It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Massachusetts Major City Chiefs’ website. We are a group of police chiefs who have come together because of problems and issues that are common to all of us. Our membership is made up of Chiefs of Police, Commissioners or Superintendents of Police from a municipal subdivision of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the State Police, and Transit Police in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We service a population of no less than 40,000 persons and/or an authorized strength of at least 75 sworn officers. Furthermore, each member must possess a minimum requirement of a Bachelor’s Degree from an accredited university. Members who meet the foregoing requirements are voting members. We also have a number of associate, non-voting members representing the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, the Office of the Attorney General of Massachusetts, several academic representatives and other ranking police officers from various Departments who do not meet the criteria as voting members. Today, we have thirty-two full time members and are growing as the population is shifting across the state.
We are an organization that grew out of informal meetings over lunch. Our first major topics of concern centered on crime, racial profiling and civil service disciplinary proceedings. From that humble beginning, then Boston Police Commissioner Paul Evans initiated a series of Police Executive seminars that addressed a variety of topics that are faced by police executives everyday. As this series of Executive Seminars was winding down, we joined with faculty from Northeastern University and Harvard University to assist us in getting to the next level. These meetings took place over a number of months and the Massachusetts Major City Chiefs began to take shape as an organization. The first formal meeting of our group, our initial meeting as a corporation within the State of Massachusetts, was held on October 22, 2003. Our first president was Chief Edward F. Davis, then of the Lowell Police Department and who today is Commissioner of the Boston Police Department.
Part of our mission is to promote public safety in our communities and to provide the fair and effective administration of justice and professionalism of policing while assuring all people’s constitutional safeguards. Our members also provide leadership and support for issues such as continuing education and development of police officers, advocating for legislative actions, and to seek out research, information sharing and program assessment to establish best practices for progressive policing in Massachusetts.
Over the past several years, we have made a great strides carrying out our
mission. We have taken a leadership role in Massachusetts in areas such as racial profiling prevention, Emergency 911 legislation, the development of the next generation of law enforcement leaders, best practices of policing communities, and have publicized what we believe to be the best practices to reduce crime in our communities. We held a strategic planning session where we identified four critical areas we wanted to focus on. The results of this session are provided on this website.
Our organization has grown and will continue to develop this website. Our members are the type of people who will not be complacent and who have the will to do great things. We hope to engage all facets of the communities we serve, and the other segments of the Criminal Justice System, so that we can effect change, that produces a high quality of professional policing to our residents.
Chief Brian Kyes, President
Massachusetts Major City Chiefs