whatever what was going on in there I couldn't even watch the video. But I know The last words that they can tell me, which I've got so many letters from the prisoners that watch it because there were hundreds of them sitting out there watching the whole thing. Part of this video. Why are those? This is steadily my question which I'm trying to keep myself together is how was it possible that there's no accountability for this? Yes, they're still dealing with it now since it's been deemed a homicide. They say they're going there and dealing with the grand jury but at this point why is it?

that elected official, which nobody can tell him to remove these guards from there when they're still having access Thank you for watching. and calling people, all kinds of things which we have to understand this though. I just have to drive this home and make it clear so you can see that everybody is not a good person. Everybody, everybody can't assume power. Why I keep thinking this point is If those CEOs or whoever is in charge were trained properly, even to deal with mental illness, even whatever is happening in that place, my son would be alive today. But that didn't happen.

So now it's telling me, which I have to stand up for what I had Something written down, but it went some way. But now it's telling me that my son's life did not matter. It didn't matter that he's dead at their hands because it was proven it was their hands. So why? Then nobody can do anything about that. And there's 20 other before him, but this one my son just happened to be his catalyst to say that somebody needs a look at South Bay This place, from what I've heard, I'm just learning. I'm not... I'm a mother and I'm hurting. I still grieving and I am still Angry, I'm trying to keep everything suppressed. But I'm not depressed because it's going to come out. Because they took something from me that I could never get back. You took my son. So I want to know this question. How is it?

That this sheriff, who was just put back in his spot because he was found not guilty for whatever he was doing but to be taken out of... To be accused of something, there's some suspicion there. So now you're back. And then you don't show up, you don' take phone calls and your interim sheriff wouldn't even speak to To us to sit down and tell us what happened. And you expect a mother, I don't care what my son did. I really don't. You have, you don't have a right to take his life. You don't have a right. And for me, you say that to go in and before they always had this saying that prison was there to bring them in and then what's that word again? I'm losing that word. To rehabilitate. No such thing. There's no such thing.

There is no compassion in those jails. When you give COs and you give guards free reign over somebody's life that doesn't respect it, because you did a crime so now, you've been punished. You've been sentenced. You go to jail for these years but on top of your sentence I'm gonna punish you even more I'm gonna take authority over you. You know, Imma make you kiss my boots. In other words, you're going to do what I say or I'm going to beat you to living shreds. And that's been proven all over again, because them same guards that had did what they did to my son took his life. The same ones came back and sent somebody else to the ER that same day. How does this happen? How is there no outrage because Not just my son, but somebody's son.

Somebody's daughter is still being offended, still being assaulted, still be threatened. But yet the sheriff South Bay Jail and the guards are still there. And nobody's outraged! So then where does the life come in that matters? If you say all life matters, then how come there's no accountability in the jails? You can't make a... I'm finding this stuff out new because my son is gone. And if anybody can look into me, I was his advocate. I fought for my son as much as I could. Get to South Bend, I couldn't even get a phone call from my son. to find out where he is, is he okay? Or this that and the other no. Then come to find what horror he was living in so why? I'm trying to figure out why. I want to stay in this place. Why are they still there?

And why is the sheriff not here right now, and why did he refuse to have them that are still suffering if you have nothing to hide? If your prison is doing its job, if your COs are trained properly, if the people working in there are caring for these inmates because what we have in jail is not just Criminals and all those things. We got rocket scientists, we've got accountants, we got lawyers, we have doctors that fell on hard times or that fell into something If there was anybody in that prison that cared about life, that cared rehabilitation it would be happening right now. But obviously, that wasn't the case. So I can speak for my son. He wanted to live. His last words were pray for me! Because he was trained, he was born and raised in the church. He was a gifted musician without being taught.

He had hopes, he had dreams. He wanted to do things, he wanted to buy his mother a house! You know, he had his issues but he didn't deserve to lose his life. My son didn't want to die! He didn't wanna die! and that is unequivocally the truth. So my problem right now, is that my baby's gone. My only son I'll never have grand tutors. He's gone at the hands of the guards in South Bay, which they've been fighting South Bay because of the treatment of the prisoners for years. And there's still yet no accountability. None! I mean no accountability. I can't see any accountability.

There's still things happening in there. There is nobody that's fighting for those prisoners. Yes. I can't, I want this to... I don't know what you wanted but I want justice. I want change for those that are still here. Those that are going through this thing right now. Just because they're in prison does not mean that they're not useful, that they throw away-able. Sometimes it just needs somebody to care. There's nobody caring. And I think, I want accountability. I want that sheriff's department. You cannot police yourself.

Why would you go in and put a complaint to somebody that your only complaint is gonna go hit a glass ceiling? It's not going any further. So they're not gonna look into that. Where? So where's accountability in there? Life gone. Wasted! And we as society, we're still sitting here allowing it to go forth. Allowing South Bay to be the tyrant that they are. There's a thing that the US Department, I just have to say this, that they brought out of phase and it says the Department of Security It says this, it said to encourage the people. I'm sorry let me get to it. If you see something Say something. It's a quote for terrorism, for those things that are happening.

But the guards in the prison they see it and they won't say anything because of the brotherhood and I'm sorry, I know my voice gets elevated but I'm passionate about this thing because I lost something that was valuable to me. And I knew that once he comes out we can work through some things and keep getting it together But these things, they say that. That was a statement from the US Department of Homeland Security and I say this because It says we're protected from foreign and domestic. We have domestic terrorists right here in that prison. that's doing assaults on these men and these women, raping, pillaging, doing what they want to do with no accountability. It's time out for no accountability! The sheriff's office, the prisons are not an island We all live in America.

This is our place, this is our land and I think now that some of we other people are speaking up that somebody has to take control. The Sheriff Department cannot police itself. Can't do it. Can't Do It. Yes, it was my son that died. But who to say it next won't be your grandson or your great grandchild, or somebody else. Anybody can easily fall into those places. I'm not a quiet person. I have a loud voice. And it's because my son is gone and I refuse to continue to sit and watch everybody. That's Springfield, Massachusetts. There, and none of the councilmen. My son was born and raised there. And none of them are speaking up in outrage. Another black man down. The place should be full. Every seat on this council should be full. But there's no more compassion.

If you are a prisoner, you're no good. You're no-good. But that's where we're wrong at. That's where we as human beings are wrong at. I'm fighting for my son, I'm fightin' for mothers... My son is gone! His life, it's over. But there's mothers sitting at home like me or feeling right now the hopelessness and the pain of hearing these stories of outrage but unbelief because they're criminals. and the very guards that are protecting them, are criminals themselves. Bringing drugs in, raping, doing whatever they got to do. And we all know it's true because some of these things have been proven. Bringing in phones, doing all these other things But yet, you look at the prisoners. They're calling my son's record into question. So does that give you the right to take his life? And you knew you were taking it.

I beg to differ. Some of them wake up looking to hurt somebody, to go to the job to hurt someone and I have to say it because it's a fact Not every officer in there is on the take or for the others, but they know I get to go along to get along. If I say something, I'm gonna lose my job. If I said something all the guards are going to be against me and I don't know but I was told from a guard that worked in that prison, that's the mentality of it. The mentality of what goes on in here stays in here, because we're together. Because one day you may have done something wrong and I'm going to cover you. But no. Jacoby DeAndre Kenny?

Secobie D'Andre Kenny is going to get justice. I demand justice for my son and then I demand Justice for the rest of them because if we don't get upset, if we dont get hungry for help for our people, our children. Who's gonna fight for us? Who's going to fight from them? Who is going to tell their testimony that been here, that's talking who's going do it. So my question In my priority here, I started to apologize for my passion. What I'm learning now, I don't have to apologize And I won't, from this point on, I won' say oh, I'm sorry for filling this. I'm not.

I am sorry because there is no accountability and to the sheriff, and to all the rest of the guards that you are protecting your buddies and your friends as they destroy people's lives. People go into that prison and come back a whole nother person because of the abuse, and because of that added punishment that they get even after we the people found them guilty. And you're going to do these years but I'm gonna

Thank you, Ms. Brown. Thank you. And none of us can feel what you feel but we all empathize with you and that's why we're here today We demand justice. Mr. Chair?

Thank you, Ms. Brown for being here. My condolences. Really appreciate your courage being here and you shouldn't have to be here but we really appreciate and value that.

Good afternoon. Thank you councillors for having us here My name is Jasmine Borges, I'm the Director of Organizing for the Massachusetts Bail Fund. I'm also the Deputy Chair for the Young Lords Holyoke Chapter and I'm someone who survived 12 years of incarceration at MCI Framingham. I use the word survive because that is exactly what I did. I survived a system in which too many of our people are entering and not making it out alive, and that is unacceptable. No one deserves to die in jail or prisons. The very nature of the carceral system is violent From the moment that the handcuffs are placed on us We are forced into silence. Once we enter a jail or prison, we lose the right to our names and given numbers. We lose the rights of our bodies through strip searches. We loose the right mother our children. We are constantly degraded and abused verbally, physically, mentally and spiritually. And that must end now.

For some reason in this country, in this blue progressive state, and in this very municipality those with decision-making power only rely on the master's playbook A playbook that continues to provide more funding into surveillance, policing and criminalizing poverty. Using incarceration as the only way to deal with the struggles of our people is unimaginative and continues to disproportionately harm black and brown communities, destabilizing our families and perpetuating cycles of trauma and we must stop funding this system. The CEOs who murdered Shakobi Kenny collectively make upwards of $900,000 in salary of taxpayer money In 2025, Suffolk County Sheriff's Department budget was upwards of $130 million. Millions of dollars are being invested into a system that is harming literally I challenge this body of elected officials to think about what

and all-time high prices in gas, utility bills, food prices and other costs of living expenses. In a records request that the Massachusetts bail funds submitted to all 14 sheriffs department asking for the information of the number and the names of those who died in custody from the years 2021-2025, Eight departments responded. The other six simply did not acknowledge our records request. What has been made clear in this process is that the Sheriff's Department and the Commonwealth are operating their own fiefdoms, and no one is holding them accountable accountable, not physically responsible and certainly not morally responsible. Let me be clear if the Boston City Council does not act now we will continue to lose our people and again, that cannot be acceptable. From 2021 to 2025, 47 people have died in jails across the Commonwealth. 25 of them were awaiting trial at the time of their deaths

and 22 were sentenced in the House of Corrections at the time of their deaths. This number does not include those who have died this year in all the jails in the Commonwealth, as well as the Department of Correction which is also experiencing high rates of death In Hampden County, seven people have died in custody. Their names were not provided. In Bristol County, 66 people have die in custody, names were no provided. In Franklin County, two people died. Their names were not provided. Hampshire County, Rameo de Jesus died in custody. And Berkshire County, Satyrayana and William Bell died in Custody and Middlesex County, Gary Record, Paul Quinlan, Sean Thompson, Scott Alley. Dave Daniel Percival, Gian Franco Gonzalez died in con-in custody.

In Worcester County Milton Calle, Arias Rodriguez, Richard Prunier, Albelter Gaurian Scott Campos, David Nichols, James Brickman, and Harold Flynn. Sorry. the names are getting to me, and Suffolk County right here. Two people died in 24 hours of them being incarcerated. Seven people died one month in the summer of 2021. Their names are as follows. Rashawn Wilson, Edward Eisberger, Aisha Johnson, Carl Reboin, Sheryl Premdaz, Ashley Emma, John Elwell, Angel Calderon, Ariel Trevijo, Sirian Borelli, Carl Taylor, Christine Lindsey, Giovanni Reyes, Taylor Hurst, Shakobi Kenny.

Jail deaths in Massachusetts have become an epidemic and that must end now. Along with Ms. Drusilla, her family, currently incarcerated community members formerly incarcerated community members, the Massachusetts Bail Fund, the Material Aid Advocacy Program, The Young Lords of Holyoke and Families for Justice is Healing. We demand the following transparency The following of this elected officials, body of elected officials. Transparency, utilize the council's subpoena powers to obtain information from Suffolk County Sheriff's Department around jail deaths Miskondik, Sheriff's Emergency Response Team and Central Booking Spending. Demand a civil rights investigation into the treatment people Tained and incarcerated at South Bay House of Corrections, National Street Jail, and at Boston Police Precincts. Termination. Demand the sheriff's immediate... immediately terminate employment of the officers involved in Jacoba Kenny's murder.

End central booking, dissolve the contract between Boston Boston Police Department and Suffolk County Sheriff's Department. No future funding, investments or contracts with SCSD. Stop the sweeps, rescind the city's encampment ban ordinance direct the Boston Police Department to end the practices of warrants sweeps, direct the BPD to end drug-based and city ordinance violation arrests, and the coordinated response team in cities addiction first practices which punish people who used drugs in our potentially deadly transformation work towards evidence-based solutions that solve socioeconomic issues and provide care, restore expand and invest in low-threshold permanent housing, harm reductions programs, and voluntary on demand treatment options. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Katie Naples Mitchell. I'm the Justice Policy Counsel at the ACLU of Massachusetts. I'd like to begin with a brief word about why this hearing matters to your role as Boston City Councilors. All of the people detained in Suffolk County are your constituents. Nearly all of them, including anyone who is held pretrial or sentenced on a misdemeanor conviction, is still eligible to vote in the Commonwealth. They retain their civil and political rights. Even during their incarceration, that's true. Most people who are in Suffolk County's jails as we've heard from members of the City Council and from members on the panel are held pre-trial meaning they have yet to be convicted of anything and most people in the Suffolk County jails are people of color. In fact, the jail at present as of the first of this month is more than 50% black in a city that is not Human dignity belongs to each of us.

