Northwestern DA spent thousands to hide info about criminally charged cops he had already made public

Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan’s office spent thousands of tax dollars on a failed legal fight to hide the names of police officers who had been charged with crimes—even though prosecutors had published some of the names and case details in online press releases and other self-laudatory documents.

Sullivan’s office hired a private law firm at taxpayer expense to defend it after The Mass Dump filed a lawsuit in June 2023 to make the officers’ names public. Lawyers for the district attorney’s office argued that releasing the names would be illegal and potentially criminal. But in a public document, the office used details of one officer’s case to praise the “phenomenal job” done by First Assistant District Attorney Steven Gagne—the prosecutor who signed the agreement with the law firm.

In January 2022, the Dump filed a public records request for the district attorney’s Brady disclosures about police officers. The Brady documents—named after a 1963 US Supreme Court decision—are used by prosecutors to inform defendants in criminal cases about alleged misconduct by officers testifying against them. Prosecutors are required to make these disclosures so that defendants can challenge the officers’ credibility in court.

Sullivan’s office provided the documents but insisted it was required to black out the names of the accused officers under the Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) statute, a state law intended to protect people’s criminal records.

In a ruling on December 30, Suffolk County Superior Court Justice Julie Green ruled that the names were not protected by the CORI law because they are available in public court records. She ordered Sullivan’s office to disclose them and pay the Dump’s legal fees. However, she ruled that prosecutors did not act in bad faith by withholding the information.

“The Northwestern District Attorney’s Office has been releasing details about prosecutions of police officers for years, but balked when a member of the public wanted the same information,” said Mason Kortz, the Dump’s attorney. “[Our] victory in this case is a step towards ending this kind of selective transparency.”

Sullivan’s office is represented by two attorneys from the Boston-based private law firm Butters Brazilian. The district attorney’s office agreed to pay $350 an hour each for two attorneys and $75 an hour for the work of clerks and paralegals, according to a July 2023 agreement obtained by making a public records request. Butters Brazilian has charged taxpayers $18,620.84 for its work on the lawsuit as of December, according to invoices released by the district attorney’s office. All but one of the eights invoices had been approved by Gagne when they were disclosed in January.

Sullivan’s office released unredacted Brady disclosures on March 13, about two-and-a-half months after the judge issued her ruling—and nearly 50 months after the Dump requested the records.

In a March 13 press release, Sullivan’s office said: “Today, to comply fully with the Court’s ruling, the NWDAO has released unredacted copies of the 191 Brady letters. These letters pertain to a total of 31 police officers. Most officers have more than one letter because a new letter was generated each time the officer was identified as a potential witness in a case. … Of the 31 police officers referenced in the 191 Brady letters, only 10 pertain to active police officers who currently work within the Northwestern District.”

Sullivan’s office said in a letter that it only provided “the Brady letters [it] maintained … on January 22, 2022, the date of [the] request.” It’s unclear how many more Brady disclosures prosecutors have issued since then—the district attorney’s office did not include that number in the press release. The Dump is working to obtain any additional disclosures.

The newly unredacted Brady records include the names of 13 police officers who were charged with, and in some cases convicted of, crimes. The details of at least six of the cases had already been reported by the news media at the time prosecutors redacted the officers’ names.

Patrick Hanley, one of the attorneys representing Sullivan’s office, argued in court in December that prosecutors were acting in good faith by withholding the names. He said the district attorney’s employees could face criminal charges if they unlawfully disclose CORI.

But Sullivan’s office did not let this purported fear stop it from freely publishing at least two of the officers’ names on its website.

One of the newly unredacted names is James Rode, a former Greenfield police sergeant who was convicted of motor vehicle homicide in January 2020. A week after the verdict, Sullivan’s office published an online press release about it titled “Former Greenfield Police Sergeant Found Guilty in 2017 Crash.” News organizations covered the story, including WWLP, which specifically cited the press release.

The district attorney’s office also bragged about convicting Rode in its 2020 annual report. The report described the case as “especially challenging and unique.” It went on to say: “First Assistant ADA [sic] Steven Gagne did a phenomenal job in his handling of this quite emotional circumstance given the defendant was an on-duty police officer and the tragic death of a young man.”

