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Tough Love

Superintendent John DiFava is bringing sensitivity, diversity, and outreach to the tradition-minded Massachusetts State Police.

In they file: 120 state troopers in formal dress uniform of dark-blue breeches, light-blue field blouse, garrison hat, knee-high boots, white gloves, and, on each silver-buckled belt, handcuffs, two ammunition pouches, and a .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol. All buckles are polished, boots spit-shined. The troopers square their corners as they enter, boots hitting the floor in unison, to form four columns on either side of the gymnasium at Massachusetts State Police headquarters in Framingham.

Now in come the brass: top-ranking officers with gold belt buckles and double blue stripes along the seams of their slacks. Gold or silver bars or pins on epaulets denote their rank. A circle of gold stitching surrounds their arm patches, gold braiding rims the bill of their caps. All collar pins, badges, tie clips, whistle chains - even the snaps on handcuff cases and ammunition pouches - are gold and gleaming. They march up through the audience and mount the stage.

Colonel John DiFava steps to the podium. Silver eagle pins on each shoulder signal that he is the top cop of them all, the superintendent of the State Police. Not long ago, he tells the audience of 400 at this annual State Police awards ceremony, he read a book titled Lesser-known Shipwrecks of the 20th Century. One story in particular stuck with him - about a Coast Guard ship that received an SOS from a steamer foundering off the New England coast during a severe northeaster in 1930. "We have to go out" and attempt a rescue, the Coast Guard captain told his crew. "We don't have to come back."

That sentiment, DiFava says, is the essence of police work, too. In the history of the Massachusetts force, 23 state troopers have been killed in the line of duty. At this evening's event, he says, "we honor State Police who every day make such sacrifices that I question whether the public has the right to expect this of them."

And with that, Captain Robert Bird, head of public affairs, recounts some recent heroic deeds by State Police officers and by a few civilians as well. There was the trooper who plunged into the raging Connecticut River in a futile attempt to rescue a drowning homeless man; the undercover officer who, at great physical danger, insinuated herself into a criminal subculture and exposed a drug operation involving several commercial establishments and more than $150,000 in cash and cocaine; the diving team that braved the hazardous ice and swiftly moving water of the Housatonic River in a snowstorm, rescuing a 9-year-old boy clinging to some rocks, though his 5-year-old sister was swept away by the current.

The troopers file by, rarely cracking a smile, to receive their commendations and medals of honor. DiFava, with a white-gloved hand, salutes each award recipient smartly. And as the crowd applauds, he poses for a photograph with every one. At 5 feet 9 inches tall, he is shorter than most of them; in fact, he would not have passed today's 5-foot-10-inch height requirement. But at 48, swarthy and handsome, he has a commanding presence: a muscular physique, a deep chest, and a military strut - a proud, erect way of carrying himself that looks natural and easy. On occasions like this, DiFava is the very model of a modern major general.

He's a lifer on the force with 25 years' experience. He's held every rank and done almost every type of police work, from highway patrol, airport security, underwater reconnaissance, and firearms instruction to his current $140,000-a-year superintendent's post. His pride in his 2,213 troops, his identification with them, is palpable. But if he is one of them in spirit, DiFava also is leading them into unfamiliar and unconventional terrain. The same man who loves military history and regalia, who is clearly at home with the force's traditions, is bringing about the most progressive makeover of the Massachusetts State Police in its 135-year history.

In April 1999, shortly after Governor Paul Cellucci appointed him head of the State Police, DiFava called Joe Liberty into his spacious office in the Framingham headquarters, looking out on the old World War I Army muster grounds, and shut the door. A 41-year-old trooper from Newburyport, on the force since 1992, Liberty is a small-boned man, impeccably groomed, with a crew cut, bright-blue eyes, and the sort of bearing that shows his six years' active duty in the Army. He calls himself an "antigun pacifist," whose role model as a child was television's Andy Griffith of Mayberry, because he policed his town without a gun. DiFava, who has known Liberty for more than 20 years, admires his integrity, work ethic, and professional manner, which combines strength with thoughtfulness and compassion. Privately, he also knew something else: Liberty is gay.