Every person in our jail is a human being and as is true of the human condition, many of them have made mistakes and sometimes grave errors in judgment but they don't lose their rights at the door and most have yet to be convicted of anything Although arrest and pretrial detention functionally presume guilt, restraining someone's liberty before they've ever been convicted of something, our law says they are supposed to be presumed innocent. They could walk out tomorrow case dismissed, evidence suppressed due to police misconduct or racial profiling Witness recants. The prosecution declines to prosecute. The drugs came back, they were tested. The certification says they were never illegal drugs to begin with. I think it's important to underscore that because it is not, as Councilor Murphy said in opening, that people do their time and then come home. Most of the people in the jail have not been convicted of anything. And in a particular example One of the witnesses to Shakobi Kenny's death had just turned 21 a few weeks before Kobe was killed. He grew up in foster care.

He was in jail on a low-level charge, and a few week later, the same day that the Massachusetts Bail Fund paid his bail that December, his entire case was dismissed. What stood between him and freedom, and exposed him to witnessing a homicide by the people charged with his care and protection was an unmeetable sum of money that he couldn't meet on his own and a case that the prosecution ultimately decided not to pursue as soon as he got out of jail. In our criminal system, these decisions can feel arbitrary to the people caught in its clutches and they are. Someone is incarcerated one day and free the next. I've submitted a long-form testimony. I'm not going to read the whole thing, I promise, but I'm gonna read a few highlights from it. But I wanted to start with that human underscoring of why we're here,

Ms. Drusilla's son, Jacobi but for every single person in the jail and the House of Correction you've heard a little bit about this memorandum of understanding that the Boston Police Commissioner signed with the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department in 2023 I just want to go over a little What it does is allow for pre-arraignment arrestees to be held at the Nashua Street Jail prior to them ever seeing a judge, before their first court appearance. That choice was motivated in part by three deaths that happened in the summer of 2019 at D4, in the Boston Police Precinct. The theory was people would have a better, safer set of conditions of confinement in the sheriff's custody, then in Boston police custody for that period of detention. But I think part of what's happening here today is to make sure that in your role as city councilors you establish that as a fact and not as a presumption. Safety is required for all people in the custody of the government, and it is not being assured right now.

So here's what I hope to do briefly. I'm going to give you a little bit of data about pretrial detention Suffolk County and about the harms that happen in jails that actually cause all of us to be less safe. And then I want to speak about some of the broader conditions that lead to mortality in jail, since that's the subject of this hearing, and then some ways that you as city councillors can use your power to influence what happens at the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department. So starting with that landscape setting, we've heard the terms jail and prison being used interchangeably but I just want to make clear that the state prison system, which is managed by the Department of Correction. 46% of people who are incarcerated as a snapshot population, as of January 1 of this year are in state prison. That means the majority 54% of people are in the county system. They're in our jails and houses of correction managed by the more than a dozen sheriffs in the state. In those county jails, the majority of people are held pretrial. 62% as of the first of this month and in Suffolk County that number is even higher.

It's 67% of people who are currently detained are held pre-trial Zooming out, though, to think about overall admissions in the county jail system. More than 25,000 people cycled through jails in the Commonwealth in 2025 and that's because there was a lot of churn. People do short stints of time in jail, right? Time to pay bail is roughly 12 days. So people are in jail for shorter periods. But that means also that there are more touch points with jails in the Commonwealth than there are with our state prison system. Many, many more families are affected by this. and that's especially true here in the City of Boston. Under the central booking arrangement, I had the number up, and I will pull it up again. There were more than 1,500 people who were admitted—I can just leave it at that—more than 1 500, and i'll get you the exact number—who were admitted just to the central booking pre-arraignment From January 1 to July 31 of this year.

So we're seeing lots of churn across the system And research suggests that actually the conditions of confinement in jails, which are supposed to be administrative detention not punishment legally because no one has been convicted of anything. are actually worse than they are in the prison system, because there's more idle time. There's more time that people are locked in their cells. There is limited or no access to fresh air or recreation. There are limited programming activities. There concerning patterns of violence as you've heard today. This does not make us safer. In fact, research suggests that it makes us less safe because even a day in jail can be so destabilizing for someone's life that it will make future criminal activity more likely. Jails are criminogenic in the terms that are used by researchers, meaning they disrupt the pro-social factors that are protective. Housing, family contact, employment Education, reliable and regular medical care with a trusted provider.

And they expose people to trauma and antisocial behaviors violence instability medical neglect and other people with criminal behavior And while pretrial detention has decreased over the last roughly 10 years, going back to the 2018 Criminal Justice Reform Act looking at that time period. A study that I was involved with when I was at the Harvard Kennedy School as a program Criminal Justice Policy and Management's Program Director, which I left that job in March. A study that we produced found that decrease in pretrial detention basically only benefited white people in the Commonwealth. The number of black people in commonwealth jails has remained basically static over that period, it's a 3% decrease and the number of Hispanic people in Commonwealth Jail has gone up. So racial disparities in our jails have actually gotten worse since reforms were implemented in 2018. And specifically, the jail population in South Bay has grown in recent years because there's been a major plumbing initiative happening at the Nashville Street Jail.

and so pretrial detainees, the men who are held pretrial used to be held at Nashua Street and have been being moved to South Bay. So the population in South Bay is in fact so extreme now that in emails to other organizations, the Sheriff's Department's own staff has described an overcrowding situation happening in the jail. I wish they were here so you could ask them about that. In addition, jails harms in communities. I'm not going to detail all of the research you've heard about the trauma that people experience and I think can infer the destabilizing effects that has for people's lives There's a lot of research that suggests really concrete economic harms for people coming out of incarceration. Um, there's a lotta research that suggest damaging PTSD and mental health conditions for folks including particularly people like Jacobi Kenney who two days before he was killed had been found not competent to stand trial by an independent medical evaluation. But beyond that,

It also is true that counties that have higher jail populations have higher overall mortality in the county as a whole. In other words, incarceration not only harms the lives of the people inside the system but it harms the mortality to speak a little bit about causes of mortality behind bars. We've talked about issues of despair, lack of access to medical care. Suicidality is the number one risk factor of how people die in jail. However, there are also really well-documented other risks including dying from preventable chronic disease. As well as drug or alcohol intoxication. Accidents and homicides account for the smallest number of deaths according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, it's 2% of jail deaths but it does happen and it happened here

It's officially been deemed that Shakobi Kenny's death was a homicide by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, even though no investigation has produced any kind of result that would lead to accountability. These issues have also been locally well-documented. WBUR in 2020 produced a four part series called Dying on the Sheriff's Watch It came out a few days after the pandemic began and everything shut down. So if you missed it, I'd really encourage you to go back and take a look at that series The tagline of the investigation says they found when people suffered from dire medical conditions in Massachusetts jails, they were often ignored and mistrusted with fatal consequences. And in the voices of incarcerated and detained people in Suffolk County, we regularly hear that there are common causes of injury and mortality behind bars. Medical neglect and ignored sick call requests being one of them. I have personally seen requests for interventions for kidney failure, for diabetes management, For x-rays of bones that might be broken based on staff assaults that go days or weeks or months unanswered. In the aftermath of Jacobi Kenney's death,

One detainee submitted a sick slip that said, and I quote, "'I need to talk to mental health ASAP because I feel depressed and sad that there was someone killed on the unit. I have really bad PTSD through all the trauma I have witnessed throughout my life, and Two days later and four days after Shakobi was killed in front of dozens of witnesses, the sheriff's department responded on the sixth slip. On the second half they said the mental health department is going to meet with every detainee on the 3-4 unit that is what they said They wrote it down, try to be patient. We also know of other common causes of mortality, lack of supervision for people who come in at risk of overdose death, for example the way that Aisha Johnson died in 2021 Her family is still suing the Sheriff's Department. That lawsuit survived a motion to dismiss a year ago. It's still pending, and they're in discovery.

Excessive use of force by staff, as has been alleged in Shakobi Kenny's death, by extremely brave eyewitnesses who have reported that to WBUR and the Boston Globe and the BOSTON Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. And exposure to violence from other detainees is also a risk, especially where the Suffolk Sheriff's Department sometimes transports people with conflicts across neighborhoods and puts them all in the same intake units and transport vans creating the conditions for violent outbreaks among detainee. People talk about the sheriff's staff popping doors at inopportune times where people who are known enemies are just across the door. We know there's despair that is amplified by lack of out-of-cell time, too much idle time, lack of meaningful programming and unredressed grievances. A culture of impunity and lack of accountability for staff wrongdoing. And as you've heard a blue wall of silence That means that even when staff witness wrongdoing, it makes it very hard for people to become whistleblowers and report what they have witnessed for fear of retaliation or ostracization.

So to wrap up, one evocative example of that last point and I can submit a photo to confirm this. There is a member of the staff at the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department who has a permanent affixed license plate cover on his personal vehicle that is emblazoned with the phrase Suffolk County House of Corruption, class of 85. That car was parked outside of a jail regularly last year When asked by an attorney who went to visit clients at the South Bay Jail about that license plate frame, other staff inside acknowledged knowing about it and to whom it belonged and said jokingly, That's what we call this place. In other words, this is not a problem of individual officers. This is a problem with management and of culture. And it is going to require a top-down investigation and redirection and retraining of all of what's happening inside that jail. So where do you come in as interested and curious and courageous city councillors who have passed this hearing order to try to do something about this? I think there are two ways you can use your power here.

One is policy attention on the front end of the system, Every person who is in the Suffolk County jails right now is there because they were arrested by the Boston Police Department or another local police department within Suffolks County. You all have direct oversight over the Boston Police Department. That means at least when it comes to how many people are arrested and for what kinds of offenses, you can change local policy to make it so that for at least a certain level of offenses you issue a summons instead of an arrest So that more than 1,500 pre-arraignment arrestee population can be substantially shrunk. Very fewer people going through central booking if you can change policy on the front end to make it a summons offense instead of an arrestable offense. And you could do that and we'd be happy to work with you to figure out how. A second way is to use the existing MOU between the City of Boston, the Police Commissioner and the Suffolk Sheriff's Department around central booking to attach strings for any future version of that.

require there be some kind of oversight hearing, require there'd be retraining on use of force, require them to produce documents at the very least before that goes into effect again. You have power of the purse related to that contract And we'd encourage you to use it. Thank you.

Chair Santana, Councillor Culpepper, Councillor Mejia, nice to see you again. Councillor Worrell and members of the committee, thank you for holding this hearing. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Dave Rini, I'm the Executive Director of Prisoners Legal Services of Massachusetts. For those who are not familiar with us we're the civil legal service provider for folks incarcerated in facilities across the Commonwealth. It's our job to provide civil legal assistance to folks in the various sheriff's care, as well as in the care of the Department of Correction. I want to be clear that my comments today really sort of focus on the legal investigation that my team did at Suffolk County after Mr. Kenney's death, and I want to separate out The requirements that a legal investigation may have that fall in many ways substantially short of a moral one or of best practice. So when I outline some of the very specific elements here, I want to make it clear that those don't necessarily reach

The requirement to act in the same way that the law, and it's very limited and precise and focused way may sometimes require. Back in July as we've already heard several times The office of the chief medical examiner ruled Mr. Kenney's death was a homicide. The examiner determined the cause of death was hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen and blood flow from cardiac arrest due to physical restraint by corrections officers After Mr. Kenney's death, PLS opened our investigation into the use of force at South Bay. We spoke to about 30 people who were or are incarcerated there And a quick note about that number. There are many reasons why someone who is currently incarcerated would not want to talk to us, even though we're attorneys and even though our charge is to protect the civil rights of folks that are incarcerated Folks are scared about retaliation. You heard about some of that already from the folks who've testified. There are many factors that determine whether someone is willing to talk to any outside agency

But probably the most important is that folks have to have faith that some form of legal process will actually work and that they're communicating with an agency like us, which has to go through the legal system in order to affect the change we are responsible for. will work for them and that participating in those conversations won't put them in additional danger as we've heard about from a number of folks already today. On August 31st of this year, we sent the Sheriff's Department an open letter setting out what we found We've sent that letter as well as a follow-up memo to a number of elected officials, including the city council, as well some of your colleagues at the state level. The findings outlined in the letter are disturbing, to say the least. The folks we talked to described officers putting them in chokeholds and kneeling on their necks and upper backs. Suffolk County's own use of force policy explicitly prohibits chokehold and directs officers to avoid areas of the body particularly susceptible to bodily injury But the written policy did not constrain their behavior.

People described officers punching them while gripping weapons like cuff keys or handcuffs across the knuckles, sort of like brass knuckles. In at least two documented instances, the resulting injuries required staples or stitches In at least one, the injury was to the person's face. Neither handcuffs nor keys are approved weapons under the Tarpon's policy but once again the written policy did not constrain the officer's behavior People described officers bending their wrists to the point of severe pain during routine escorts after they were already handcuffed and not resisting. You heard about an example of this from Ariane before, during her testimony earlier this afternoon. We've seen documentation of at least two fractures that appear to have resulted from that type of technique. Now pain compliance is the term you may hear in, again, somewhat bloodless legal world about what these techniques are. They're designed to ensure compliance if someone is not responding to an officer's order. But the goal of all of those, regardless of what my own personal opinion might be about their legality broadly, is that they have to end once compliance is achieved

In this case, we saw that go far beyond that necessity. They were used on folks when the tool was or when people were no longer resisting. Complaints we received described it used on people who are handcuffed already Across these complaints, a number of officers' names appear again and again without any apparent scrutiny or consequence. I want to identify that like Katie just mentioned, these aren't isolated failures There are symptoms of a culture of violence and impunity that develops when leadership does not respond to misconduct with swift and certain consequences. This is a culture that produces deaths like Mr. Kenney's, And again, I'll make it clear as we've heard from a number of folks already. It's not as if Mr. Kenney's death stopped that use of force or that our investigation or our letter has stopped that or that Sheriff Tompkins' return has miraculously stopped that I imagine you'll hear in just a moment from some of the community members that that violence is ongoing and still present.

