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Methuen officer at troubled department files discrimination suit alleging decades of racist abuse

Officers made comments about shooting Black supporters of Hillary Clinton, having an “ethnic cleansing” of the department, and wanting to hang Black G.I. Joes with bullet holes in a tree, the complaint said.

By Molly Farrar

May 7, 2024

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A Methuen police officer filed a lawsuit against the city last week, claiming that officers and their superiors have discriminated against him for decades, from berating him and other officers of color to the point of leaving the department to frequently using racial slurs.

Charles DeJesus, a current detective with the Methuen Police Department, detailed decades of strife within the department in the complaint filed in Essex Superior Court. 

DeJesus, a Dominican American, was not hired as a police officer after passing the civil service exam in 1998, the complaint said. At the time, there were no active Hispanic or Latino officers in the department, and DeJesus’s father-in-law was the only Black officer.

He spent years as a civilian dispatcher before being hired as an officer in 2001.

“He heard at the time that officers considering his application had joked about whether he could even speak English,” the complaint said, and when he became an officer, he was called a “sp-c” more than once.

The department’s uniformed police force is currently more than 90% white, the complaint said.

While DeJesus was promoted to detective in 2003, he was demoted in 2006, which he felt came after a racist argument, the complaint said. He became a detective again in 2012. 

“After this incident, Det. DeJesus spoke to the Deputy Chief about his concerns,” the complaint said about the 2006 demotion. “The Deputy Chief told Det. DeJesus that he should be grateful he was not treated worse and called a ‘n—–‘ like his father-in-law, the first Black officer on the force, had been.”

According to the complaint, DeJesus took notes about the racist comments or jokes from officers. The complaint said officers made comments about shooting Black supporters of Hillary Clinton, having an “ethnic cleansing” of the department, and wanting to hang Black G.I. Joes with bullet holes in a tree with a “Black Lives Don’t Matter” sign.

Officers also allegedly said they would wait to administer Narcan to a Latino Methuen resident during a life-threatening drug overdose and during an exam hypothetical said the police should “just arrest them for being Spanish,” the complaint said.

Complaint: Solomon “shrugged” off racist comments reported by DeJesus

DeJesus, who also previously filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination in 2022, worked under former Chief Joseph Solomon, who was named in the complaint as repeatedly ignoring DeJesus’s concerns. 

Solomon, who had been previously investigated by the FBI for mismanaging funds, made $326,707 in 2019 as one of the highest paid police chiefs in the country. He was then placed on leave in 2020 and ultimately retired as his alleged widespread public corruption came to light, including creating bloated salaries for top officers, hiring untrained police officers, and giving favors to city leaders. 

Methuen said in a statement that since a new chief took over in 2021, the department is headed in the right direction, but Methuen “welcomes scrutiny of these initiatives and the current practices of its Police Department.”

“Chief McNamara has implemented, and continues to promulgate, many positive initiatives,” the statement said, including “achieving full accreditation, conducting outreach programs that have helped to expand the percentage of minorities in both the department’s professional and sworn staff, and filing special legislation to create a cadet program to increase interest in law enforcement as a career and further diversify the department’s cadre of officers.”

The complaint alleges that while Chief Scott McNamara made “some needed changes,” the ongoing culture of discrimination and retaliation did not improve. 

“Det. DeJesus has been isolated, mocked and subjected to disparate scrutiny,” the complaint said. “He has been told he cannot be trusted; that he was only playing the race card; and that he should have kept quiet.”