"I'm going to be as blunt as I can," DiFava remembers telling him. "We've got an issue with gays and lesbians, the way we deal with alternative lifestyles. If we don't address it soon, it'll be trouble on the job. We have to open communication, and I think only someone who's a member of the community can do it effectively. I'll understand if you don't want to do this, because it could be difficult for you. But I think we need to reflect the people we serve, all of them. If you want to be my personal liaison to the gay community, I'll support you a thousand percent."

Liberty remembers leaning back in his chair and looking straight at DiFava in silence. He never considered himself a champion for the gay cause, but now that the moment had come, he knew his response. If he was stunned by the proposal, he also felt relieved by the opportunity to live his life honestly, with DiFava's support. "Sure," he said, enthusiastically. That is how Joe Liberty became the first openly homosexual member of the Massachusetts State Police.

A few months later, Lorraine Cambria, a 37-year-old lesbian from Shrewsbury, volunteered to help with lesbian relations. A trooper since 1986, she had worked as a drill instructor at the Massachusetts State Police Training Academy and was upset by what she saw: Lesbian recruits who had passed the training were afraid to bring their partners to the graduation dinner and dance. They feared they'd be harassed and might not get the backup they'd need on the job.

Today, with DiFava's blessing, Cambria is giving diversity training to recruits at the academy and also has the full-time job of bringing more homosexuals onto the force, as well as more qualified women and minorities, regardless of their sexual orientation. She and Liberty represent DiFava at gay and lesbian events - they marched in uniform in Boston's Gay Pride Parade, for instance - and field complaints from closet gays and lesbians on the force.

This is one of many progressive changes DiFava has made. Immediately after taking office, he established a strict policy outlawing all forms of sexual harassment and other discrimination against women and minorities, on the force or off. He says he hadn't seen overt instances of discrimination, but over the years he had heard disparaging remarks. He knew homosexuals were being rousted from roadside rest areas on the assumption that they were meeting for sex, when others were allowed to stay. He was aware of apparently isolated instances of abuse, such as the case of a female trooper who allegedly was raped by one state policeman and assaulted by another - a case that resulted in a $290,000 settlement in 1998. He saw police around the country hammered by charges of racial profiling, meaning they were stopping people merely because they were black or fit some criminal stereotype.

DiFava also knew that 54 percent of Massachusetts State Police were dissatisfied with their domestic violence training, according to one report, and 62 percent believed they were insufficiently prepared to deal with crimes involving racial, ethnic, or gender bias. "I was surprised the percentage was that low," DiFava says, at his Framingham office. "In my career, what I got for diversity training is right here." Then he touches thumb to forefinger to make a large zero.

His new policy is so strict that officers are advised not to tell off-color jokes on the job at all, even to colleagues who say they don't mind. Among those protected from offensive language or behavior are black, female, pregnant, handicapped, and elderly persons, and members of any religious or ethnic group. At least four officers, including a major who served as troop commander, have been removed from their positions and reassigned for violating this policy. All members of the department, plus recruits, now have four to eight hours (depending on their rank) of mandatory sensitivity training aimed at eliminating behavior based on racial and ethnic stereotypes. After studying the experience of the New Jersey State Police, whose profiling practices were widely criticized, DiFava concluded that training and supervision are the keys.

"Society is changing, and so should we," he says, nattily dressed in a cranberry-colored shirt, brown slacks, and a jazzy tie. "State Police need to be educated that change is not treason. Tradition is the flashlight that illuminates the path, not the path itself. I've always been very comfortable with myself," he continues. "I've never been afraid of change. Even change for its own sake can be a good thing. We have to let new thinking in. I'm a huge believer in communication. There isn't a background or point of view that I won't try to analyze and understand."

So while Lieutenant Colonel Glenn Anderson handles daily operations, DiFava is out at meeting after meeting, making new connections, opening doors wherever he can. State Police are sharing equipment and resources with towns and civic groups, and they're seeking input about police practices from a wide range of academic institutions and private organizations. DiFava's staff believe locals know who in their neighborhoods would make good cops; they intend to ask them.

With a $227 million annual budget, DiFava also is delegating authority in a way previously unheard of in State Police quarters, where rank has ruled. Division, troop, and section leaders, who typically supervise from 350 to 25 troopers, for the first time have control over their own budgets. "People used to joke that if a light bulb went out in the Lee barracks, the colonel [as the superintendent is known] would get in his cruiser and go fix it," DiFava says. "Not me. I say every level of command should fix things for themselves to the best of their abilities. We're making them not just majors but managers."

