This interview was conducted on Jan. 21 with Brookline Police Chief Daniel O’Leary as a response to the interviews conducted with Officers Prentice Pilot and Estifanos Zerai-Misgun, and to answer questions about racial discrimination in the police force and in Brookline.

So going back to 2014 when Officer Pilot, Officer Zerai-Misgun and another officer brought it up with you, you said there would be no tolerance for racial discrimination, but confidentiality was breached and Officer Zerai-Misgun was ostracized. Is that true?

He never told me he was ostracized. I told him, and I told the officers who were in the room that there was no way that this (complaint) would remain confidential. I spoke and I told them I would speak at the Command Staff meeting, with almost all of our supervisors, which is a number right around 32. I was going to tell them what was taking place, and I told them who the officers were. I told them and they knew who the officers were. They knew Estifanos had brought that forth. I never promised him that it would stay confidential. As a matter of fact, I told him that it would not be staying confidential. I did say that there was a possibility people knew they were meeting right then in my office. We have one building with 136 police officers and, including civilians, about 180 people. It is very difficult to keep secrets.

The officers said that they didn’t feel safe coming back to work and that’s partially because there are many family relations within the Brookline Police Department, and they don’t feel safe because of that. What do you think?

I get asked this question a lot because some people are related to other people on the job here. You take a look at any profession: take a look at doctors, take a look at teachers, at sports people, plumbers or attorneys. You will see that within a lot of those families, you have kids who emulate their parents and take on the same type of jobs or maybe even the same jobs as their parents. Now, why is it bad in policing, but not bad in these other professions? That’s not the right way to think. I think that parents should be proud of their child who wants to follow in their footsteps. Obviously they send a good tone for their children by saying, ‘This is what I do for my profession. I’m proud of my profession and the work that I do.’ It’s a good thing to see somebody following in their footsteps.

As of right now, what is the investigation being held?

Right now, there are two types of follow-ups being done from people outside of the town and outside the police department. There’s an investigation into the allegation made by Officer Pilot. There’s a subsequent investigation made by the complaints that Officer Estifanos Zerai-Misgun said back in December of 2014. That’s being handled by the same individual. There’s a separate (investigation) being done by a consultant at the police department, who was hired to interview all of the officers of color and women in our department, as well as a group of about eight to 10 White male officers. This is to see what the feeling is amongst the officers, regarding the culture and how we treat people within this department. That’s currently underway. Both of those investigations are currently underway.

One thing the officers were confused about was that they themselves are being investigated. They thought that didn’t make sense. What’s your response to that?

I don’t know about them being investigated. They are being asked to cooperate with the investigation. They are being asked to tell their story. The investigator has to look into it.

Is it true that minority complaints sometimes disappear or are unsustained?

We have a system complaint policy that has about six options that we can choose. It can either sustain the complaint or find it to be not credible. We can determine whether we think the complaint is valid or not. It can be mediated, when people go into a room and talk about things and work it out. It can be unfounded, in which the action that took place was legal and there’s nothing wrong with it. Or, it can be filed. That means the person didn’t follow through with the investigation. The officers’ complaints can be classified into any one of those classifications.

There are claims that these racial discrimination reports come up in a lot of places, such as the high school, the fire department and the police department and they’re not just isolated incidents. What do you think?

I think it’s absolutely true. I think it’s not unique to Brookline, either. I think all you have to do is take a look at what’s happening across the country now and what’s been happening across the country for years, with racism as the topic. These incidents keep cropping up, and it’s all across the country. We are not unique. We’re not separate from the rest of the country. We’re all affected by it. It’s become such an issue in Brookline. A lot of people think that we’re past it, when in reality we are part of this American society, and this is something that we have to deal with. We should be dealing with it and doing a better job with it.

At the Town Hall meeting (on Jan. 5,) people talked about racial diversity training. The officers said they either didn’t remember it or they thought it was ineffective. They also said diversity training seemed to be a window dressing for liability purposes for the town to say that they did something. What do you think?

We have been doing training for a while, especially Officer Pilot, who has been here for longer than Officer Zerai-Misgun. I had them here back in December 2014 when Officers Zerai-Misgun and Pilot filed their complaints. They actually proposed to me and asked me if I would consider putting on diversity training specific to the Brookline Police Department. That was their suggestion. I readily agreed with that. I wanted them to be involved in the development of the curriculum that we give to our officers. We spent time here talking about how to design the curriculum. Officer Pilot then said that he knew people that would help design the curriculum and he was going to run with it.

Is there anything you would like students to know about this situation?

I would hope that the students would keep an open mind about it. Like I said, don’t make a judgement, and they should keep an open mind and take a look at things. I know that it’s easier said than done, but we all have the best interests of people at heart and the best interests of the community at heart.

Do you have anything else to add?

I think people should sit back and really think about the fact that there’s two sides to every story. I think that people have to agree and continue to talk to each other in order to work things out. I think isolating yourself and not engaging in conversation is not going to do anybody any good. That’s my opinion on the whole thing. I do want to say that we took these complaints very seriously. We started the investigations into (the complaints) right away, and, at least with Prentice (Pilot), we started the same day. We handled the complaints of Estifanos (Zerai-Misgun) a little differently, based on what I thought was the desire of the officer involved. We handled it in a way where we agreed on the steps that I was going to take in that room before we left that day. Both times the people who left my office knew what was going to take place and I followed through.