The state’s law enforcement licensing commission decertified a former Woburn police officer accused of helping plan a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., a move that adds the cop’s name to a national database of decertified officers.
It is the first time the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission has decertified an officer under a 2020 police reform law that was created and passed in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
New records released Monday show that former Woburn cop John Donnelly entered into a “voluntary decertification agreement” with the POST Commission that was signed by POST Commission Chair Margaret Hinkle last month.
“The respondent John Donnelly has entered into a voluntary decertification agreement under which he has agreed to the revocation of his certification as a law enforcement officer in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the entry of his decertification in the National Decertification Index,” the order reads, referring to a national registry of officers whose certifications or licenses were revoked because of officer misconduct.
Donnelly was at first put on leave in October 2022 as the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office investigated allegations that helped plan the 2017 white supremacist rally that led to the death of a counterprotester.
Woburn Police Chief Robert Rufo Jr. said at the time that his department had “recently learned” that Donnelly “allegedly participated in and was active in the planning of the so-called ‘Unite the Right’ rally.” White nationalists, neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan participated in the rally.
Donnelly resigned from his post only days after he was suspended and “prior to the conclusion of its internal investigation into this matter and prior to the imposition of any discipline,” according to the POST Commission.
A spokesperson for the Woburn Police Department referred the Herald to an October statement from Rufo, who said Donnelly’s actions are “in direct opposition to the core values of the Woburn Police Department, to serve all members of our community equally and treat them with dignity and respect.”
MassCop, which is listed as representing Donnelly, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The POST Commission started a “preliminary inquiry” into the allegations against Donnelly on Nov. 22, 2022. A month earlier, a reporter from HuffPost.com and a group called Ignite the Right “both publicly alleged that [Donnelly] engaged in misconduct and/or is unfit to be a police officer in Massachusetts,” the POST Commission said in an outline of the case that Donelly signed on March 26.
Donnelly waived his rights to contest the order or ask for further administrative or judicial proceedings with the POST Commission.
The POST Commission also refused to recertify the policing license of Michael Brennan, who was hired as a part-time deputy sheriff by the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office in 2008, because his name was listed on the National Decertification Index.
“It is undisputed that Mr. Brennan consented to have another jurisdiction list his name in the NDI and admitted to having conducted an improper search for information using Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) while employed as an officer in Massachusetts,” a POST Commission document said.
After serving for years in Massachusetts at the sheriff’s office, the United States Marshals Service, and as a special police officer in Rockland, Brennan sought employment with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona in 2021.
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office forwarded Brennan’s file to their local POST Board after offering him a job, which found a “suspected violation” of their certification rules. He was denied the job because he answered “yes” on a polygraph test when asked if he had ever broken the law.
“Mr. Brennan disclosed during the interview that in 2015, while volunteering with the Rockland Police Department, he accessed CJIS to search for the address of the mother of his then-girlfriend,” documents from the Massachusetts POST Commission said. “Mr. Brennan asserted that the two women were estranged and the girlfriend was concerned for her elderly mother’s well-being.”
Brennan was later added to the National Decertification Index by the Arizona POST Board.
Attorney Peter Noone of Avery Dooley & Noone confirmed that he represents Brennan but did not immediately provide a comment when reached by phone.