He's trying, in short, to create a police style that is neither military nor MBA -ish but somewhere in between. He wants police to think of the public as their "customers," clients to be served, while still maintaining the ability to take charge in emergencies, enforce the law, and assure public safety in the face of the most heinous crimes. It all adds up to changes so profound as to be almost revolutionary for this hidebound institution, the oldest state police force in the nation.

In the women's dormitory at the State Police academy, shortly after 9 p.m.: Seven female recruits in their pajamas - T-shirts and shorts - stand at attention on either side of a hallway, with rifles in their hands. They pass the guns from one hand to the other and to each other in sequence, until the drill is interrupted by a recording of taps. Then they put away the rifles and stand at attention by the doors to their bedrooms. When the trooper in charge asks who they are, they belt out in unison, "One hundred thirty-two highly motivated, truly dedicated, rough, tough Massachusetts State Police recruits, ma'am." Then they all grunt loudly.

After a few encouraging words, the trooper yells, "Get in your holes!" The recruits hurry into their bedrooms and stand at attention by their beds.

"Prepare to mount," says the trooper.

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am," they reply.

"Ready, mount!" yells the trooper.

The women jump energetically into their beds and lay stiffly at attention under the bedcovers.

"Ready, sleep!" the trooper yells.

"Good night, ma'am," they all say.

This is the regular bedtime routine for men and women at the training facility, which sits on 860 acres in rural New Braintree, near the Quabbin Reservoir. Built in the 1960s as a Seventh-Day Adventist community, it was renovated as a medium-security prison but never served as one, due to town opposition. But the prison guardhouse still towers over the site, and a fence 30 feet high encloses the complex, which opened as the State Police academy in 1992.

Any US citizen over 19 and under 35 years old is eligible to serve on the force, and last year, 16,000 applicants took qualifying mental and physical exams for about 235 openings. Currently, 132 of the top candidates are in training. They take a 26-week course equally divided between classroom sessions and hands-on training. Subjects include law, ethics, and police procedures such as pistol firing, sobriety testing, first aid and water safety, narcotics street work, attending mock courtroom trials, learning to avoid physical confrontation, to quell riots, and to respond to bomb threats, domestic disputes, and hostage crises. They try to develop what Lieutenant Kevin Kelly, director of training, calls a "disciplined mind-set" to help them take control in the most difficult situations.

The program is much like boot camp, regimented and a bit robotic. Recruits square their corners when walking anywhere, salute superior officers, say "Sir, yes, sir" or "Ma'am, yes, ma'am" when responding to any question, and are told to grunt a lot for motivation.

All this militarism has roots deep in State Police history. The force began as the Mounted Constabulary on May 16, 1865 - 131 troopers, mainly Civil War veterans, charged with enforcing unpopular state laws banning the manufacture and sale of liquor, keeping the peace at public gatherings, and policing dens of ill repute. As political fashion and societal needs changed, they frequently were renamed and reorganized. In 1875, after repeal of Massachusetts's prohibition, they became the State Detective Force - 30 men who helped to track down criminals. In 1879, they became the District Force - just nine men, at one point, who inspected textile mills for child labor violations. They did not carry guns until 1908.

When the automobile lurched onto America's roadways, state police were driven into new territory. Not only were citizens maiming themselves in car accidents, but criminals were operating on wheels, striking in one jurisdiction and fleeing to another. So in 1921, troopers took to the roads, reorganizing yet again to become the Uniformed Branch of the State Police. The first 50 recruits trained at the muster grounds in Framingham, with quarters on a former poor farm. They cannibalized some World War I ambulances and refitted Model T touring cars to make the first police cruisers. And for the first time, they had uniforms.

Initially, they wore forest green Army surplus outfits, with leather or canvas puttees, white shirts, and red ties. But the look was never popular. During World War I, some officers had admired the more stylish, two-tone-blue attire of the French Army, originated during Napoleon's rule. So in the 1930s, Massachusetts troopers donned "French and electric blue" uniforms.

In 1930, the Massachusetts State Police became the first state police in the nation to enlist women. Mary Ramsdell and Lotta Caldwell each covered half the state, focusing on crimes involving rape or children. But they did not wear uniforms and could visit a crime scene only when accompanied by a male. Uniformed female troopers were not admitted to the force until 1975.