On April 30th of this year, nearly five months after Mr. Kenney died, the Sheriff's Department stated publicly that all officers in question continue to serve in non-inmate or detainee contact posts pending the outcome of the investigation. They repeated that statement on July 21st. Officers reported to be involved in Mr. Kennedy's death are still working in positions involving direct contact with incarcerated people, despite what the Sheriff's Office claims both before and after their statements. The Department produced records documenting one of these incidents in response to a records request, and it should have been aware that their own department produced records indicating that their statements were untrue. Despite PLS informing the Sheriff's Department of the documentation we have regarding these officers' continued involvement in use of force at South Bay, The Sheriff's department maintains that the involved officers are not in contact with incarcerated people and have not been since some unspecified time early in 2026.

Our position is that its public statements did not accurately describe where these officers were subsequently assigned. The department has not said when the reassignments it describes took place, Separately, the department has declined to answer public records requests seeking records regarding officers terminated for use of force incidents citing an example or exemption for personnel records that we don't believe legally applies. Our letter asked the Sheriff's Department to immediately suspend the officers involved in the use of force against Mr. Kenney pending the results of an external investigation. As we heard before again, and I know that I'm saying it many times but you'll hear these trends repeated multiple times as well It's not an outrageous or unusual situation for there to be a policy where officers involved in a homicide across a variety of different law enforcement agencies are suspended pending an investigation. That didn't happen here and Suffolk County has no such policy as far as we were able to determine. The letter asked the department to review every use of force since December 7th, 2025 and take appropriate disciplinary action

It asks for retraining, for changes to who's eligible to serve on the Sheriff's Emergency Response Team. That's the CERT team you've heard about a few times. For the elimination of camera blind spots and for real disciplinary hearings where witnesses are permitted to testify. Indeed Suffolk County has not offered any public statement as to how a young black man held in their custody awaiting trial was killed during use of force by their officers that restricted his breath to the point that he died when that specific type of use of is not authorized by their own policy, and no officers have been relieved of duty as a result. Suffolk County owes an answer to those questions. We asked this committee to press the department for a public accounting where these officers had been assigned since 2025 We also seek to understand why and how Suffolk County continues to allow their officers to use force that is prohibited by their own policy, that is not necessary to maintain order, but is an exercise of power and control for its own sake.

Suffolk County's failure to ensure that its officers use only necessary and appropriate force on a regular basis has led us directly to Mr. Kenney's death. We ask that the Council insist on accountability for the officers involved Collaborate with your state colleagues to issue things like subpoenas that Suffolk County cannot ignore. Follow through with some of the financial oversight indicated by Katie a moment ago. We also ask that the Council insist on accountability for the officers involved, but also for the Sheriff's Department broadly so that another young person is not lost to senseless violence. Thank you

I think we'll be going to Mallory next.

Mallory, if you're on virtually, you have the floor.

Good afternoon, thank you very much. I really appreciate you having me and accommodating me to testify virtually and I want to thank the council for ensuring that this hearing happened today, and everything you will do to ensure Another hearing is held so that our siblings incarcerated can testify. I'm Mallory Honora, I am the co-director of Families for Justice as Healing. Our mission is to end the incarceration of women and girls and we're very proud that our headquarters is based in Roxbury. I am testifying virtually today And again, I deeply apologize for not being there in person. But part of my role is we have stepped up to provide transportation to women who are reentering from MCI Framingham because the Department of Corrections policy is to dump women at the MBTA commuter rail station in Framinghan.

We're trying to step up and fill that gap. And as it happened, the sister that I picked up today did some time in South Bay herself. I let her know that this hearing was happening today and if she wanted to listen in while we were driving. And she said yes, and she was brought to tears. by hearing similar experiences as what she went through. She's safe at her program now and we're wishing her the best, and will be there to support her in the next steps of her journey She particularly raised the sexual exploitation of women by guards inside of South Bay and regular demeaning and dehumanizing comments, and verbal abuse. That's something that she wanted to lift up if she had capacity to testify today We are here after a long pattern of raising concerns about this jail. In the fall of 2019 200 women were moved from MCI Framingham

Women from four counties were moved from Framingham to South Bay. And we raised an immediate alarm about that, knowing the history of harm that happened at South Bay At the time, we lifted up the fact that the vast majority of those women as Katie mentioned were pre-trial. and had not been convicted of anything. And instead of shipping them to a men's jail where they were gonna have far, far less out-of-cell time and never have access to sunlight and fresh air that we needed to consider every possible alternative before moving women into South Bay, that these women should be free in the first place to fight their cases. Many of them held on bills that they could not afford many of them on technical violations of pretrial probation related to enduring poverty. And we screamed and yelled about what else is possible for are community members rather than incarceration at South Bay knowing how harmful it was.

We sent a letter to the Sheriff's Department exactly seven years ago, October 31st 2019. And one of the demands in that letter was that correction officers' disciplinary records must be reviewed and officers with incidents of violence and abuse must be removed. We asked for that seven years ago, and frankly we were waved off and told our concerns were baseless. And we got no traction whatsoever with the city or with the sheriff's department when we were raising those demands. Since then, we have protested outside of South Bay countless times. We have driven around South Bay every single Mother's Day to honor our neighbors inside who are parenting from jail. and we have marched over and over again, and I'm specifically thinking about the time after Miss Aisha Johnson's passing. So throughout this seven years since we wrote that letter, the pattern of abuse and violence continues.

So does the grief, anger, anguish, and trauma after so many lives have been stolen or forever scarred by guards at South Bay? The pain and the devastation radiates out to our entire community. I wanna thank our community for showing up, and thank you for your courage in speaking out. And it's landing with me also to highlight what Katie mentioned that we're talking about thousands of families who are impacted in the city as constituents. Not just simply the number of people who are in the jail right now, but who have been in and out of the jail and their entire support networks who love care about them and are terrified for their safety while they're in custody. Over the past seven years, we have organized and repeatedly called for accountability in decarceration due to this grave harm that happens at South Bay and at Nashua. And what's happened during that time is actually an escalation of criminalization

The City of Boston and the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department are enforcing policies and practices to fill South Bay and punish people for being poor, unsheltered or struggling with mental health or drug use. In 2021, amidst yet another wave of frequent sweeps of unsheltered people and people living in temps, Sheriff Tompkins tried to run a courtroom out of his jail. While the city of Boston supported this initiative, we protested immediately because not only is jail court so obviously coercive and violative of people's due process rights but also because we know the reality of terror in that jail. Sheriff Tompkins sees his jail as a solution to homelessness. He was quoted in the press at the time, and since then saying that his jail court and jail treatment would quote save lives and quote, help people who cannot help themselves. He sees the Sheriff's Department role as guardianship.

Mr. Kenney's murder and 20 other deaths in the past five years, and the complete and total lack of accountability after each one of them. are shocking, they should shock you and therefore make it impossible to believe. that care and treatment can safely or ethically, or effectively happen in any jail let alone the Suffolk County House of Correction. Jail is not housing, jail is not treatment. Jail Is not mental health care. Jails is not education. Jailed is not safe. and the jails in your city are destabilizing and dehumanizing, and they are deadly. I urge the City Council to use the power of your platform to demand information from the Sheriff's Department and to change the narrative about incarceration in the city of Boston.

I implore you to recognize that city policy failures like the encampment ban and drug policing generally, and the lack of no-and low threshold housing are why our community members end up in South Bay. and always experience harm and trauma, and sometimes are restrained, beaten, suffocated and killed. So I just... I am thinking about so many media stories Suggestions about what we could do with South Bay, especially after the ICE unit was closed years ago. What could we do with south bay? What could South Bay be that people need It needs to be shut down. It is not filling the needs of our community it is causing grave and constant harm

and I hope you are insulted personally by the lack of presence of the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department. And if they're not coming to you as elected colleagues to stand up for what's going on inside their jails, imagine how they are treating our people inside Imagine the disrespect they're treating Ms. Drusilla with and all the other mothers that you heard from today, and the thousands of mothers who you don't hear from. This is the culture, the real culture of the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department and not the bill of goods that's being sold to the city and sold to our state legislatures. around needing more funding for more initiatives that are happening at South Bay when this is the reality of what goes on at those jails. So again, I hope that we can work together in changing municipal policy in order to and many more.

Thank you for joining us. and making a plan to keep our people in our community, to get the care and treatment that they need. Thank you.

Can y'all hear me okay? Good afternoon. This is, my name is Genevieve Matabushi I'm the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Bail Fund. I'm insulted that SCSD's not here today. I am insulted that VPD is not here to day. both departments and agencies that have specific and pointed policies and practices that inform everything that we're talking about today are not here. What is that saying about our city? What is that saying about the people that are claiming to provide quote-unquote care and are accountable to their constituents? These are electeds. The Suffolk County Sheriff's Department is an elected position. The sheriff is not here, and we are here just talking amongst ourselves about what it is that we can do. And I find that to be not just insulting and disrespectful but really just defiant of everything that we are demanding

and other institutions that are affecting our everyday lives. Was here receiving text messages from folks on the inside while this city council hearing is happening. Receiving text messages for my cousin who was at Chattuck on a civil commitment, he's been there for three years People are worried about what is happening to their siblings left and right. And I'm sitting here upset today, I'm very upset. I'm emotionally distraught. Tears have been flowing this entire time because I cannot believe that we have to be amongst all of these words of violence over and over again for us to feel like we can actually do something. This lineup of people has been fighting Jail deaths since 2019. And we want to see something change, that's why we're here today.

The City Council can actually do something today to change what is happening inside of our jails. As an organization, as the Massachusetts Bail Fund we're an abolitionist formation that believes that prisons and jails and police do not actually rehabilitate people. They don't actually provide people with the things they need that actually people are surviving poverty, socioeconomic crisis and abolitionists believe we can dream of a better world for all of us where we can live dignified lives. The Massachusetts Bail Fund is operating as the decarceration machine of pre-trial detention in Massachusetts right now. We are relying on a bail fund to do the work that our electeds could be doing. That is shameful. I find that to be insulting and disrespectful. Electeds have not come to the table

To the detriment of us and all of the people that we support, of the things that we could be doing upstream to prevent these arrests from ever happening. From bringing people to our jails who do not need to be there. Tompkins has gone on record. There was a quote in the Bay State Banner where he said, don't bring people to my jail. They don't need to be here if they have mental health issues or drug use issues Don't bring them here. There's a quote that he has said. He acknowledges that his jail is not meant to be such a thing, and at the same time he pontificates about how we should bring unhoused people to his jail because he can provide shelter and clothing and a bed. So when it is convenient, a jailer wants to build up his jail population to stay relevant so his department stays relevant. But he can't be here today to talk about that with us. As a bail fund that operates in five counties, we post the most amount of bails here in Suffolk County. 50% of our bails.

Here. That's up to 700 people any given year. Our bail program has been there, our bail organizers are here. They've been there to greet people late night If you're released as a Nashua Street prisoner, you are released at the jail. But if you're a South Bay House of Corrections prisoner, your release at the jails. So that means you're being processed at the house of corrections and then you're put in a paddy wagon to be released at 11 p.m. at night at Nashville Street Jail. Our bail organizers have been staying late to greet people because we believe that people coming home should have a warm hug and resources to survive the first 24-48 hours of reentry. We're doing that! Again, our electeds are nowhere in sight. I just have to say, I'm just pissed. I'm mad.

I want to highlight the routine and daily racism, assault, sexual harassment, and distribution of drugs that is happening inside our jails. All of the things that have been talked about today, they are a pattern of abuse that is daily. It is not out of the extraordinary that these things happen every day. It's a routine experience. And not only am I concerned that it is routine, but that it celebrated by the guards, by the COs. They are interested in continuing this pattern of practice because it benefits them. It benefits them to bring drugs inside the jail and profit from it. To have a coercive power over people, it benefits them. It benefits them to continue to make more money every year because their budget is increasing every year, because our sheriff is hell-bent on making a jail a relevant conversation in what I believe is a conversation about housing.

It's a conversation of affordable healthcare for everyone, it's about treatment on demand that isn't coercive So the jail in itself has a responsibility to the people on the inside, and then we have a responsibility for what happens before they ever reach the inside. The City of Boston, through the Boston Police Department and Suffolk County Sheriff's Department responds to poor people's survival efforts by arresting them for their charges of loitering, breaking and entering, trespassing possession and distribution, and larceny under $250. Those are the vast majority of bills that we pay. These charges represent what we call crimes of survival, right?

They're the vast majority of bails that we pay along with assault and battery because people are doing the best they can to survive horrifying conditions. Every single person in this room can probably attest to the fact that our economy is sliding, that we do not have the opportunities that we need. That inflation is ransacking our households So of course the most poor people are going to be hit by that, and they're going to try to survive those conditions. So why are we arresting them and punishing them? Why? Why are we arrested someone for using drugs because they're unhoused? It makes no sense. It costs more money to arrest them and book them and bring them into a facility than it does to house them. and provide on-demand treatment. It's less money. Mike Johnson, mayor of the city of Denver has piloted a evidenced backed program

to cut down on unhoused populations in his city. And they have seen a historic and sweeping change And the reason why it has worked is because he believes in the evidence. The evidence shows that you cannot provide treatment before you provide housing. You cannot, it doesn't work. We need to be providing housing first and stabilizing people, not arresting them. I am tired of the bail fund existing. I would love for us to be out of a job. And the only way that we can do that is if the City Council directs the Boston Police Department to end the warrant sweeps, end the arrests of people who are using drugs outside and for city ordinance violations. We don't need to be putting money and trauma into people's lives. Sorry, spending city dollars and money and delivering trauma into peoples' lives for these low-level offenses. We don t need to do that. There's actually a solution.

