The president of the Worcester branch of the NAACP has formally joined community activists in demanding that City Councilor-at-Large Kathleen Toomey step down as chair of the City Council Standing Committee on Public Safety. The call for her removal follows a late-night vehicle collision involving Toomey and a subsequent internal police investigation into how responding officers handled the scene.
The incident took place around midnight on September 2, when Toomey struck an unoccupied parked vehicle after leaving a local restaurant. The force of the impact caused substantial damage, requiring both Toomey's vehicle and the parked car to be towed from the roadway, according to official police reports and released body camera footage.
Following the collision, the Worcester Police Department initiated an internal affairs investigation the very same day. Worcester Police Chief Paul Saucier noted that the administrative inquiry was launched specifically to ensure responding patrol officers did not grant any form of preferential treatment to the veteran city lawmaker during their on-scene assessment.
In a formal press statement issued on September 14, Worcester NAACP President Fred Taylor called upon Mayor Joseph M. Petty to actively urge Toomey to vacate her leadership role on the committee on an interim basis. Taylor stated that taking this corrective step would help demonstrate a meaningful commitment to institutional transparency, governmental accountability, and the restoration of public trust in local law enforcement.
Mayor Petty, who oversees committee assignments in his capacity as the presiding chair of the City Council, had not publicly indicated whether he plans to request Toomey’s resignation from the committee post. Initial requests seeking comment on the matter had been directed to his office beginning on September 13.
Toomey currently serves in her 11th two-year term as a Worcester councilor-at-large, occupying a prominent voice in municipal policy. Outside of her legislative duties on the council, her municipal biography lists her as working professionally as a post-release and reintegration specialist for the Worcester County Sheriff's Office.
A central point of concern raised by Taylor involves the procedural handling of the crash scene, specifically questioning why responding officers did not require Toomey to submit to standard field sobriety testing. Taylor highlighted that several visible factors at the scene should have prompted law enforcement to conduct a deeper and more thorough inquiry before concluding their initial response.
Recorded police body camera footage revealed that Toomey took multiple minutes to locate her driver’s license, initially handing responding officers a different document instead. When questioned directly by officers regarding what had led to the late-night crash, Toomey answered on video that she was merely driving down the street and could not recall anything further before thanking the officers.
The video recordings also documented Toomey making explicit references to police leadership while at the scene of the accident. She was captured asking responding personnel to place a call to the police chief and mentioned that she was attempting to get in touch with Sgt. Anthony Petrone, a former representative for the Worcester Patrolmen's Union.
Addressing those recorded remarks, Chief Saucier stated that Toomey did not make contact with him during or directly following the collision. Saucier added that, to his knowledge, no other members of the police department were contacted on her behalf that evening, while emphasizing that he cannot evaluate the responding officers' specific on-scene assessments until the internal affairs investigation is completed.
Toomey’s legal counsel, Michael Wilcox, previously stated that his client had likely attended a primary election gathering earlier that evening, noting that the Massachusetts state primary had taken place on September 1. Wilcox firmly denied that alcohol played any role in the collision, maintaining that the incident was simply an unfortunate motor vehicle accident.
Significant public scrutiny has also emerged regarding Toomey's legislative conduct during a City Council meeting held on September 8, just one week following the crash. During that session, Toomey actively participated and voted to recommend against establishing a municipal civilian review board, a police oversight measure that she has consistently opposed throughout her tenure.
At the time of that vote, details of Toomey's collision and the police department’s active internal investigation had not yet been made public. Information regarding the crash and the internal affairs probe was only confirmed by municipal officials on September 11 following inquiries from the press, after which extensive body camera footage was released.
Taylor sharply criticized Toomey’s decision to engage in council business regarding police oversight while her own interactions with the department were under active internal scrutiny. He maintained that, at a minimum, ethics demanded she recuse herself from all deliberations and votes touching on police accountability while the investigation remained open.
The demand for Toomey’s suspension from the Public Safety Committee is also supported by the Civilian Review Board Coalition, a network of local advocacy organizations. Both Taylor and coalition members drew comparisons between Toomey’s incident and the departmental handling of a case involving campus police Lt. Gregory Markiewicz of UMass Chan Medical School, who faces drunken driving charges, pointing to the need for unwavering consistency and accountability across all law enforcement interactions.
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