Being a State Police officer was a life, not just a job or a lifestyle, "so close to the military that it almost was military," says Lieutenant Ed Montague, a State Police historian from Methuen. Troopers "enlisted" for minimum two-year periods. New arrivals were called "boots" and spoke only when spoken to. Commanding officers ruled with an authoritarian hand.

A system of substations had been created throughout the state, where typically four to eight officers lived while on duty. The barracks were located in makeshift structures, and conditions often were primitive. The first barracks in Lee was a barn and stable. The outpost in Norwell lacked running water or an outhouse. In Shelburne Falls, State Police occupied unheated rooms on the second floor of Town Hall. But beginning in 1930, handsome redbrick barracks were built throughout the state, tailored to police needs.

At the brick barracks in Grafton, constructed in 1931 and slated to become a State Police museum by 2005, Montague and retired trooper William Gearin offer a tour. Upstairs are three bedrooms, each lit by one bare hanging light bulb and barely large enough for two people, with two bunks, two lockers, and perhaps one chair. Downstairs are two cells for prisoners, a guard room, an office, an institutional kitchen, and a plain dining area with two tables. No living room, not a single comfortable chair.

"It was a lot like the priesthood," says Gearin, who lived in various barracks from 1953 until he left the force in 1966. He remembers the Spartan decor, minimally heated rooms, often indigestible food, and extremely long hours. State Police worked 108 hours a week well into the 1950s. In the 1960s, wives and children picketed headquarters to protest troopers' working conditions. The residential system was finally abolished in 1971, when the duty week was reduced to 40 hours.

Through the years, State Police have been largely Caucasian, male, blue-collar. As late as 1968, only two could boast a bachelor's degree. Today, they're better educated and more diverse. Troopers operate from 34 stations throughout the state, and they include 165 African-Americans, 50 Hispanics, 27 Asians, and 11 Native Americans. There are 225 females on the force, 32 of whom are commissioned officers. About 58 percent of all police have at least a bachelor's degree, and 35 percent have some graduate training. The current entry-level salary is $31,140 annually.

The range of their work also has widened. In addition to patrolling highways - that duty occupies 54 percent of their total work time - and investigating state crimes, they run a high-tech crime lab, patrol state waters, and help to monitor dog and horse races. There's a State Police air wing, a gang unit, a mounted unit, an underwater recovery team, a unit with dogs trained to detect explosives and dead bodies. In 1992, the State Police merged with the Motor Vehicle Registry Police, the Capitol Police, and the Metropolitan District Commission Police Department, adding their duties to the growing list. And in a few rural communities that lack their own police, such as Zoar and Hawley in northwestern Massachusetts, State Police serve as the local law.

In their daily work, the military influence remains pervasive and formidable. Most troopers still work from stations referred to as "barracks," although these are more like offices now. They still wear the same wide-hipped, tight-kneed breeches favored by Napoleon's soldiers, even though the jodhpur-style flare is unnecessary for those who don't ride horses and the tight knees and high boots are impractical, because they make running or fast walking difficult.

State Police still maintain a clean-cut look that some observers would call severe, with hair so short that it barely shows under their Smokey Bear-style hats, referred to as "campaign cover," a military term. Mustaches, beards, and goatees are prohibited. No visible jewelry is allowed, except a wristwatch or finger ring. Women cannot wear makeup or nail polish. Troopers are expected to stand at attention when they enter the office of a colonel, lieutenant colonel, or major and to salute any commissioned officer wearing a uniform and hat.

At DiFava's suburban, split-level home in Wilmington, a teddy bear flag flies from a front porch. The interior was "spit-shined" until the children came along, Karen DiFava says. Their son, John, is 2 years old, and daughter Rachel is 1, so the house is strewn with toys. Two lovebirds coo in a cage in the kitchen, and several bird feeders sit outside - bird-watching is another of John DiFava's many interests. Police work takes him away from home five or six nights a week, but two rooms in the basement have become his private refuge, he says. "My whole life is condensed in these rooms."