The city is codifying tactics and practices that brings more people into jail, and those tactics and practice have been intentionally put in place to maintain the illusion of unhoused people. Not in the street. It is just a visual marker, there's actually nothing happening people are not being disappeared forever they are returning to the street and we are bailing them again and again These tactics and practices utilized by the City in partnership with the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department and the Newmarket Business Improvement District include citywide sweeps, warrant sweeps. The tent ban ordinance Jail Court, Complaint Oriented Policing, the Coordinated Response Team, Central Booking and Project Evolve which is a course of treatment facility now inside of the jail partnered with the Boston Medical Center. So these practices that are clearly in place to target and sweep unhoused people, and bring people into jail who are vulnerable already, who actually need care. And disruption of care to them is going to end up deadly?

We could be just not doing that. We could actually just rescind these policies and practices the City of Boston is utilizing. I just want to say that unhoused people are not the only people we're worried about. We're worried everyone, black and brown populations in Roxbury and Mattapan Hyde Park, and Dorchester. And we know that these policies and practices that are being used and the structures that are built is expanding to touch other people Criminalization is expanding. In 2024, when pro-Palestine organizers and students were putting up encampments on their campuses to protest the genocide in Gaza, the tent ban ordinance was utilized to disperse them and arrest them and they were brought to central booking. I was one of them, but brought to Central Booking a apparatus that is being created to sweep large amounts of people in to book them in a mass way Right? So this is going to affect all of us.

Criminalization is expanding, and we need to stop using criminalization as a response. I will leave by saying that You know, as someone with a loved one currently on the inside and a brother who just ended his one year stint in pre-trial sentence, every day I worry that I'm going to get a call. that my loved one has passed in custody. It's been 15 years of that for me, 15 years worrying that I'm going to get that call Most of my loved ones have been in county facilities and civil commitment facilities. I've been worried that I'm going to get that call, and I'm It will never end. That it will just be a blip in the sea of experiences of people who are dying on the inside.

and I wish for every single person in this room to never have that experience. And if you do, I show my deepest solidarity. Thank you for allowing me to testify today.

Good afternoon, my name is Cassie Hurd. I'm the Director of the Material Aid and Advocacy Program or MAP. Since 2006, I've provided direct support to learned from an organized alongside unhoused people and people who use drugs across Breda-Boston At the heart of our work at MAP is a community drop-in space where unhoused and under housed people who use drugs meet their most basic needs, and organize towards their collective vision for transformative change. And increasingly against the criminalization of their survival As part of our work, we spend countless hours helping people access voluntary evidence-based substance use treatment, low barrier healthcare and housing. This work is often interrupted or not possible because of Boston's choice to criminalize our community and SDSD's partnership in that.

More often than not, we are now supporting community members in navigating sweeps, criminalization and their court cases most frequently related to their survival or habits as has been named. and since the city's collaboration with the investment in central booking, often spend time looking for our community or their loved ones who are locked up most frequently in CSD facilities. We understand homelessness and persistent poverty Preventable Overdose and Substance-Related Deaths to be the result of stark inequality rooted in racism, systemic failures, and the misplaced priorities of those in power. which at this moment includes this body and the supposed leadership of the city of Boston. Our community members experience the daily consequences of these inequalities in policy choices, and to be clear they are choices

that have been co-signed by or advocated for by at least some members of this body who have also made the choice to leave today, which either land people in SCSD custody or happen with the city's partnership with SCSD. These include and have been mentioned, but I'm going to share a bit more. Mayor Wu's encampment ban which destabilizes and criminalizes unhoused people for their circumstance in the city that as has been named and we all know is increasingly unaffordable for the most of us and where shelter isn't accessible, safe or doesn't meet people's needs. Mayor Wu's Addiction First Practice, which authorizes the Boston Police Department and Mayor Wu coordinated response team to harass and essentially kidnap unhoused people who use drugs demanding they make the false choice between forced treatment and incarceration at SCSD facilities, both of which are potentially deadly.

As a reminder, has been named and feels important to name again. At least 20 people have died in SCSD custody between 2021 and 2025. This includes multiple people who were neglected after drug use arrests or substance related arrests or involuntary commitment for a substance use disorder. A further reminder that the Massachusetts Department of Public Health data shows unequivocally that people who have experienced civil commitment were more likely to die from overdose than those who sought treatment voluntarily. I also want to make clear that this enforcement includes Boston Police Department and the coordinated response team not only blocking access outside healthcare facilities, including Boston Public Health Commission's own harm reduction program but going into health care facilities and Forcibly Removing and Detaining Patients Who Were Seeking to Access Care.

This not only impacts the person who was being kidnapped but serves as a threat to other people to stay away from necessary healthcare, especially trusted providers. This also includes, as has been named, collaboration with and investment in central booking about which many of us said on a panel before many of you. In a hearing two years ago, we shared the egregious harms as we are today and offered many questions. Most of which has still gone unanswered by SCSD and solutions, which we're reaffirming today. Unlike today, SDSD chose to be present at the hearing. Though the only piece of information they shared was later proven inaccurate by their own information via public records. To be clear, there are not credible reporters but they should be here

to be accountable to all of you, to all us and especially the people who are caged within their facilities and dying. Sheriff Tompkins isn't here today And it seems like that was a choice that he made and I hope you all will choose to hold him accountable for that. If there was nothing for him to hide, I don't know why he would not be here. Further, you all oversee the Boston Police Department and their budget which is as others have said paying SCSD $150 per person every day. To disappear people from the streets of Boston as a means to create the illusion of a resolution to the unsheltered homelessness and public substance use which is increasingly being brought up by broader members of the community.

And lastly, the City of Boston has been continuing to rescind services that are actually rooted in people's self-identified and basic bodily needs supported by peer reviewed public health evidence. The removal of so-called transitional housing, which is all near shuttered leaving many people both without actual housing and also forced to be on the street only to be criminalized. The closure of a multi-million dollar engagement center on Atkins Street that served as the climate controlled indoor space for people to spend time, use the restroom, meet with providers and connect with treatment. and pivoting away from the funding of the highly successful needle buyback program. And instead, funding a significantly less equitable cleanup program run by their new market bid of which has caused an increase in stray syringes, making our broader community significantly less safe.

The City of Boston's strategic dismantling of services and increased investment in expansion of criminalization including deaf are at the core counterproductive and clearly deadly. I want to share one experience, unfortunately of the countless experiences of neglect cruelty and harm from inside South Bay from one of our community members. He shared, I have never experienced anything more dehumanizing or painful than my most recent stay at the bay. and I have been someone who has slept in gutters, and regularly used in porta-potties and public bathrooms. I thought I was finally on top of things. I felt like I was getting a bit ahead even. I was on the clinic taking care of my Hep C and was told I might finally get into housing. I was kidnapped by BPD into the new spot Boston created to hide us after they shut down Atkinson My family, my girl, my provider. No one had any idea where I was. They assumed I was back running the street.

I didn't have meds for days. I was so sick. The CO's found it funny. It was all of our survival shit that caught up with me that I thought I was past, some I didn't even know about. Some things I don't even were hanging over my head that cleared up pretty quickly once I was actually able to get into court. The COs made me feel so ashamed. They made it clear we were there to be punished and humiliated with their every word in action. They denied us our legal rights, and told us they knew that. The treatment by those running the supposed drug treatment was a joke. I wasn't even in there for long, but it messed me up really bad. Mostly the abuse I saw others go through. I can't even talk about it. It was a few years ago, but I'm still getting my health back on track I'm lucky I left Boston, which is just what they wanted. I'm luck to be alive. That poor kid. Rest in peace, Jacobi Kenney." As Katie noted, there's a churn within SCSD. You're unhoused and poor constituents with black and brown people

being overrepresented are regularly brought through SCSD facilities by BPD, who is enforcing policies created under the purview of this council. The community member whose experience I shared described the underlying culture of neglect, disrespect and harm which every single person who is in custody experiences and the type of negative impacts and trauma even an extremely short duration of time has on them and their loved ones. Nashua Street and South Bay are not places of treatment, healing or care. They're not housing or treatment despite what Sheriff Tompkins has said and others have noted they are places of dehumanization harm and death incarceration should not be the central pillar of any part of the City of Boston's approach to the compounding crises of homelessness, public substance use or preventable overdose. Your constituents deserve better from the city and from you as Councillors.

Clearly, this hearing is completely personal for Ms. Drusilla. Shakobi would be alive today if not for the vile and violent murder by SCSD COs who have not been fired which this body must demand immediately. The community care work map and the organizations represented alongside me carry out stands in opposition to the harmful carceral interventions the city of Boston continues to fund Expand and Uphold. The extraordinary community members we work with and organize alongside who have experienced neglect and abuse within SCSD facilities are our loved ones, our neighbors, an integral part of all of our community Some of them have been my lifelong friends, former teammates, coworkers, housemates, neighbors. These are not strangers. They're people with whom I and many others share a history relationship in community. Some of the know we've all lost

They are your constituents who you must be accountable to and who deserve better from you, and certainly from SCSD. No one deserves to be criminalized, subjected to neglect or abuse or to die prematurely because of circumstances they are being forced to survive on your streets or in SCSD custody. Their lives have value, their dignity must be protected and they deserve care and compassion not punishment and death The current conditions and interconnected crises unhoused community members in Boston, including those housed in SCSD custody are experiencing the results of a City of Boston-created Crises, Practices of Criminalization, Displacement and Coordinated Abandonment. They are the result of decisions made by some members of this council including some of those still present and certainly those who were no longer present

To be clear, for this council to continue to sit idly by is to co-sign on the continued harm and potential death of your constituents. This body has significant oversight and power over who ends up in, and what is happening inside a CSD. You must take every action and opportunity within your power to protect your constituents from the harms of the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department, and at the same time hold SCSD accountable. I firmly believe with more information we as people make different and often better choices. There has been a significant amount of information and more than a number of egregious experiences shared with you today. We demand you to make better choices, and to use your powers as a body and as counselors to take action to stop participating in the harm enacted by SCSD invest in the solutions and your constituents who do not deserve to die. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate all of you for being here, for testifying. We're now going to go over to my council questions. I know this is unconventional and not usually how a hearing goes but I think given the Subject at hand, I wanted to make sure that everyone had ample enough time to speak. And I do want to thank again Ms. Brown for being present here with us today I'm going to go over to the lead sponsors first for opening questions. I want to give six minutes per question, and we're then do a second round if we need to do that. If anyone needs to use the bathroom or take some water, feel free to do so as well. We're going to start with Councilor Culpepper. Six minutes per question? Six minutes in total, thank you.

Cassie I want to start that there were critical questions that have been asked in the past of this council, they've not been acted on today. What questions are those that you're referring to?

We have shared I believe more than three dozen questions With the council, with your office and my understanding is there's potential for the openness to using subpoena powers. Everything from the number of people who have gone through central booking What harms are being enacted by sheriffs and COs? How many people have died? That number has been unclear to us. We are more than happy You know, share that information again. We have hit a wall and if you all would be able to move that forward as a body I would hope SCSD as your elected colleagues or Sheriff Tompkins rather would be more responsive.

Well, you know for me these days subpoenas is a hot issue and so Let me just focus on the one I'm focusing on now. Maybe we'll get to another one later. But I wanted to talk about some of the things that you felt we could do, Katie, regarding policy reforms.

Yeah.

And before we get started, I wanted to ask about the impact of doing away with cash bail. When I look at Illinois statewide They have no cash bail. New Jersey substantially eliminated cash bail, New Mexico eliminated bail as a condition of detention even Jackson Mississippi and so What do we need to do? How do we get it done and the impact that it would have if we could eliminate cash bail?

That's a great question. And I want to offer that there are really different policy regimes in the examples you just gave, right? So in New Jersey, the state adopted a statewide risk assessment tool So the jail population did decrease, but it did nothing to disturb the rates of racial disparities in the jail. We want to think about holistically is how do you adopt a policy that resolves the problem you're trying to resolve without creating externalities of other harm or not resolving the whole problem, right? Which is that we know this is a system that is informed by Race-based, right? And so I want us to be thinking about policy reforms that are going to have the impact you all want. and as we said, 50% of people in the jail right now today are black in Suffolk County. So on the... Yeah I'm happy to talk about it so I mentioned that to say In Kentucky, for example, which also the state of Kentucky eliminated cash bail. Racial disparities went up after they eliminated cash bill In Illinois, the jail populations initially dipped.

But in the Chicago counties and Cook County, the population by the most recent studies that are out of Loyola, Chicago there's a group that's been studying both before and after implementation of the Pretrial Fairness Act which is the policy that adopted the implementation of eliminating cash bail It's also called the SAFE-T Act, S-A-F-E dash T. That policy among other things it also created an incentive of summons over arrest for certain classes of offenses which is another way to decrease the number of people that come into contact with the jail system. That was a part of that holistic policy, but it also massively expanded pretrial services So they not only eliminated cash bail and implemented a statewide risk assessment, they also created more conditions of release for people and active monitoring. But what they didn't do unfortunately in that bill, and again sometimes you make policies and then don't always think ahead to how is this going to get implemented? was to make the same classes of offenses that are no longer eligible for bail

no longer be detainable if somebody violates a condition of their pretrial release. So what we're seeing now in Illinois is that people are being funneled back into the jail because they're getting conditions violations of their pretrial release conditions, and then they're non-bailable. They're held in the jail so people end up stacking up in the jails. And we see that actually here too right? There are kind of four primary sources of pretrial detention in Massachusetts. The substantial plurality. But there are also bail revocation, which is when a prosecutor requests that somebody be detained for a violation of their conditions of release or for incurring a new arrest while they were out on release. which those arrests themselves may later get dismissed but the fact of the arrest is a violation of their conditions and so they can be sent to jail for 60 or 90 days under our state law depending on which piece of the, which statute they're moving under. I don't want to get too technical.