In its 2022 annual report, Sullivan’s office used the Rode case to promote the work of its Appellate Unit. In a section titled “Notable 2022 Appellate Decisions,” the report noted that the Massachusetts Appeals Court rejected Rode’s challenge to his conviction. The report gushed that the office’s Appellate Unit is “by far the most experienced appeals unit, per capita, in the Commonwealth.”

Each of the two annual reports opened with a signed letter by Sullivan explaining that the document’s purpose was to highlight cases “in which our prosecutors distinguished themselves.” Information about other criminal cases, including the defendants’ names, are included in both annual reports—and a dozen similar documents hosted on the website.

Web captures from the Internet Archive show that Sullivan’s office first published the 2020 annual report no later than March 2023 and the 2022 report no later than June 2023, the month the Dump filed its lawsuit.

Another newly unredacted name that appears in the Brady disclosures is Jacob Wrisley, a former part-time police officer in Bernardston and Buckland. In February 2024, Wrisley was sentenced to prison for charges related to creating child sexual abuse materials, according to reporting by MassLive. The MassLive story notes that information about the case was “announced” by Sullivan’s office.

When Wrisley was arraigned on CSAM charges in 2021, the district attorney’s office published an online press release that identified him by name—but it did not mention that he was a police officer at the time, instead calling him a “Millers Falls man.”

The Dump previously reviewed the press releases about Rode and Wrisley and reported about them on July 18, 2023, shortly after filing the lawsuit. However, the press releases are no longer on the district attorney’s website. Sullivan’s office appears to have removed all press releases that it published prior to October 2025, but it’s unclear when it did so. No archived copies of the two releases could be located, but the Internet Archive has captures of the website that include their titles and links to them that match those included in the Dump’s 2023 reporting (see screenshots here and here).

In four of the other cases mentioned in the newly unredacted Brady disclosures, it’s unclear whether prosecutors publicly shared information, but they were nevertheless covered by the media. In some cases, the media reports contain more up-to-date information than the 2022 Brady records.

• Now-retired Buckland Police Chief James T. Hicks in May 2023 admitted there were sufficient facts to convict him of indecent assault and battery, according to the Greenfield Recorder. A judge continued the case without a finding and dismissed it one year later, the Recorder reported. When prosecutors charged Hicks in 2021, the case was covered by the Recorder and the Springfield Republican.
• Northampton police officer Michael B. Cronin in May 2018 received a continuation without a finding on charges of operating under the influence of intoxicating liquor and leaving the scene of property damage, according to the Brady records. A judge placed Cronin on probation for a year and later dismissed the case, the records say. Cronin’s 2018 arrest was covered by the Daily Hampshire Gazette, the Republican, and other news outlets at the time. Cronin has valid law-enforcement certification and continues to be employed by the Northampton Police Department, according to online records maintained by the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission.
• Former Massachusetts State Police trooper Michael Atton was found not guilty of assaulting his wife in December 2023, according to the Sun Chronicle. Atton’s 2021 domestic-violence arrest and resignation from the State Police were covered by the Sun Chronicle, the Associated Press, and other news organizations at the time.
• Former Massachusetts State Police Sergeant Bryan Erickson in October 2021 pleaded guilty to domestic violence charges and resisting arrest after prosecutors accused him of assaulting his girlfriend in New Hampshire, according to the Associated Press and other news organizations. Although the district attorney’s office released the Brady disclosure about Erickson after his guilty plea, the document only says that he had been charged.

When the Dump requested the Brady disclosures in January 2022, prosecutors initially blacked out the names of every police officer, whether they had been charged with crimes or faced internal investigations for alleged non-criminal misconduct.

At the time, Sullivan’s office cited the Public Records Law’s privacy exemption—even though this exemption explicitly says that it “shall not apply to records related to a law enforcement misconduct investigation.”

It wasn’t until May 2024 when Sullivan’s office agreed to disclose the names of officers who faced internal investigations. The reversal came about only after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in a separate case that the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office couldn’t invoke the privacy exemption to conceal the names of officers in records related to a misconduct investigation of a fatal police shooting.

