Egremont silent after taking cop with history of complaints off active duty
Egremont silent after taking cop with history of complaints off active duty
Matthew O’Sullivan has been the subject of complaints, a criminal investigation, and a lawsuit — and resigned from a previous police job after an investigation found cause to fire him
Egremont, a tiny town in Berkshire County, has a population of just 1,372.
Since Matthew O’Sullivan’s first shift as a police officer there in May 2019, he has been the subject of at least 11 complaints, one criminal investigation, and one lawsuit.
Before that, he had resigned from the Shirley Police Department after an investigation found cause to fire him for kicking a man in the groin.
O’Sullivan is no longer on active duty in Egremont, but town officials are refusing to explain why — or even to say whether he is still employed by the town. Police Chief Jason LaForest and select board member Mary Brazie both declined to comment, citing the advice of legal counsel.
“This matter is in litigation,” said Jeremia Pollard, the lawyer representing the town. “Stop contacting my client.”
Pollard did not explain the nature of the litigation related to O’Sullivan’s employment, and there were no relevant cases listed in state or federal court records.
Police records show that O’Sullivan’s last shift was on January 31, according to a report from the Berkshire Eagle. Since then, the town has quietly removed his name and contact information from the police department’s web page.
The Egremont select board scheduled a disciplinary hearing to be held in executive session on February 3, but the meeting agenda does not specify which employee was the subject of the hearing. After the Mass Dump requested a copy of the meeting minutes, Brazie said that the hearing had been canceled.
Brazie declined to say whether O’Sullivan was the subject of the hearing.
O’Sullivan did not respond to requests for an interview. He spoke with the Eagle but declined to say why he was taken off active duty.
O’Sullivan is currently employed as a part-time police officer by Sheffield, a town that neighbors Egremont. Sheffield Police Chief Eric Munson said the town hired O’Sullivan in October 2021. At that time, O’Sullivan and now-former Sheffield police officer Jacob Gonska were the subjects of a criminal investigation by the Massachusetts State Police.
Munson and Sheffield Town Administrator Rhonda LaBombard did not respond to requests to interview them about the decision to hire O’Sullivan.
The State Police opened the criminal investigation after a handcuffed woman was knocked unconscious in O’Sullivan and Gonska’s custody in Egremont in August 2020. The woman said that the officers threw her into Gonska’s cruiser and were responsible for knocking her out. Both officers wrote reports blaming the woman for hitting her head.
LaForest reported the incident to the State Police, telling the Dump in an October interview that he was “alarmed” when he watched video from the cruiser.
State Police detective Edward Culver wrote in a report that the video was “inconclusive to … implicate officers for improper use of force,” but investigators never interviewed O’Sullivan about his role in the incident.
The Berkshire County District Attorney’s Office did not bring criminal charges against O’Sullivan or Gonska. However, the district attorney’s Brady Review Team determined that both officers wrote reports that were “not consistent” with the video. The district attorney’s office added the two men to its Brady list, which includes the names of officers with credibility problems.
Munson, in a one-page report, found no excessive force by Gonksa. Pittsfield Police Chief Michael Wynn also found no wrongdoing by Gonska in a brief report requested by Munson. However, Gonska later resigned. He is currently not certified to work as a police officer in Massachusetts, according to information from the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission.
LaForest told the Dump in October that he believed excessive force was used on the woman but that O’Sullivan wasn't responsible. However, LaForest told investigators that O’Sullivan’s report about the incident was “not true,” according to a State Police report.
LaForest told the Dump that he did not feel comfortable opening an internal investigation of O’Sullivan’s conduct because he was present the night of the incident, even though he did not witness what happened.
O’Sullivan defended his actions in an interview with the Eagle, saying the camera only captured part of what happened.
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Other members of the public have accused O’Sullivan of various types of misconduct, including excessive force, groundless and aggressive traffic stops, and racial profiling. LaForest found that O’Sullivan conducted an inappropriate number of pat-down searches and violated the police department’s vehicle pursuit policy. O’Sullivan is also facing a federal racial profiling lawsuit by a man from Connecticut who is representing himself without an attorney.
O’Sullivan told the Eagle he receives so many complaints because his “proactive policing” approach puts him in more contact with the public than other officers, creating more opportunities for complaints.
O’Sullivan has received one complaint while working at the Sheffield Police Department, but the complaint was not sustained by the department, according to the Eagle.
O’Sullivan criticized the Egremont Police Department for not using dashboard or body cameras, which he said would have helped clear him when members of the public complained.
“I don’t understand how you can have complaints in one department without cameras, and here you have an officer saying, ‘Give us cameras,’ yet [Sheffield] does have cameras, there’s only one complaint and that’s been discredited,” he told the Eagle.
In 2017, O’Sullivan resigned from his job as a reserve officer at the Shirley Police Department after the department determined there was cause to fire him for unbecoming conduct that was caught on video.
O’Sullivan and another reserve officer, Ian Brown, were escorting a man to a police holding cell after O’Sullivan arrested the man for alleged drunk driving.
The surveillance video of the incident shows the man bracing his hands against the cell door’s threshold while the officers try to push him inside.
O’Sullivan wrote in his report that the man struck him in the face. O’Sullivan said he kneed the man in the thigh two or three times, and the officers were then able to force him into the cell.
After that, O’Sullivan kicks the man in the groin, the video shows. O’Sullivan then stands in the doorway and raises his fists before Brown separates him from the man and closes the cell door.
O’Sullivan defended his actions while speaking with the Eagle, saying he kicked the man to protect himself and “create distance.”
“If you pause the video, you can see his assaultive behavior continues and that’s when I threw the kick,” he said. “It’s my belief that I acted within proper use-of-force policy.”
However, the Shirley Police Department’s investigation reached the opposite conclusion.
“The subject was active resistant and assaultive while being escorted in the hallway to the holding cell, but was not active aggressive/assaultive towards either officers [sic] when in the holding cell,” wrote Sergeant Peter Violette in his report.
Violette faulted O’Sullivan for kicking the man, taking a “fighting stance with his fists up,” and not ordering the man to back up.
“As Police Officers, we are trained to de-escalate and alleviate minor to dangerous situations,” Violette wrote. “In this incident, this did not happen, until Reserve Officer Brown decided to intervene.”
Brazie said during an October interview that the Egremont select board has the authority to hire and fire employees. She said she did not know why O’Sullivan left Shirley and did not remember receiving a copy of the internal affairs records when he was hired.
Shirley Police Chief Samuel Santiago said he had “no record of the Egremont Police Department reaching out to [Shirley] for any background or to review personnel files.”
Brazie declined to say whether the town has changed the way it screens applicants for police jobs since October.
The district attorney’s office in Middlesex County, where Shirley is located, added O’Sullivan to its Brady list in March. Although the Shirley incident happened six years prior, the district attorney’s office did not begin reviewing it until the Dump asked about it in November.
The Dump sent Egremont a request for various documents, including O’Sullivan’s internal affairs records and other records that would shed light on his employment status.
Town Clerk Juliette Haas said that the town had already provided the internal affairs records to the Dump in December. She did not say whether O’Sullivan has been the subject of more complaints since then.
Haas rejected the request for the other records, saying they were “not yet public” because of an open case. She did not cite any exemptions to the public records law, which the town is legally required to do in order to withhold records.
The Dump filed an appeal with the state’s supervisor of public records to challenge the town’s decision to keep the records secret.
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