So we've talked about bail and bail revocation, and then there's also probation violations which is considered a pretrial hold because the violation itself has not yet adjudicated so even though somebody who's on probation is post-conviction The probation violation hold is functioning like a pretrial hold until they've had what's called their final surrender hearing. So there are a lot of people who are held in jail pending their final surrendering hearing on probation, they may be reprobated to the same conditions of probation. They may come back into the community but they're held for a period of weeks or months pending that probation adjudication and then Outstanding warrants are the other major remaining hold for people. People who have warrants in another county, they're held here. They end up getting delayed by days or weeks or sometimes months because the jail systems and the trial courts in the other counties aren't communicating well with each other We could fix that, frankly, tomorrow if the state adopted a better warrant management system and a jail lookup system.

So right now people can get issued bench warrants for non-appearance in court, what we call a default warrant under state law When they're actually already in jail, in the same county. It happened frankly to one of the people who witnessed Jacobi's murder. One of those folks was detained and had a summons arraignment for a single charge of trespass that has since been dismissed. But he missed his court date on that summons because he didn't know about it, because he had been in jail at the time the summons was issued to his home address. So I say that to say the way these things cycle over time, eliminating cash bail. First of all, cash bail is wealth-based detention. It is an outrage. It's a civil rights issue 100% and it produces tremendous racial disparities Doing it in a way that's not going to produce other externalities, that will reduce the jail population holistically and thinking about all of these sources of detention which cycle over the course and life of a case is really important.

There are ways in which because bail is set at the, in the court system through a county process right it's what combination of the Suffolk DAs office in our case Actually, well there are multiple counties who are detained in the Suffolk County Jail also which is something we didn't explicitly mention here but women from multiple other counties are held there. I think Mallory referred to that in her testimony and the move from Framingham so Let's talk about the Suffolk DA's office. They play a role here, and also judges that are working for the trial court play a That would be a different kind of state intervention that would be required to address those questions, I think. But in terms of what you all can do and you can use your leverage to say to the elected DA certainly Can we think differently about bail policy and bail revocation policy?

Katie, I know we've got a lot to talk about. Yes, go ahead. Cut me off. No, give me your proposal. Give us through the chair. A proposal of what we can begin working on. Let's start with the low-hanging fruit and then move up to some of the other tougher issues that we can talk with some of our state reps about to begin the process.

I think it would be a huge benefit for this council to say as a matter of city policy, For any ordinance violation, we don't want to see a single arrest on an ordinance violation. For an open container of alcohol, somebody shouldn't get arrested and sent to jail. They should get a summons to come to court for their court date. That's something you can do. The ordinance violations are wholly within your control and there are a number of them that we do see people in the jail for. Then, for any lower level misdemeanors you can make as a matter of city policy our city police are not going to arrest people on misdemeanors that carry a maximum penalty of 100 days of incarceration or less. There were more than 18,000 of those arrests in a single year at the last count which is from fiscal year 2019. That's the last study that trial court produced. Why are we doing that? Those cases mostly end up dismissed and people are having these front-end systemic harms, right, that could be avoided. That are not producing Anything except for destabilization in people's lives.

And you all could say to the city of Boston, actually as a matter of our city ordinance, as our policy, we're going to say those are not arrestable offenses. Yeah, it's 100 days or less is how the trial court codes our different classes of misdemeanors.

And get us that proposal so we can begin. I would love to.

I'll send it to you as soon as possible.

And Cassie, you're going to give us the... I will share the questions, yes. Have been before the council that you want to see responded to now?

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank You Councillor Culpepper. We're gonna go to Councillor Mejia next

We're over by two minutes.

They just don't give Culpepper a break, do they?

OK, Culpeper, shut his mic down, Shane. Hello everybody. And thank you, and I am too upset that we don't have those folks who are here to be held accountable because this seems like a one-sided conversation. And so I think it's hard for us to think about solutions and how we're going to address these I will join the chorus of saying what a missed Even though we might have discomfort around conflict, there is an opportunity for us to have meaningful conversations with each other so that it's not doing this all the time. And so I hope we have a second hearing Everybody will show up ready to do the work that we have been elected to do so. I have a question, I have few questions.

I've been waiting, when can we talk? We signed up to talk.

Yeah.

But I have a daughter who's in the hospital whose leg and hip was broken by the Sutherland County Corrections Office, and she was stripped. and left for naked for two days on a mattress without a blanket or a sheet, unpissed. How can you do that? And then you talk about, oh most of the victims are people of color. Suffolk County Correction Officer. When I was there, there's people of color who are in control. My daughter is at Lameo Shack Hospital with a broken hip and a broken leg She laid there for two days. They took her in on the 6th, what? Because she posted on social media? She's mentally incapacitated. She's bipolar. Right? So I go there looking for her.

I have to go through all the hoops with the southern county corrections people to see where my daughter is. I had to go to court and I find out she's in the hospital. I look at the judge, what happened to my daughter? Did she have a heart attack? So I go to Suffolk County Court. What, Reneal shattered? I can't get past Rosila. I finally do all the hoops Get okay with corrections people to go see her for 15 minutes. I go there, she's laying in a bed with two other young Suffolk, you know had nothing but her legs are broken and her hips broken and she can't move. What's gonna happen now? Is she going to go to rehab? She should go to Spalding Rehab in Cambridge. She can't go back to that correction place They don't give a shit who they take or who they do what to.

I'm very sorry to hear about your daughter, ma'am. No, I am too. And I'm sorry if it's emotional.

I understand.

But I've been waiting. So what we're going to do is we're gonna finish with Councilor Mejia's questions and then after that, if it okay with my colleagues I'm gonna allow you to testify in between other councilors questions, okay? And I appreciate your patience and I appreciate everyone's patience.

I know it's a long hearing and I know- Thank you because of your son and you, I am here to be able to speak for my daughter And you may wonder why he's dead. But let me tell you, he's an angel. He opened the doors for everybody in this fucking hellhole. The demon world over there. So don't feel bad. Your son's life matters. And he's opened the doors for many other people.

So we're going to do that, OK? We're going finish with Councilor Mejia's questions and I'm going to take you out of order to give your testimony then continue. And I want to apologize to everyone's patience. I know it's been a long hearing I know this is extremely personal to so many, and I want to be respectful of that in people's time. So Councilor Mejia if you can continue then we're going to take the public testimony. I'll give you a few extra seconds as well.

So, I think it's important for us to acknowledge the hurt and the trauma Not just acknowledge it, but I want to personally apologize. I know what it's like to want to be heard and have to wait your turn to be hurt. And sometimes when you hear things that you hear, it's a lot of lip service. You guys have been banging on these doors for the last since I've been in this position and nothing has changed. And so the level of frustration is gotten to the point of like, what are we going to do now? And I think that where we're beyond impatient And I think what you are looking for now are real results and measurable outcomes, and things that we can hold ourselves accountable to. And I want to acknowledge that I know it's not easy to sit through a hearing

Especially because the white dominant culture has created an environment in which we have these protocols, policies and procedural things that we have to go through in order to be in this space. And oftentimes we come into this space not ready Be fully expressed, and then sometimes we get told too that we have to leave just because we're being passionate. Like the whole system is messed up y'all like I just want to acknowledge that the whole way that we do this work is messed-up including how we show up even in this space Because it's this level of decorum that we have to abide by, right? And so even this is traumatizing because when they do this, what does that say? Get in line. So the whole system is screwed up in my personal opinion, but anyways. My question is do you know of and if there is please tell me how I can get connected

An independent oversight committee that is working alongside city and the sheriff's in Suffolk County around some of these issues. Is there such a thing? It's an independent body.

Right now, as far as I'm aware, there's no formally outside independent entity whose function is to do this. The closest we might have would be the Attorney General's office. Certainly, the Attorney general has the authority in various departments to conduct investigations into state agencies and what's happening there. The Attorney General has many departments looking at many different things and may not prioritize this one area for their main focus. Correctional oversight has been a major issue for a long time, we know that we've talked about it in a variety of different spaces There is no currently entity that would do that sort of work in the same way that, say, the Post Commission might do for police. That section was pulled out of the discussions of that particular state statute, so there isn't a body right now that does that. And then I'll refer to Katie for any additional detail there.

That's right. Katie already knows. I've got two more minutes left. will come back to me. So then, I guess I would just offer when you put together the list of things that you want us to do is that maybe one of the things Councilor Culpepper can add to his list of thing is maybe creating an oversight Commission or committee that is composed of people who are living the realities and doing the work. And a few folks, ex-officials that can help support the work but I do think there's an opportunity for that as well because There has to like is there a dashboard right now or anything that shows real transparency of how many complaints get put in and Right? So then there's something else. Katie, I see you taking notes. I want you to add that to the list of things because we have to get to the point where whatever we can do, we start working towards solutions that can start addressing the little things that we can

Because I want to be honest, people come into this chamber thinking that we can change so many things. Well, we're the city council. And we actually don't even have the power that you think that we have because we have to at least have nine votes to override the mayor's veto if we're trying to change anything. So I just want to manage everybody's expectation is that change is hard and it's harder when we're not all rowing in the same direction, right? So I think it's really important for me to put that on the record, that whatever we do, we have to do in deep partnership with community. And you all need to blow up our phones to make sure that we vote in favor of whatever it is that you are advocating on behalf of. And then, I think that's really important for me to say and I got 42 seconds left so My commitment is, in the 42 seconds that I have left, is that I will work with Councilor Culpepper. Everybody here has their own superpower.

My superpower is the gift of gab and like y'all follow me on social media you know who I am so i'll use my platform to help amplify and to help support whatever it is that we're going to be pushing. But what I will refuse to do, is continue to have the same conversation and come back to you and say, I'm sorry, we tried. Sick and tired of being sick and tired. And the families that have come here to testify deserve the justice that you've been seeking, so my commitment is to do just that.

Chair Santana, I have to unfortunately leave at this point. I'll toss in one very quick recommendation for the City Council that's a very practical one which is about support and public records requests. One of the issues that I think all of us have brought up here is that Suffolk County has not responded to a number of different records requests, which provide as you mentioned Councilor Mejia some amount of that transparency The challenge with records requests is that oftentimes when they time out, there's an automatic process where we can get a judgment from All of those steps in that process take time, energy and follow up. And many of our organizations or us as individuals have very limited capacity to do those things. So where the city council can partner with us to follow up on those records requests, if Suffolk County doesn't respond within their amount of time they can get judgments noted against them and then be commanded to produce those documents. They do have a ton of records. They are required by law to maintain a number of them,

Being able to force them to actually produce them could be incredibly valuable for getting more detail about what's happening inside that facility. And I apologize for having to leave a little bit early. Thank you for allowing us to testify.

Thank You David, appreciate your presence and the work that you do Thank you, Councilor Mejia. If it's okay with my colleagues, I'm just gonna take one public testimony out of order. Ma'am, I don't know your name but... Okay, if you can come and testify

I don't have the paper to prepare this.

I just kind of came here... No, I understand and I know that this is personal to you so we usually do two minutes. We're going to do three minutes try to keep it to that frame so we can and also get everyone else in. We have a list of people, but...

Okay just to make a long story short my daughter had a court date because she had a restraining order for posting on Facebook, Texas She overdid it, you know with an old friend and coworker. So there was a warrant out for her arrest right? And so we went to the courthouse To take her there and then she was immediately taken into custody to the Suffolk County Corrections, whatever. And I said well where is she? You know it's 630. I don't know where she is. I called the courthouse, but they said she's there. So I didn't hear anything about it. But then I went for her hearing, a status hearing on the 15th and they said, She's not here. She's in the hospital at Lemieux Shadding. And I looked at the judge and go, what's she in the hospital for? Because you know, the injection Haldol creates heart problems, right?

And that's one of the things that they felt. So anyway, so I asked. They didn't know. So I went Lemuel Shattuck as they told you in my craziness and I couldn't see her and I had to go to the Suffolk County, go through the loops over the phone get verified you know name birthday address. And it took them a few days And then finally, they gave me a date that I could see her on Sunday. And I went to Sunday and she was at Lemieux Shattuck on the fifth floor. And as soon as I walked in, she goes, Mom, you know how'd you find me? I said well, I've been looking for you. And I said, what happened? And she started crying. She goes on this October 6th they took her in custody and They had her handcuffed, you know, and she was having a hard time walking. And she actually stepped on one of the guard's foot.

They put her up against the wall and they kicked her And they said for her to take off her dress before that. But you know, how is she going to do it? You know, she's a big girl. So anyway, they threw on the mattress. They took scissors and they cut her dress. And they left her like that. for three days, or two days, three days however long. And no blanket, no sheet and then she said I'm thirsty and the guard says there's the toilet okay? And she's like what? So she didn't drink anything until the next day or something. They brought her something to drink, and then she said to them, she goes I can't move my leg. They didn't believe her. So that was the sixth, seventh... Sixth was Tuesday, seventh was Wednesday and the eighth was Thursday. And finally they realized she wasn't lying

So they sent her out to BMC emergency. And BMC performed an emergency surgery They had to put pins in her hip, pins in our leg to keep all the bones together because they were broken. and then they sent her to Limeo Shattuck. And that's where I was able to see her on Sunday, and she told me about it. So I was pretty outraged. I looked at the guards and go is this normal? You know what I mean? I've never heard of anything like this. She needed to be in a medical facility for mental health, take her meds or whatever. She's a good person She never harmed anybody. And I'm looking, why would you do that to somebody's loved one? So anyway, to make a long story short, so I was told that I have to go through

Suffolk County Courts to get her phone, you know, and have access so she can pay her school loans Whatever bills, and I have to go to the bank and do all that stuff. And then for health care proxy power of attorney and all that, I'm going to have to through the loops with that in order to order BMC records So that's why I contacted Brad, his organization this morning. And that's what I was here you know so that's basically it where I'm at and I want to thank you for hearing me and putting up with my rant and thank you. And believe me, people's lives They come in this world, and for whatever reason karmically they make a difference. So don't think that your son's life didn't matter. because there's a lot of people here, like myself that was able to come to this civil meeting and meet everybody and talk. You know what I mean? And say my piece.