By the entrance to one of these dens, antique weapons stand at attention under lock and chain, near tall stacks of compact discs. His musical loves range from Motown to Mozart, Verdi, George Gershwin, singer Melba Moore, and Stevie Nicks - on whom he says he once had a "big-time crush." There's a VCR with lots of animal videos, an array of underwater cameras from his diving days, two tanks of fish, and two exercise machines. He says he's been working out since he was 13 years old. But what dominates this room, lining shelf after shelf on nearly every wall, are toy trains, more than 90 electric train cars. He says the New Haven Railroad roared past his boyhood home, all noise and power, making the house shake; he was thrilled.

The adjacent study is full of books. "Reading is my recreation, my stress relief, the way I find out about the world," he says. Here is an eclectic assortment of ancient and ethnic histories, tales of great battles and military heroes, annals of crime-fighting, texts on firearms. Nearby sit some tiny toys - cannons, antique cars, bicycles, motorcycles, tanks, and bombs - as well as military helmets and a sword or two, all neatly arranged, preserved with great care and a sentimental reverence for the past.

DiFava was born and raised in Hyde Park, the only child of Al and Helen Aprea DiFava. Helen is a retired dressmaker who worked in Boston's garment district, a kind woman with a dry sense of humor. Al was a hard-working ironmonger who had emigrated from Italy; he never finished high school but is known for the wide, eclectic range of his knowledge. He and Helen have been married 53 years.

The family lived on the third floor of a triple-decker, with relatives on the other floors, then moved to a house that Al built on Hyde Park's Fairmont Hill. "I know every nail of it," he says of the three-bedroom, Cape-style home plus shed for the motorcycle John DiFava got at age 17. Most locals, like his mother's family, emigrated from the same town in central Italy - San Giovanni in Carico - and DiFava remembers the neighborhood as a lively place full of good, industrious people. He raised rabbits, ducks, and chickens, families canned tomatoes and made anisette together, and he always had lots of children to play with.

John DiFava was the one who liked to make the plans, his mother recalls, and he had a yen for adventure. He tried to scale a sheer-faced promontory in the Blue Hills when he was barely 5 years old. At age 6 or 7, he loved to head off into the woods, a BB gun over one shoulder, for a spree of target shooting.

He was a mediocre student at Most Precious Blood, a Catholic grammar school that he loathed. The nuns had favorites, he says, encouraged students to inform on one another, and too often taught by shame and humiliation. He vividly remembers how one boy was ridiculed for accidentally defecating in his pants. "I saw kids' confidence destroyed, treatment that was completely unfair," he says. This was his first brush with blatant injustice, and it haunts him still.

His experience improved at Catholic Memorial High School, where students received more positive reinforcement, he says. DiFava became president of the Catholic Youth Organization. "He was a leader; he wouldn't just go along. He wanted to do it his way," recalls Richard Loftus, who has known DiFava since John was 14. DiFava didn't much care for football or baseball - the "in" sports - but he loved swimming and was always popular with girls. He also loved animals and considered becoming a veterinarian but decided this was beyond his intellectual ken.

After two years at Long Island University in New York, DiFava transferred to Boston University and graduated with a degree in sociology. He was planning to enter the military when a friend told him about an upcoming State Police examination. John DiFava didn't know any State Police officers but had good memories of Boston cops. Three lived in his neighborhood, and he admired their brass-buttoned uniforms and flashy motorcycles. They were his friends' fathers, not agents of oppression.

DiFava took the exam and passed. "Everything about [the State Police] resonated with me," he says, back at his office. "I felt like I had met my destiny. The job found me ... and it has given me everything I ever wanted in life."

He began in 1975 as a trooper assigned to help keep the peace amid the busing turmoil at South Boston High School. Then he helped beef up security at Logan Airport, did highway patrol, taught firearms use and physical education to recruits. In 1981, he met his future wife, Karen Sujko, of Polish and Italian descent, at the training academy; she worked as a clerk in the attorney general's State Police investigations unit and was taking an academy class in photography. They married 16 years later.

In 1983, DiFava began to rise through the ranks, assuming executive authority for the supply depot, the marine unit, tactical operations, and then the Metro Boston troop. In 1998, he was appointed lieutenant colonel with responsibility over all field services, the largest division. Then, on April 13, 1999, after Colonel Reed Hillman left the superintendent's post to run for Massachusetts state representative, Cellucci named DiFava the new head of the State Police.

