Needham PD Investigation Exonerates Officers Of Racial Bias

NEEDHAM, MA — The Needham Police Department completed its internal investigation into the actions of officers who stopped and detained a Black man they suspected of shoplifting last year.

Marvin Henry was detained by Needham police for questioning in January 2020 by four officers in a parking lot off a main road, relating to an alleged shoplifting incident at a CVS. Henry, a Black man who had been inside the CVS store during the alleged incident, was stopped and detained by officers outside the CVS. Henry was handcuffed and detained for half an hour in the lot before officers removed the cuffs and let him show them his CVS receipt.

Henry, a father of four from Boston, works as a massage therapist in Needham.

Henry wrote a letter to the department in July accusing the officers of racial profiling and asking for an apology from the department.

Over a year later and the police department completed its internal investigation and exonerated officers on three issues, including racial bias. The only issue that was sustained was "arrest reporting." In a disposition letter obtained by the Needham Times, who first broke the story, the department investigation focused on five charges against five officers. The charges were Bias Based Profiling, Arrest, and Threshold Inquiry and Use of Force.

The five officers under investigation were Leo Schlittler, Colin Fitzpatrick, Sgt. Andrew Cray, Nicole McMahon and an officer who was not mentioned by first name in the original arrest report, Kelleher. Leo Schlittler is Needham Police Chief John Schittler's brother.

The disposition letter says the department has "taken appropriate action where applicable," but does not go into specifics .

An independent investigation into the incident is on the way this month after a "COVID-19 related" delay pushed the original autumn delivery date. Needham hired Boston attorney Natashia Tidwell as the independent investigator — Tidwell is a former federal prosecutor and a police officer and served as the lead monitor in Ferguson, Missouri, overseeing implementation of reforms to the city's police department and municipal court in the wake of a Justice Department civil rights investigation.