What will be done, I don't know. But I've explained to them that she can't go back to the South Bay of Corrections. She can't walk. She needs to go to rehab. at Spalding Rehab or wherever. I work for the Spaldy Network and I worked for MGB, so I'm kind of aware of that And, you know, I'm fearful of her life. The quality of life and the trauma she experienced. And the fact that they laughed at her while she was naked and took pictures too. So... That's where I'm at. Thank you for hearing me.

Appreciate it. I appreciate your being here, appreciate your patience. We're excited to hear about your daughter and if there's anything that we can do any of us as counselors please reach out. I don't know if you live in the city of Boston or not or one neighborhood but You have a district councillor, you have four at-large city councillors. If there's any follow up that you need from us please contact us. I appreciate your presence and sharing your story. Thank you everyone so now we're going to go to Councillor Louijeune For your questions, then Councilor Weber.

Thank you Mr. Chair and thank you to this panel. Thank You to Jacobi's mom Okay. Thank you to Ms. Brown for using

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for watching!

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sorry about that, everyone. We are back in session. We had some technical difficulties. We're going to just jump right in where we left off. Councilor Liechten, you have the floor for questions.

Thank you. And again, I want to thank all the panelists and all the community folks for being here. Obviously there is a very systemic problem in our Suffolk County Sheriff's Department, when it comes to oversight of South Bay and our carceral systems are failing our residents. And we have a lot of investigation that needs to happen, a lot Thank you. Thank you very much. The fact that they're violating their own use of force policy and no one is investigating that pattern. I think the colleague may have asked a version of this question prior, but

Who is responsible for that investigation of those violations of use of force?

Yeah, it's a great question. So the attorney general's office has two primary divisions, right? The criminal division and the civil division. Right now, the criminal division is involved in this specific investigation.

Which is because it's been deemed a criminal investigation. Exactly.

But that itself took time, right? It took lobbying by incarcerated people who witnessed his death and The State Public Defender's Agency to point out the conflict of interest of the Suffolk DA's office being an entity to investigate when they were also the ones prosecuting all of the witnesses, right? So even getting the Attorney General's Office involved took time. It took at least six weeks and Beyond that point, the Civil Rights Division could investigate a pattern and practice of brutality in the jail. And Prisoner's Legal Services did this in-depth period of being able to respond to rapid response to brutality intakes. You heard that they... We together did 30 of those interviews. I was, did it in between jobs. I helped them with that investigation and And that work was an attempt to create a record to involve the Attorney General's Office Civil Rights Division. But they could now take the reins and run with that. And so I think if you all know people over there, give them a call. Right?

I mean part of this is I hear you about saying there are other entities that are better poised Legally to take this on.

And have the jurisdiction to be able to do that, right?

Totally but this is also the first oversight hearing that has happened about the jail in about 25 years and So that's a credit to you of being willing to hold this hearing but it also means we're in sort of a world where everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else and so Thinking about what are the things we can do. You're right to say there are other people who are poised to do things, and I think the way that Prisoners Legal Services outlined and the way that other organizers up here have outlined demands is to put specific things that are within each body's control on their plate. You're absolutely right.

So when, so the, Shakobi unfortunately is not the first time that this has happened in We're working so that it will be the last. In prior instances, Who has been the body that has been doing the independent? Is it the attorney general's office? I mean, sometimes they hire a former District Attorney to do an independent investigation? Like, what is that entity?

Yeah. So when there is a death in custody in the county, the county district attorney is the entity that's charged by law with investigating the death But there are lots of other forms of brutality that you've heard about today from witnesses in terms of PREA violations and sexual assaults, and other kinds of assaults and broken bones. And all of that stuff When it happens in the jail, if somebody writes a grievance about it or otherwise comes to the jail's investigative team there is a specific team in the gaol called SID which I believe stands for Special Investigations Division. which is supposed to investigate these. And on the grievance form there are various categories that say sort of substantiated, unsubstantiated or referred to SID as a category of grievances can move within the jail. But again, that's all internal to SCSD. It's not an outside independent investigation.

Right, right, understood. I mean, all this is made all the more egregious by the fact that the majority of folks that we're talking about are folks who were held in pretrial detention. And I think that is what I mean, as a justice issue, as an understanding that our legal system is punitive against folks who are poor and folks who often haven't had the ability to really have a thing called choice Under all of this makes it feel completely violative of people's constitutional rights. And on top of that, like I said we have even a bigger obligation once they are in our care so Hope that what we are able to do in sort of uplifting and shining a light Look, there are also implications here. We're talking in this moment in time about what this means for those who have immigration implications, right? It's major.

And we're talking about ICE and its role. I think that we definitely need to be looking a lot more under the rug here, to ensure that folks have access to justice. and I want to thank all of the vice, I heard the buzzer. I wanna thank everyone for being here because I know that folks mentioned all the upstream things too that we need to work on before We need to be investing in and working on to ensure that we don't even have to get to this space. And I will tell you, that work is not easy but it is the really important work I know it feels like pushing a boulder up a mountain and the boulders often coming back down, but I want to thank you for all the work that you're doing.

Thank you, Councillor Louijeune. Councillor Weber, you have a floor.

Sure. Thank you very much, Chair. I've stuck around primarily to thank Ms. Brown for her testimony. She's not here, but just... She's still here.

She just had to step out to take a call so you can see her. Okay.

Just want to thank her for being here and I want to think all of the panelists and everyone. You're doing God's work, you're speaking for people who don't have a voice. You can't be here today so I just want to bring it back You know, Jacobi Kenney's death and the you know our contract with the Suffolk County and Sheriff Tompkins. I mean so Can you just, I don't know if this is for Katie or anyone else. To what extent is South Bay an outlier? If you look across the state, is this how all of these Places Are, and to what extent is Sheriff Tompkins' reaction not being here in

Is there any interaction with you, especially around this murder in his jail? Is it different? and in terms of actions we can take as a city to be thinking about this, the MOU and our interaction with the jail.

I'm gonna start and then I'm going to pass to Jasmine because she's also done some of this kind of across the state research of various sheriff's departments. But, um, I'll say a couple of things. One is that I think problems Thank you very much. It is the worst place they've been incarcerated. You heard that in at least one of the live testimonies today from somebody who is currently, I think, at SBCC. So to unpack what that acronym is, that's the Souza Baranowski Correctional Center. It is this state's supermax facility It is the place within the DOC that has the worst pattern of violence, that the DOCs settled for to the tune of roughly $7 million a lawsuit of civil rights Class action lawsuit with Prisoners Legal Services a couple of years ago, right? The person who was presently there said South Bay is worse than that place.

So I think it's important to underscore that there is a particular culture at the South Bay Jail People will tell you I spent time at Nashua Street and South Bay within Suffolk County, but it's different at South Bay specifically. And the corrections officers also, I think believe in that culture and that's true in how they communicate about it to people in their custody. People have talked about during the Assault of Shakopee, one of the CEOs saying that this is the South Bay special. So that's the kind of commentary that we've heard from witnesses. And then to your question about what do these issues look like in terms of accountability from the elected sheriffs, there are some sheriffs who are much more available who came, multiple sheriffs were on a panel testifying in favor of the Protect Act at the state legislature for example. Who do come and talk about issues in their jails and ways to change policy And that's not to say that there aren't problems in those jails, too. There are.

But I do think that one thing that I want to mention is that Sheriff Tompkins was not officially in power at the time that Jacoby was killed. He was on leave. Technically, I believe it was a medical leave that coincided with his pending federal indictment. So he was on the leave when that particular incident happened.

Yeah, I don't really have much to offer as to what Katie said. I just want to underscore that this panel has been talking about the work that we've been doing trying to shut down South Bay since 2019 but the harm extends past that, right? We're talking since the 90s. Our people have been harmed, raped, brutalized since the early 90s and because it has continued so long and gone Unchallenged, people haven't been held accountable. It has breeded a culture of like people get to they get away with murder Like that's what's happening People are getting away with the murder in this facility And so I would say that South Bay is our Rikers Island in Massachusetts.

I just wanted to quickly comment on your question about MOUs between local law enforcement and sheriff's departments. In Suffolk County, that MOU was created in 2023. Those MOUs do exist in different sheriff's departments across the Commonwealth between the Sheriff's Department and local law enforcement because local law enforcement has created this sort of premise that they do not have the police precincts available to provide single-day or multiple day holding cells for people before they are brought to arraignment. that they do not have the medical screening necessary and the Sheriff's Department supposedly does but we know those things aren't true. The police are, you know talking about a thing that they don't have these resources to offer But it doesn't necessarily mean that the sheriff's department does. And I think that's where the mistake lies, right? That these MOUs are being created because people are being arrested and being brought to a holding cell at a police precinct. And the police are either running out of cells or do not have the resources needed to keep people there safely

and so they're relying on another institution to fill that gap. That institution itself across the Commonwealth, the Sheriff's Department here is definitely I think emblematic of what They're in a fraternal sort of order of sheriffs who run their jails sort of in mirror of each other. has actually been piloted here in Suffolk County. And so you can imagine that the negotiated detention agreement that exists is to serve the interests of the jail itself, The sheriff has gone on record to sort of say multiple times, you know bring people to my jail because I can provide shelter housing a bed and None of those things are true. A cage is not any of those. He's saying that he can provide medical care for people and medical screening. Our records request that we've asked for multiple times, there's no evidence to show that that's happening.

And so these are just claims that are being brought forth that does not have any evidence. That will be part of the list of questions, we have an entire list of medical related questions that we'll be submitting because we don't actually have evidence that's happening. Also, when someone's getting arrested and being transferred to a sheriff's custody it is still the law enforcement agency that's arresting that person and then transferring them. That's happening here, right? BPD is arresting someone and then bringing them to Suffolk County Jail, but they are doing that through BPD officers. SESD is not responding on the scene and so there is a chain of people involved in that instance Where information gets lost, identity gets lost. The police report gets lost a lot of hands are in the equation and they're is a lack of communication between the front end and back end.

When we first started organizing around central booking, we were learning that BPD was not sharing information with SESD on who they actually brought into the facility. And so we need to know if that has changed. Have those policies and practices shifted? We need to understand that.

Okay, thank you very much. Just one quick follow-up question. Ms. Brown I just wanted to thank you for your Thank you for being here today. I know that we all have been impacted by just hearing you so this is not You know, wasted energy on your part. And I'm very sorry along with all my colleagues that you've had to go through this So I guess, I don't know. Is there anything you want to add? It's been a couple hours since you first spoke. I just wanted to give you another chance If there's anything you've heard here that you want us to think about or anything else.

I've heard a lot here that it disturbs me To hear the disregard for a human life and human pain that has been professed, even with the young lady there, you know, with her daughter. If we can relieve some of that great fear from families that do have incarcerated people, It's not by choice sometimes, it's by circumstances. Sometimes you're a product of your environment and sometimes things happen but to be in a place where you're supposed to be a supervised place A place where you do your time and you should expect to be treated as a human being. I think so that's the main thing for me is that transparency,

from the Sheriff's Department is to open up everything that you claim that you're doing and every complaints that have been set in your facility that nobody knows about. So when they bring complaints to you, are they going anywhere or are they being filed and nothing is happening? So overall the thing that needs to be done is that somebody needs to police the Sheriff's Department in some form or some fashion of that so we can bring some peace to some of these families. I know the feeling, that they're saying and I know that now mine's he's gone so I'll still grieve but they are still sleeping not sleeping nights, not knowing what's happened with their family. So for

It needs to be more oversight, more government in there with the guards and with the sheriff's department period. So it can be transparency what is happening Behind those doors, and how can we make it better for society and for the parents and for their families to entrust this thing that they'll come out, go in and come out alive.

Okay, well thank you very much and thank you to all the panelists and everyone here is here. Chair I apologize I have to run but anyone who speaks further testimony will listen to it online and I just want to thank everyone.

Thank you, Councilor Weber. Councilor Culpepper do you have any final questions for this panel?

Just a couple of questions. And Kitty, I wanted to ask you about the SIRT team. The Sheriff's Escort and Response Team. And I see you have a lot of questions down here Tell me a little bit about your experience with them, what you know about them and what

Sure. So the CERT team, sometimes they're called the Sheriff's Escort and Response Team. That's what I call them in my testimony to you all. They've also been called the sheriff's emergency response team. Basically, they serve two functions in the jail. They respond whenever there is any incident involving violence or a disturbance within a unit, which could be among people who are incarcerated or it could be Detainees and staff. And they also kind of serve as transport within the jail, particularly to the solitary confinement segregation units and they staff the segregation units. It's important to know, you've heard comments today about body cameras and blind spots right? The cells within the segregation unit do not have cameras That is where sometimes people experience the most violence from CERT.

And many people have reported in the PLS investigation that that violence happens while they're being strip searched, which is awful and also often a pre-violation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act. and there are also concerns about people being brutalized while they're still handcuffed because they've been transported right so the questions that I have provided to you are also questions we've provided to the Sheriff's Department that have not been answered in public It's a request, which is to Dave's point that if there's one function you all can serve as city council it may be sort of doing a series of interrogatories as you would in litigation right sending them questions and seeing if they'll give a response to you all under your authority differently than they would a member of the public so that's That's why I've provided those questions to you, but also to let you know we have gaps in our knowledge because jails are a hard place to get information out of. As Drusilla keeps pointing out transparency is a key issue and people are scared to testify from behind the wall, even though people have been brave in offering their testimonies because they witness and fear retaliation.

