Lawrence police chief controversy pits mayor against former top Mass. public safety official

An ongoing controversy in Lawrence, Massachusetts, is providing conflicting accounts from the city's mayor and the state's former public safety secretary, the person hired to investigate alleged misconduct involving the acting police chief.

As the NBC10 Boston Investigators have reported, the POST Commission suspended William Castro's law enforcement certification last March. The acting chief continued collecting his $210,000 salary from home while city leaders spent taxpayer money probing a series of allegations.

The problems for Castro began last February, when he pursued a vehicle in the middle of the day. The suspect was wanted for trying to cash a stolen check at a credit union, according to dispatch audio of the incident.

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Video the NBC10 Boston Investigators obtained shows Castro chase a Mercedes onto a sidewalk in his unmarked department vehicle, and then follow it into oncoming lanes of traffic on a city bridge.

Following the incident, Mayor Brian DePeña wrote a letter to the head of the police department's internal affairs unit, saying he believed no further investigation was necessary.

"I believe Chief Castro acted assertively and quickly in an attempt to safeguard the citizens of Lawrence," DePeña said. "I believe his response to be truthful."

The Massachusetts POST Commission came to a much different conclusion, however. The agency suspended Castro's law enforcement certification and determined the acting chief was not truthful when he filed a report that said he believed it was a bank robbery.

During an interview last week with NBC10 Boston and our colleagues at Telemundo, DePeña indicated he thought the incident was blown out of proportion.

"Do you think that this is first time a police officer violates a department policy? And when has it been in the press?" DePeña said in Spanish. "When is there going to be such a big scandal for violation of policy?"

The city eventually tapped Daniel Bennett to conduct an independent investigation. Bennett has more than 30 years of experience as a criminal prosecutor in Massachusetts, and later served as the state's public safety secretary under the Baker administration.

While appearing before the City Council at a special meeting on Wednesday night, Bennett said he tried at least seven times to schedule an interview with Castro, but repeatedly met resistance.

According to Bennett, Castro's attorney said he had conflicts on proposed dates and later questioned Bennett's authority to interview his client.

Bennett eventually set a date for Castro to appear in his office last October and said the acting chief did not show up. The following day, Bennett received an email from the mayor's senior adviser, instructing him to "halt any investigation."

"If (Castro) had wanted to talk to me, I would have been overjoyed," Bennett told council members. "The mayor's office told me I was to halt my investigation. By Webster's, that actually means 'stop' my investigation."

Several days later, Bennett said he finished his report and sent a copy to the police department, the city attorney and the mayor's office. Bennett's conclusion was that Castro had broken the law — most notably with the felony crime of filing of a false report — and should be fired.

However, during the recent interview with DePeña, the mayor said Bennett finished the investigation without his authorization. In his mind, the report that cost taxpayers nearly $40,000 remains incomplete because Castro was never interviewed.

"You can't believe that if I pay you to bring me five chickens, but you only bring me four that I would accept the purchase, right?" DePeña said. "As a mayor, I can't make decisions about a case that I ordered to be investigated and it wasn't concluded."

In his career of conducting investigations and trying cases, including 30 murders, Bennett said it is not unusual for the target of an investigation to refuse to answer questions. Based on other evidence and interviews he gathered, that does not stop him from reaching a conclusion.

Bennett told city councilors that it takes "extraordinary circumstances" for him to recommend someone be fired.

"I had substantive evidence and all of it fit together to give a very strong circumstantial case that Mr. Castro was in a high-speed chase when he didn't have a right to be in it and then he went and lied on his police report," Bennett said. "Which, in my mind, is far more serious, because you can't have a dishonest police officer."

The mayor's office spent more taxpayer money on a separate investigation that looked into how Bennett's probe expanded to include other allegations against Castro, including unethical hiring practices, intimidation and performing his police chief duties after the POST suspension.

That report found no collusion among city officials and police officers, nor did it find evidence that would taint the credibility of Bennett's work. On Wednesday night, council members voted to authorize an investigation into the leak of that unredacted report to an online media publication.

As NBC10 Boston previously reported, Castro has returned to his previous position as DePeña's chief of staff.

Following the lengthy meeting on Wednesday night, Council President Jeovanny Rodriguez said there are still plenty of unanswered questions.

"Why does the mayor want to go through this situation with someone that has cost so much and done harm to the city?" Rodriguez asked. "A lot of people are asking the same question: What is it that Castro is holding against the mayor? Or what is the political favor?"