A police officer was fired for sexual harassment of students. Is his certification next?
Groton Police Officer Omar Connor's fall from grace played out quickly.
In a March 2022 social media post, the Groton Police Department called him a "great role model" for the high school students he protected and mentored as a school resource officer.
But some people in the school building and around town had encountered another side of the veteran officer.
Less than two years later, Connor would be suspended and then fired over claims that he sexually harassed both students and teachers at Groton-Dunstable Regional High School.
Connor contested his firing . In May, an arbitrator tasked with independently reviewing the case ruled that the department was justified in dismissing him.
Now in question is whether Connor can ever return to work for a police department in Massachusetts, and whether the commonwealth's police oversight board will take steps to prevent him from finding employment with a department in another state as well.
Connor faces possible lifetime ban from police work in Mass.
Two internal affairs investigations completed in late 2023 surfaced complaints that Connor engaged in "overt sexual harassment" while on and off the job.
Reports on the investigations obtained by MassLive last year described him using lewd language with teachers and students, propositioning a high school girl in the school building and making unwanted sexual advances on a young adult woman living in Groton after she interviewed him for a college project.
Connor denied the accusations in interviews during the internal affairs investigations and during arbitration hearings.
But the arbitrator, Boston attorney Sherrie Rose Talmadge, did not find his responses to the charges to be sufficient.
She ruled in May that the department had properly established that Connor sexually harassed the high school student, that he made threatening comments toward her and a teacher and that he made "numerous sexual advances and suggestive comments" toward the adult member of the community — all together grounds for dismissal.
Joseph P. Kittredge, a police union attorney who represented Connor against the department, said he no longer works with the officer. Connor could not be reached for comment.
Any chance he has of future law enforcement work in Massachusetts is now in the hands of the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission , or POST, a nine-member board appointed by the governor and attorney general to oversee police departments and officers across the commonwealth.
Connor did not show up for a Sept. 4 commission hearing on his disciplinary case.
Amy Parker, an attorney for the commission, said at the hearing that Connor stopped responding to communications from the commission in June. His last response amounted to a single thumbs-up emoji reaction to an email.
Retired Judge Charles J. Hely, who presided over the hearing, has yet to rule on whether POST should revoke Connor's certification for police work. Any decision he makes would need to be approved by the full commission.
If decertified, Connor would join a group of 65 other officers to permanently lose their license to work in law enforcement in Massachusetts.
State lawmakers established the commission and its decertification process through police reform legislation passed in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
Many of the decertified officers have been convicted of criminal charges, automatically leading to the loss of their licensure. However, the commission can also decertify an officer for egregious but noncriminal misconduct, as it is seeking to do to Connor.
The names of all decertified officers are submitted to a national registry, a move designed to alert faraway departments to the officers' histories if they cross state lines in search of police work.
Complaints accuse Connor of sexual harassment
Connor spent the second half of his 23-year law enforcement career in Groton, after stints with the police departments of Littleton, Ashburnham and Lunenburg, according to the internal affairs reports obtained by MassLive.
In Groton, a town of 11,000 just northwest of Interstate 495 near the New Hampshire border, Connor worked as a school resource officer from 2018 until he was suspended and then fired in 2023.
In September of that year, according to the reports, Groton officials placed Connor on leave after two young women who had recently graduated from high school accused him of making inappropriate advances while they were students.
One of the women said Connor had once asked her at school if she wanted to come to his house to have sex while his family was out of town. She said it was not the first time the officer had spoken to her in an inappropriate manner.
The second woman said Connor made advances on her while at a restaurant where she worked. She believed Connor did not recognize her until she mentioned their connection through the school system.
After department officials suspended Connor while investigating the two women's complaints, a third woman came forward accusing him of making sexually suggestive comments and advances after she interviewed him for a college project.
The woman said she had mixed feelings when Connor began texting her frequently. But she eventually grew increasingly uneasy with his overtures and told him she was uninterested. Still, she said, he continued to make sexual comments to her by text and in person when they crossed paths, an internal affairs report said.
Connor denied their accounts.
The two internal affairs reports, prepared by Groton Deputy Police Chief Rachael Bielecki, described Connor as a charismatic, chatty and casual adult whom some students "flocked" to in the school building.
High school students affectionately called Connor "Officer O," the Groton Police noted in a glowing 2022 Facebook post.
But to some school staff members, Connor's language and jokes could be "shocking for a school setting," including comments toward female staff members about their attractiveness, some sexual references and profanity, according to one of the internal affairs reports.
Talmadge, the arbitrator, found the accusation that Connor sexually harassed one of the high school students to be credible and sided with the town in its decision to fire Connor.
The town also established that Connor made threatening statements to the girl, as well as to a teacher with whom he had a disagreement, Talmadge found. She also found that the town provided sufficient evidence that Connor made inappropriate sexual advances on the woman who had interviewed him for a college project.
Though Connor was also disciplined by his department for sexually suggestive comments toward teachers, Talmadge ruled that his statements — though unprofessional and inappropriate — may not have constituted sexual harassment.
Regarding police disciplinary proceedings, critics argue the arbitration process can sometimes protect officers credibly or repeatedly accused of misconduct, allowing them to remain on the force even as superiors seek their dismissal.
When arbitrators reduce an officer's punishment in such cases, it "undermines internal police discipline and undermines the perception of police among the public," said Dennis Galvin, a retired major in the Massachusetts State Police and president of the Massachusetts Association for Professional Law Enforcement.
One alternative to arbitration, he said, is for the discipline for various offenses to be standardized in police union contracts, with disputes sent to the court system.
Police officers widely support some form of process to challenge their discipline to protect against frivolous complaints or unfair treatment, Galvin said.
"It's a balancing act between the need to protect the officer's rights, but also make sure that if they're engaged in bad behavior, that it's immediately addressed," Galvin said. "It's all about trust. Without it, nothing functions."
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