And so I've got a lot of other questions but we'll put The question to you in writing, but I do think it's important that we follow up and let's start working on some of these policy changes. I think we've got a battle ahead of us And you know, depending on what happens with this subpoena that we're fighting over now, that will either strengthen our will to subpoen and use subpoenas. I was a trial attorney for quite a few years, so for me subpoena is just they don't want to come testify. Get that subpoenna out and that's how we handled it when I was in private practice. Really bothered me when I was in private practice, I think you mentioned it a little bit, was when someone had to be surrendered. Yes.

And the probation officers wanted to surrender them They had no, no recourse in a sense because the probation officer would go in and say well he's on probation. Real battles so Let's fight to see if we can make life acceptable for those that are inmates. And I think Working with you, all of you, the knowledge that I've heard from this panel. We can get together and we can make some changes so let's do it. From all of your panels been great and then I heard a lot of different things that I want to try and do. I've got notes next to everyone's name. And so what I'd like to do is put together a little group, Julia Mejia mentioned Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To your list as well. I would definitely like to, and I want to thank this panel. It's currently past 530. We started at a little past two, but really appreciate not just your presence here and the education you provided, but I know that this work is very personal to many of you. And I know this requires a lot of effort and time every single day It's not as rewarding as one would think in terms of the progress that's made, so I really value all of you and what you do every single day. I know a few of you for a few years and we've been able to connect, and looking forward to connecting more. And as Councilor Culpepper mentioned, I think there's a lot of work. I think we all were aware of the work that needs to happen but I think this hearing

Your presence has created a different type of urgency that we, as councilors and I think the city and as a state need to be able to respond to. Weber, I will dismiss this group. We're going to do public testimony now and thank you Ms. Brown for being here we really do appreciate it. I think as Councilor Weber mentioned I think um we were all impacted by Your voice and your story today. I always say no mother should ever have to bury their own child, never. And I'm sorry that You've had to experience that in our experience and not right now. And wishing you the best. Anything that you need from any of us, please let us know.

I appreciate it. I feel heard. Thank you.

I absolutely feel heard.

Just call my name, and I'll be there.

Thank you, so I will dismiss this panel. We're now gonna go over to public testimony. When your name is called please come down to one of the two podiums and state your name, neighborhood and organization affiliation. Please speak into the microphone and please keep your comments to two minutes. For those testifying on Zoom, please accept the message asking you to be promoted to the panelists when it appears We're going to do the people who are here in person first. So with us we have, if you're still here and want to testify, West Ward, Elizabeth Rucker, Nicole Smith, Emma Roth Ellen Shamerson, and Phyllis K. Larson so we'll start with those folks and then I'll read off the rest okay great thank you

Hi my name is Elizabeth Rucker and I live in Jamaica Plain. Most weeks for the past five years, I have helped Greek people leaving pretrial detention at South Bay House of Correction. And what I'm thinking about is all the people that couldn't leave, and all of the people I've greeted. who felt like they were fleeing a war zone. And I could read it in their faces and in the faces of their families, some of whom would say, I never wanted to be back here. Fortunately, they were standing in the lobby picking up their child And I'm really blessed to be able to greet them and be a friendly face after what they've experienced. And even standing in the lobby,

So you've heard today, I don't think anyone needs to hear more stories that date back to the 90s of rape, of murder, of assault, of disrespect, of racism, of transphobia. All the things we know have been going on in South Bay. But I can tell you that standing in the lobby even, I've heard stories about people denied their dialysis appointments. People denied their psychiatric medication. People deny necessary procedures that they were waiting for and I've also seen guards harass people trying to simply put their shoelaces back into their shoes after being locked up in that hellhole. And that's why I'm here today. And you've heard enough solid policy recommendations to get started, and especially speaking to my councilor Mr. Weber but to all the city councilors transparency is a first an important step to ensuring that we understand what happened with Shakobi's murder, as well as a civil rights violation spanning decades. But there are concrete policy aims that the transparency will enable.

We need to stop the flow of people into South Bay through BPD and into the DOC because the call that I'm waiting on right now is, I hope my friend calls me back after they have not killed themselves. because we're facing an epidemic of suicide inside of the Department of Correction and that starts on the streets of Boston. And it goes through South Bay, and the last thing I wanna say, I know I'm over time is I have been, I've had the honor of participating in many direct protests outside of National Street Jail and South Bay over the years. And I'm remembering in particular one occasion in which people inside of the cells held up signs in the windows that said they beat inmates There has been a desperate cry going on for decades out of the people who are directly impacted and they were denied from being here today to speak to you. And in addition to SCSD not being here and disrespecting this entire body, Those people, your constituents have been denied their voice. So I'm here saying I have personally bailed nearly 100 of them over the past five years

and we must act, not simply examine the issues but act on the information we gather and stop the flow of people into the Suffolk County House of Correction.

Thank you for being here and your patience. and for testifying. Do we have Alan? Alan, do you want to go? I'm going to go to West.

Hello. My name is Alan Tanner Good afternoon, Chair Santana and members of the Public Safety Committee. I stand today as a volunteer who has been to both facilities to do civic engagement work. We are gathered here today as a result of the numerous complaints by residents of this city with loved ones impacted by the atrocious actions happening inside of the Suffolk County House of Corrections. and the Nashua Street Jail. Specifically, we are here because of one case, the case of Shakobi Kenny that has gained wide attention due to its heinous nature and recent legal finding. I want to first start by sending condolences to the family of Shakobi Kenny and to all that knew him. I will speak now to one incident that I witnessed as a volunteer with

Within one of the two aforementioned facilities, I had witnessed an altercation going on between two returning citizens and the altercation was intervened by multiple correctional officers. The part that concerned me, though, was when they detained the individuals involved in this altercation. An amount of restraint force used that could have caused further injury to the individuals involved in the altercation. The correctional officers, two of them, had taken the individual and bent her wrist inward to the extent of almost breaking it, to which the individual said that they felt like they were going to break her hand. The officer continued to use this brutal tactic, which

With what I viewed as excessive force, these kinds of restraint tactics can lead to further harm and distrust between returning citizens and correctional officers. This does not foster safety. It disregards it. It does not foster public trust, it kills it. And this does not help further harm... Help, it further harms the situation and individuals involved in the institution as a whole. To this point, let us consider moments like this as the conditions that led to the kinds of incidents we see with Shakobi Kenny and many others. and in the interest of time, I will yield.

Thank you, Alan. Appreciate your being here and your patience. I don't spend a long hearing. West, do you have the floor?

Good afternoon. My name is Wes Ward, my family has lived worked and organized in this city for over a hundred years To Shakobi Kenny's mother who sat in this room for hours waiting for answers before having to walk out, we send our prayers, our deepest respect and an unspoken and unbroken promise that we will not let this council forget her son's name. Seven days after Shakopee County was taken from us on the concrete floors of South Bay, I launched a first petition demanding independent investigation, the removal of officers involved and legislative change so this never happens again. On August 14th, I mobilized our community directly outside of South Bay Jail to demand justice. In August the M.E., the medical examiner confirmed what we already knew. His death was a homicide. Another Human Life Stolen in the Commonwealth. This council voted demanding the officers involved be stripped of their badges and put on leave.

That made for a clean press release, but on Braddon Street, the officers and the sheriff is treating your vote like dust. The men whose hands were on Shakobi's neck and took his life are still at work, and those detained eyewitnesses are facing retaliation. A lot of people held in South Bay Jail are your constituents from Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan. Rosendale, Jamaica Plain and across the city of Boston. They are eligible voters and their lives matter. You cannot reform an institution that takes the lives of our loved ones in the dark and conceals the tapes. Do not hide behind jurisdictional excuses when City Hall wants answers. You find the machinery. If you want justice, execute it. Pass an immediate resolution censor against the Sheriff's Department. Compel the release of unredacted frame of video.

Every redacted frames needs to be un-reducted, most definitely. Strip the Sheriff of Evidence custody. Mandate an automatic special prosecution so that it's fully independent that is prosecuting this case and other cases similar, so that in-custody deaths are not conflicted from courtroom conflicts of interest. Subpoena every BPD and EMS record Under your direct municipal authority so that you can have these records and make the right decisions. Establish a binding municipal in-custody death protocol with the ME requiring BPD and EMS to file independent public Incident Reports, Two City Councils so you could have the information right at hand. Karate Paid Civilization... No, Karate-Paid Boston Oversight for real subpoena power so that people in Boston who have experienced this, have a say at the table.

There shouldn't be a table involved where people Your residents, your constituents that have experienced the hate, experienced the abuse and have seen the deaths in South Bay Jail not be at the table. Not having that leadership, not actually being able to tell This city and tell these government seats what actually needs to be done. Because who knows better than the people that have been impacted? Audits. We need an audit of the municipal pre-trial diversion and bail funding so that our people can stop dying behind the walls. Ensure that full evidence oversight in court so residents are arrested and held without definitive undeniable proof of crime. De-criminalize low level survival offenses so that people aren't held in jails simply because they have a mental health issue. Instead of that, they should be given the proper treatment

Remove quarry barriers so then when these people actually come home, they can get a good job and actually benefit our community. So that they can actually be a good standing citizen in the Commonwealth and actually help better our community Redirect the city entry grants away from the sheriff's department and give them to the grassroots organizations. Give them to sole proprietors doing the work, fund real local community mental health rehabilitation centers like Torchlight Recovery in Grove Hall. A majority vote without reinforcement is simply complicity, so What I'm expecting you guys to do today is actually help the people who are suffering behind the walls and help the brothers and sisters who have came home that are looking to create a better life. Thank you for your time.

Okay, great. Hi. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. Anyone who...I have a long list of people but I know a lot of people have left so if you are here in person and would like to testify please come down just state your name and your affiliation We'll make sure that you testify. Sorry, go ahead.

Hi, my name is Emma Roth. I live in Dorchester. I came here today with planned testimony Through the lens of working as an educator, I would like to save that testimony for whenever the sheriff and the rest of your esteemed colleagues decide to be here and engage without looking at their phones. So instead I will say, I have degrees in theater arts and political science. I joke that I have two degrees in performance. Today, that is not a joke. What I have seen here today feels frankly like a farce I am glad that you all listened intently when Ms. Drusilla spoke, but the phones came right back out when she was done. This is not a new issue. This has been an issue that Councillor Mejia admitted it has been an issue since she's been an elected official, since you all have been. And why has nothing changed? Why has it gotten worse? Why have all of these people already said these things in front of this esteemed body?

I look forward to providing full public comment at a later date and to hearing your answers verbally and in your actions.

Hi, my name is Eleni Kalfas and I have been a volunteer contractor with the jail in the House of Correction going into facilitate civic engagement. as many people have mentioned. People inside are your voters, are currently waiting for their absentee ballots. We've talked with city council before about people being denied the right to vote and one of the reasons for having this hearing is people saying if we can't vote because our ballots are coming in the mail or they're not being returned by correctional officers in time to be counted like we need to be able to talk with city councillors directly So one request has been for city councilors to come inside and talk with incarcerated people. We did collect testimony from about 10 incarcerated people who really wanted their voices to be heard, so I'm going to give a summary of what they raised up and then end on two quotes that really stood out to me.

The summary is the quality of life is extremely poor in the Suffolk County Jail and House of Correction. Incarcerated people point to a punitive culture on the part of guards As well as staff ignoring simple issues like mice, cold cells, rec time being cancelled or skipped, bad food and lack of bathroom access. Verbal and physical abuse from COs is rampant, and multiple people have experienced and witnessed harassment and assault, some leading to deaths. Incarcerated people suggest wide-ranging improvements, from changes in training to more programming to body cameras and believe transparency is key. People on the outside need to hear our voices was a common refrain. The two quotes that stood out to me were one, we as detainees and inmates witness these situations and are forced to be silent because they make us lock in and they disable our tablets.

So we're not allowed to talk with each other or the public. and the people the jail are hiring to work here are damaging us more inside than when we came in, and that damage can have a long time affliction even longer than physical abuse. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me, my name is Jay Johnson The system isn't broken. It's working exactly as intended. Let's call this exactly what it is, state sanctioned violence. Private sector institutions that generate massive profits off the backs of the most vulnerable The most vulnerable, some could say from the CEOs down to those detained. Now if we want to look at the CEOs Underpaid, overworked, trained to protect property. The properties of the state. Chattel, chained. We now call this mass incarceration. The language that evolves, but the practice that remains the same. I want to use a real life case example, Mass and Cass.

Look at how we treated people who are experiencing addiction, right? Now, I worked with a team called Getting to Zero through Fenway Health and we tried implementing safe injection sites here. But y'all didn't want that. Actually, there was so much propaganda that was pushed out about our policy, about what we were trying to do here saying that we were just allowing folks to free for all, you know, do drugs in the street But when you look at Mass and Cass, Isn't that what was sanctioned anyway? Allowing people to have an open-air market and then the way they were treated afterwards funneled right into the jail systems, pumped right on in. And then lo and behold we got those opiate settlement funds, right? Oh!

Reparations for the white people here in Massachusetts. We could easily use those municipality funds to help fund the health crisis that we have here. I really need y'all to take a look at what it is that we're asking to do. We're not asking for much. Actually, we are asking for a lot. and we have it all lined out here for you. So if you could just take a moment to listen to the people who've actually been doing the work, yeah, you know what to do, thank you.