Before going to court, the Dump filed three administrative appeals with the state’s supervisor of public records, the transparency watchdog who serves in the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Office. All three times, the supervisor found that Sullivan’s office had failed to justify redacting the names under the privacy exemption or the CORI law.

“The NWDAO values our law enforcement partners and remains committed to maintaining strong, professional relationships that uphold the highest legal standards and ensure fairness in our courts,” Sullivan said, according to the March 13 press release. “Our Brady review process reflects that responsibility, and we are committed to complying with the public records law.”

The Dump reached out to a spokesperson for Sullivan with questions about why he fought to conceal information he had already made public. This article will be updated if the spokesperson responds. (If you are reading the email version of this story, you will need to check the web version for updates here.)

The Dump is working to learn more details about the seven other officers named in the newly unredacted records.

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Once again, I would like to thank my attorney, Mason Kortz, who—along with his students at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic—did tremendous work fighting for transparency in my case.

“Artificial intelligence tools were used to reformat information into a news article”

The news that the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office finally provided me with the unredacted Brady documents was broken by WWLP, which cites “a news release sent … on [March 13] from the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office.” No one from WWLP asked me for an interview or a statement even though I share my email address on my social media accounts and in all the newsletters I send out. 

The story ends with this interesting disclosure:

All facts in this report were gathered by journalists employed by WWLP. Artificial intelligence tools were used to reformat information into a news article for our website. This report was edited and fact-checked by WWLP staff before being published.

As far as I can tell, no “facts … were gathered” by anyone for this story other than what was detailed in the press release. The only thing the story includes that’s not mentioned in the press release is a link to my Substack newsletter—which I no longer use. The top post on the old Substack clearly explains that I now publish on Ghost, where you are reading this.

I appreciate that the disclosure says “artificial intelligence tools were used to reformat information into a news article” as opposed to saying that the so-called “AI” wrote the story. I do not consider what these text-extruding programs do to be writing in any meaningful sense. But I suspect WWLP is only avoiding that word because it would be embarrassing to give the “AI” full credit, thereby acknowledging that no one actually writes these computer-generated articles.

I have to say, there’s something darkly funny about spending four years working on a story and fighting in court for the disclosure of public information only to be scooped by some dingus feeding press releases into ChatGPT or whatever the hell they’re using.

It’s certainly nothing new for news organizations to regurgitate law-enforcement press releases. But now they’re automating the process. I have to wonder—what is the point? If you’re not adding anything of value and can’t even be bothered to put the information in your own words, why not just publish the press releases verbatim?

We’re being sold this “AI” junk on the basis that our brains are inefficient in comparison. But the people buying into this are missing something pretty important—and pretty obvious to those of us who haven’t given up on the old-fashioned method of actually thinking things through. If you try to figure out for yourself what something means, you find yourself asking questions that lead you beyond what is immediately in front of you. This is what’s known as curiosity—and it is the source of insight. “Generative AI” is not a tool for the curious nor the insightful. Let’s just ask the discount Bat Computer to barf up something, that’s probably good enough. It’s not. Be a human and think, goddammit.

According to the WWLP story: “Before this decision, Massachusetts had no clear caselaw on whether [Brady] letters were exempt from disclosure.”

This claim was taken directly from the district attorney’s press release. Had WWLP reached out to me, I might have told them that it’s very misleading. The issue in the lawsuit was not about whether Brady letters are exempt from the Public Records Law, it was whether specific information contained in the letters—the names of criminal defendants and docket numbers for their cases—were exempt. This is an important distinction that Justice Green actually pointed out during the oral arguments in December. And in Green’s ruling later that month, she found that there was indeed existing caselaw to support requiring disclosure of the information.

I also might have told WWLP that the district attorney’s office was being misleading by saying that it disclosed 191 Brady disclosures about 31 officers without specifying how many additional disclosures it has issued since I made the records request more than four years ago.

On second thought, I wouldn’t have commented at all if WWLP had told me a piece of software would be spitting out some slop in the place of a real story. I don’t think I’ve turned down any interview requests about the lawsuit, but I’m not interested in being fodder for an LLM.

If any human beings want to write about my lawsuit instead of using “artificial intelligence tools … to reformat information into a news article,” then they are welcome to contact me using the email address listed above.