"If anyone had told me I was going to be president of the United States, I wouldn't have been any happier," DiFava says, exultantly. "It's the opportunity of a lifetime. I found my niche."

Police who have known John DiFava through the years remember the same things: that weight lifter's physique with the trim waist, big chest, and huge arms; a manner at once disciplined and personable; and a capacity for kindness that stands out in a paramilitary organization. Lieutenant Oscar Langford III, who heads the department's affirmative action and recruitment units, says DiFava was the drill instructor who, "when all the other guys were kicking our butts, all over us, he gave us tips about how to keep our feet from getting sore." Captain Tom Robbins, commandant of the training academy, recalls how, at the end of one training session, DiFava instructed recruits to put a dollar in their socks. "Then he ran us to the Dunkin' Donuts for coffee and doughnuts," Robbins says, with a chuckle. DiFava is a "cop's cop," says Kathleen Barrett, a trooper in the canine unit. "He doesn't forget that he started like us, at the bottom of the food chain."

DiFava says that when he joined the State Police, "it was a parochial, insular agency. Communication was one way: down. The input of troopers was neither solicited nor wanted. People just said, 'Do it!' " Now he's encouraging police to ask questions. They are.

Many question DiFava's strict sexual harassment policies, for instance. At a sensitivity training session in the police bunker in Framingham, several officers roll their eyes and guffaw as Judy Loitherstein, of the Donahue Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, explains department rules, such as the ban on off-color jokes. "Grow up and get a life," one sergeant grumbles. "People are becoming so politically correct, seems like anything you say can get you in trouble," growls another.

Some, like Langford, wonder if DiFava's diversity program goes far enough, although it's still early to judge its impact. Why, Langford asks, are there just 165 blacks on the force? He suspects that, since many black men have been in jail, they feel that policing is a form of betraying their own and also that the few who are interested have more lucrative job offers elsewhere. He's trying to target recruitment to qualified blacks, other minorities, and women, but he wonders if a more thoughtful exam (not limited to multiple-choice questions, as the current test is), and a less militaristic training program would encourage a more diverse pool of applicants.

The jury is still out on how DiFava's policy toward gays and lesbians is received. But union officers, who hear complaints and are not reluctant to relay them, insist that the grumbling is no more than this: the sound of hearts shifting slowly, perhaps reluctantly. "I honestly think there's more divisiveness about whether troopers should be aggressive and give more tickets or be more laid back and just give warnings," says Paul Cesan, 32, union treasurer.

Perhaps the best-qualified judges of the diversity initiatives are Liberty and Cambria. On a park bench by the Charles River, across from the Brighton barracks where he works, Liberty talks about his position as the lone publicly gay man on the force. Tensions in the workplace are palpable, he says. "Sometimes the contempt is so heavy I could shovel it off the ground... . It's not a free-flowing atmosphere. If I said I saw this really awesome ballet last night, I'd get some odd looks." He still overhears troopers making inappropriate cracks about "rest area commandos," gay men who meet at turnpike rest areas for sexual encounters. He feels tolerated at best, not really welcomed, and only socializes off-duty with one other trooper. He seriously contemplates leaving the force. But he believes he's accomplishing something important just by being who he really is. "When I speak to groups, I try to show my vulnerabilities as well as my strengths," he says. "I want kids to see that a state policeman can be a thinker, be artistic, be in touch with his feelings."

Cambria also is trying to be a role model for openness and honesty. She says there are at least 15 closet gay and lesbian state troopers, but they still fear that, despite DiFava's sympathetic policies, they'll be harassed or worse if they reveal their sexual orientation.

DiFava knows what they're up against. He's using his personal popularity, his reputation for sensitivity and fairness, to ease the way. Troopers who grouse about political correctness nonetheless appreciate his openness, the feeling that he's approachable and compassionate without being condescending. Union representatives note that, to accommodate some troopers with illness in their families, DiFava has reassigned them closer to home - a kindness not seen in the past. He has intervened several times to moderate punishments that he deemed too severe. He even tried to give four weeks of his own vacation to a secretary battling cancer.

DiFava insists he isn't Mr. Softy. "I can dig my heels in and refuse to budge... ." he says. "But if you're strong, you don't have to show it. Being sensitive doesn't mean you're weak. The true gauge of strength is kindness."