Hello, my name is Timothy Bilodeau. I live in Jamaica Plain. I'm here to speak because I have a number of friends who were impacted, incarcerated in Massachusetts. I also just want to thank the panel provided like really You know brilliant and fantastic overview of the history of this struggle here. I also want to call out that just In this last year, there was a murder of Dorchester resident Emmanuel DeMoss by ICE in March that made national headlines and rightfully caused an uproar. Meanwhile, the Suffolk HOC has killed an average of four people per year over the last five years. We've talked about that extensively. This also deserves an uproar and I'm glad it could be a part of tonight's part-of-that-uproar. I am also disgusted by the lack of presence from Sheriff Tompkins' staff, from the sheriff's department. And then the fact that folks who are currently incarcerated and detained were prevented from speaking.

horrific and unacceptable. I would also prefer to share statistics, talk about data and details about the conditions In these facilities, the rates of injuries are death. I would love to have an honest and detailed conversation about the facts and realities of Suffolk HOC but there simply is no such data. Boston's jails are a black box. We know about Jacobi Kenny's murder primarily because of eyewitnesses reporting through jail phone lines made a great personal risk. We've talked about harrowing accounts of retaliation that people have experienced or witnessed, The courage of these people and their integrity goes unacknowledged, and instead their voices are excluded from this very conversation. Let me be clear that I think that this is a crisis of information All of us on the outside of local jails can only guess at the scale of this crisis.

We are only hearing drips and drabs of what is actually going on, With a general lack of information and the specific exclusion of testimony from firsthand witnesses, how are we expected to know what's actually going on in these facilities let alone respond appropriately? So I think, I just want to echo what other people have testified too which is that there are a number of ready policy changes that can be made tomorrow. That could make a huge difference and there's decades testimony and witnesses that can attest to the efficacy of those policy changes. And we also need transparency, we could be collecting data, we need to be forcing the Sheriff's Department to share the information they already collect and that should be a foundation moving forward. It should not prevent work that should done now, thank you.

Okay, good evening council members. My name is Jayden Ojiaburu I live in Jamaica Plain. I'm an attorney and a volunteer with Massachusetts Bail Funds And I'm here today because I'm outraged by the fact that the city of Boston allows its sheriffs, police departments and corrections departments to disregard the lives of people that are incarcerated. And obviously I want to thank you both for being here this whole time. I have to believe that you're here because you really do care at some level, but I think that it only matters to us If your care for this issue actually extends to being able to move forward with all of the things that we heard today from the panel, from Wes, from all the folks who have spoken because we have given you and asked for our demand so clearly over so many years, and we're really hopeful. Well, I don't know if we're hopeful. I'll say we're helpful to be optimistic in your presence because I appreciate you being here.

That y'all can get your other council members to back the proposals and the very, very clear policy changes that we've already talked about all day today and also for you know the whole last decade. And in large part because this is about Shakobi Kenney and we know that there is nothing you all can do to bring him back or even to really provide justice to his family but at the end of the day, you can acknowledge that he never deserved to die by preventing future in custody deaths. And we know if you don't do anything about it This is only going to continue. and many more. That people are going to continue to die. And we just, we know that and we cannot accept that. And that's why we're all here today. It doesn't have to be this way.

You can demand complete information around jail deaths You can start a civil rights investigation around jail conditions. You can dissolve the contract between Boston Police Department and the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department. You also end central booking. And you can insist that every human being in Boston who's being housed by a local government entity has their human Their human right to dignity to be respected and also uphold their eighth amendment constitutional right to not have to endure cruel and unusual punishment. That is like bare minimum, the very least that I know you all can do and I know that Councilmember Mejia had already kind of preemptively apologized, that it's possible that you all get nothing done. And we really cannot stand for that because we know that as City Council you do have power there is a lot that you can do We expect it from you and if for any reason you can't rally at least the majority of nine other people on City Council to be able to back these proposals then that's a moral failing that we can't put on the Sheriff's Department for not being here today. Thank you.

I know we have a few people virtually as well, just want to make sure that everyone here who's in person wants to testify got the opportunity to testify. Great. So we're going to move on virtually. We have Tatiana Rodriguez, Cecilia Donn, Jocelyn Vasquez and Romilda Pereira. I don't know if Romilda was here earlier in person as well. We have Tatiana. Just remember that for those testifying on Zoom to accept the message asking you to be promoted to a panelist when it appears.

Yes, I'm here.

Awesome. Is this Tatiana? Hi.

Yes, it's Tatiana.

Okay, great, Tatiana, you have two minutes. You can go ahead.

Okay. My name is Tatiana Rodriguez, born and raised in Boston. I founded my nonprofit there. We serve families statewide including incarcerated people Housing costs pushed me out. I now own a home in Springfield, Jacobi County's community. I honor his memory and stand with his family's demands for justice. My brother is incarcerated. This is personal. Shakobi's death re-traumatized me. It brought me back to standing by Aisha Johnson's family outside South Bend 2021 demanding justice, Shur, Tompkins office feel to provide accountability too. The fear of speaking up is real. When I reported officers' brutality toward my loved ones, the harm continued. They were placed in the hole and retaliation. This is not new. Demanding safety should never bring more abuse. That wasn't my only lived experience, so not surprised to hear incarcerated witnesses were denied the chance to testify.

Demand an explanation. Their voices belong on this record. Our tax dollars fund these facilities. Loved ones there are awaiting trial. They were not sentenced to brutality, neglect or death in a court of law. But based off of what Katie said about the CO's license plate, it explains why they believe that one of the officers involved in Jacoby's death, Officer Lopez Reported earnings last year were $222,759 including 106 A thousand of that being in overtime. Our taxes paid that. Remove him from contact with incarcerated people now. pending independent investigations, scrutinized overtime and adequate sleep in staff mental health. Fatigue cannot excuse abuse. I am not asking for more officers or a bigger budget. We need independent investigations Enforceable Oversights, Medical Care and Protection Against Retaliation.

A jail must never impose a death sentence through violence or neglect as a homeowner and taxpayer I want housing mental health care substance use treatment and community support Jacobi's family deserves justice now. Our loved ones deserve safety and dignity this hearing must lead to action thank you for your time thank you Tatiana appreciate you testified

I also appreciate your patience in waiting to testify. Next up we have Cecilia Don,

Good evening to all members of this committee and thank you for your opportunity to testify. I'm here today for two important reasons, to demand accountability for the lives lost in custody and to raise concerns about the excessive overtime correctional officers are working. Months ago, we learned that the medical examiner's office officially ruled Chicoa Bikini's death a homicide. Yet to date there is still no accountability. This is not only a profound miscarriage of justice, but also heartbreaking tragedy for his mother Drusilla to bear. On that day she was forced to endure the devastating reality that her son's life had been sensibly snatched from him She has been denied the opportunity to hug him and say, I love you son before he finally closed his eyes. No mother should have to experience such an imaginable pain especially under circumstances that demand answers, transparency and accountability. No family should have to endure this pain without answers,

should have to fear for their life while under the care and supervision of the very institutions responsible for their safety. We must continue to expand and advocate for those who can no longer speak for themselves. Secondly, I want to bring to attention the significant number of hours correctional officers are required to work and explain why this issue deserves serious consideration. Why are correctional officers working so many hours? According to the statewide payroll system, through October 17th, 2026, Lieutenant Andres Lopez of one of the South Bay 13s officers involved in Shakopee Kennedy's death annual base salary rate was $119,000. But its total earnings reported $183,000 which included an additional $83,000 in overtime.

That equates to 80 regular hours and 46 hours of overtime per bi-weekly pay period. These figures raise serious concerns and questions, therefore should not be the long-term solution to staffing shortages. It's imperative correctional officers remain alert, exercise sound judgment, make critical decisions and respond to potentially dangerous situations that can have serious consequences for everyone in their care. Consistently working extended hours can contribute to fatigue, which threatens their physical and mental wellbeing, job performance, and overall safety for everyone. Ultimately, this issue is about more than just compensation. The goal should not be to normalize excessive overtime. We must examine scheduling practices, working conditions, appropriate training and Employee Retention to develop sustainable solutions.

I urge this committee to use its authority to make meaningful action on both fronts, demand accountability that effective policies are implemented and enforced to prevent future deaths in custody. Our communities deserve justice, families affected deserve answers and meaningful change. Thank you.

Thank you, Cecilia for testifying. Next up we have Jocelyn Vasquez.

Hi. Good afternoon, counselors. My name is Jocelyn Vasquez. I'm here to speak about the treatment of women at South Bay House of Correction. While awaiting trial, I faced a potential life sentence. I didn't know if I would ever get my freedom back. Eventually overturned. I once asked an officer to unlock my cell so I could use the restroom he told me to use his shower. When I explained why I needed a toilet, he accused me of threatening him and I spent three days in a hole only to be found out guilty. So imagine facing a potential life sentence for something you didn't do and then being accused again by someone with the power to punish you. The emotional weight pushed me into such a dark place that there was times I just wanted to die, I also witnessed a captain reviewing my discovery and describing photographs in it to another officer, which raises serious concerns about privacy and professionalism. I saw officers degrade women, verbally abuse them and threaten them over basic requests. Like a false D report can even threaten someone's future freedom in court

or parole hearings, and they know that. The punishment can outlast the accusation. Women struggling with mental illness or addiction deserve treatment not humiliation. South Bay needs trauma-informed training, deescalation, and meaningful accountability Incarceration takes away your freedom, it should never take away your humanity and the uniform must never become a shield against accountability. My heart condolences to Shakobi Kenny's mother and family rest in peace Shakobi and thank you for your time

Thank you, Jocelyn. I appreciate your testifying and being patient. We have Romilda? Are you online?

Yes, I am.

I know you were here earlier, so appreciate your patience. You can go ahead.

Thank you. I appreciate you. As you know, I'm the founder and executive director of Project Turnaround, a restorative justice facilitator, and most importantly, a woman who spent significant part of her youth incarcerated in Suffolk County jails. I'm old enough to remember when women were held at National Street Jail. I was there young, 17, 18, 19 years old. I as a child, a young girl and some of the things I experienced behind those walls are unspeakable. I wasn't planning to testify today. I came here to support the mothers of young people who are currently incarcerated. Mothers who call me almost every day terrified about what their children are enduring behind those walls. I reach out to Katie multiple times a week Seeking support for these families. But as I sit here listening to people speak about the very struggles I lived, I realize I cannot remain silent. I have to be a voice for those who are voiceless whose voices continue to go unheard. But I'm tired.

I'm tied because we all know what's happening, and we've known for decades. The question is no longer what's happened in the South-South Bay. The questions is what are you going to do about it? And when are you gonna start? I was incarcerated when Building 5 was constructed in 2001. That land used to be the woman's yard. They built a new facility for women, and just days before we were supposed to move in, the federal government stepped in and stopped it. We were never told why. There were rumors about whether the building was even fit to house human beings. That building remained closed until immigration took over and eventually used it. I remember that history because I lived it. And now, sitting here in 2026 listening to testimony about deaths, drugs, abuse and allegations of sexual assault by correctional officers against incarcerated women, I have to ask 26 years later, we're still here. Do our lives not matter? Did my life not matter when I was 19 years old?

I have shared my trauma publicly many times that I can't even count, hoping that telling my story would help bring change. Do you understand what it takes for someone to relive that pain over and over again? That young girl is still inside me and every time I speak about what happened, it still hurts. Our stories are not lies. Correctional officers have been arrested. Federal authorities had to intervene before. What are you waiting for? For them to step in again? And we need to have a serious conversation about accountability and the power of correctional officer unions. Who is holding officers accountable when they abuse their authority? Who is protecting the people in custody? I also want to talk about the people sitting in jail for days, weeks and months while awaiting dangerous hearings for decisions. People who have not been convicted of the charges they face. Take Norman Gray, a father currently detained on drug charges while facing dangerous proceedings

His health is declining, his doctors have expressed concerns and yet his family has left wondering who was going to intervene before something happens to him. People have to die before their concerns become an emergency. I also want a reminders room about Aisha Johnson. My friends and I organized and led protests Demanding Justice for Aisha and the three other individuals who lost their lives in county custody. Aisha had never ended up in jail. Her family sought help because she was struggling with alcohol. They believed she would... received medical treatment. Instead, she ended up in booking at South Bay where she lost her life. Her family was looking for help not a death sentence and her children they're the ones left to live with that loss. Her brother and family had to step in and take care of them. When we talk about deaths in custody, we're not talking about statistics. We're talking about mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, and children who will never see their parents again I'm not here asking for another conversation.

I'm asking for action. I want independent investigation, meaningful oversight, accountability for officers who violate people's rights, proper medical care and real protections for people being held in these facilities. And I want the voices of formerly incarcerated people and their families currently living through these nightmares at the table when decisions are being made. Because you cannot keep discussing our trauma without including us in the solutions. I was 19 years old when I experienced some of the worst trauma in my life in Suffolk County custody. I'm standing here 26 years later listening to families describe the same fear, the same suffering and the same failures. How many more generations have to suffer before something changes? I survived those walls. Some people didn't, and I refuse to let their stories or mine be forgotten. We don't need another hearing where everyone agrees there's a problem and then goes home. We need accountability, we need action, and we need it now. Thank you.

Thank you, Romilda for your testimony and the work that you do every day on behalf of our city and neighborhoods. That wraps up our public testimony. I will just, um... I want to thank again everyone for being here. Actually before that, do you have any final words? No, go on.

Okay.

I'm going to adjourn after this. Right, thank you for me too. On behalf of Councilor Culpepper and I we want to thank you all the panelists today, the public people those who testified, those who couldn't testify as well We really appreciate, I think this was a very informative hearing. I think there's a lot of work that we as a council need to be able to do in partnership with community and organizations so I'm looking forward to that work. Again, I really appreciate everyone's patience today and appreciate central staff as well who's still working as well. So this hearing on docket number 0870 is adjourned, thank you.