Independent Review Of Investigation Into Hate Crime At The African Meeting House Released
JohnCarl McGrady •
A long-awaited report on the town’s investigation into the 2018 African Meeting House hate crime found “no evidence suggesting the incident was ignored or intentionally minimized,” but did suggest that the investigation failed to follow up on all potential leads, which could have hampered efforts to identify the perpetrator.
Drafted by James Brigham of the Texas-based digital forensics firm LCG Discovery Experts, the report claims that “overall, the investigative record demonstrates that the incident received substantial attention and sustained investigative effort,” but noted “missed evidentiary opportunities, incomplete documentation, and limited verification or corroboration of certain investigative leads that likely reduced the ability to fully evaluate potential suspects and preserve potentially valuable evidence.”
The town’s initial handling of the hate crime drew intense backlash from the community, the reverberations of which are still being felt today. No one was ever criminally convicted for the graffiti on the historic building, which included a racial slur and a phallus, but Dylan Ponce was found responsible for the hate crime in a civil rights case in 2022.
The report, which will be reviewed by the Select Board on Wednesday, calls the police response “prompt and appropriately prioritized” and claims that “the investigative record reflects that officers recognized the significance of the incident and treated it as a matter of substantial community concern.”
However, it criticizes the police department’s decision to allow the graffiti to be removed quickly, potentially before conducting a full suite of forensic tests. It also says that follow-ups on initial leads, including potential witnesses and nearby cameras, are not always documented in the existing record, and suggests that after the initial investigation, the police department should have been more thorough in its efforts to collect evidence from nearby residents, businesses, and cameras.
“Several decisions, follow-up efforts, and investigative conclusions were not consistently documented. In some instances, it was not possible to determine whether certain investigative steps were not performed or simply not recorded,” the report reads in part. “Because documentation itself is a critical component of professional investigative practice, these gaps limited the ability to independently evaluate portions of the investigation.”
Steps not documented in the record include fingerprinting, DNA collection, and paint-scraping comparisons conducted on the initial graffiti and a spray paint can later found near the site.
However, the report says that investigators “recognized the seriousness of the incident and treated it as a bias-motivated offense requiring elevated attention.”
“The investigation into the March 11, 2018, vandalism of the African Meeting House reflected substantial effort by responding officers, supervisors, and detectives under challenging circumstances and significant public scrutiny,” the report reads in part.
The police department interviewed “numerous individuals,” but “the record does not consistently reflect documented independent verification of objectively verifiable assertions through transactional records, digital platform history, cellular location data, or comprehensive surveillance review. Additionally, while digital device use was acknowledged by several individuals during interviews, the record does not reflect documented efforts to obtain voluntary digital corroboration, limited device review, or device/data preservation corresponding to the relevant timeframe.”
In a discussion on the graffiti’s nature as a racially-motivated hate crime, the report notes that the records do not indicate that the town consulted any specialized civil rights or forensic resources, but that “the documented investigative response was generally consistent with [generally accepted law enforcement standards for bias-motivated crimes] through the deployment of additional personnel, forensic resources, interagency coordination, public outreach, and continued investigative follow-up.”
The report also addresses conflict-of-interest allegations against Nantucket town manager Libby Gibson and Nantucket Police Department deputy chief Charlie Gibson, who are married - though it does so without naming either individual. In a section dedicated to the allegations, the report suggests that no laws were broken, but that the Gibsons did not always follow best practices.
“The review considered concerns raised by members of the public regarding potential conflicts of interest and the appearance of investigative impartiality. These concerns primarily arose because one individual identified through community rumor and multi-level hearsay was the juvenile child of a Nantucket Police Department command officer, while the juvenile's mother served as an official of the town,” the report says. “The investigative record reflects that the command officer was present during the juvenile interview, which was conducted by detectives within his supervisory chain of command. Although Massachusetts law permits a parent or guardian to be present during a juvenile interview, and the record did not reveal evidence that investigative decisions were improperly influenced or that applicable conflict-of-interest laws were violated, earlier documentation of investigative oversight, recusal considerations, or the rationale for proceeding as structured would likely have strengthened public confidence in the process. Ultimately, the allegation remained based on multi- level hearsay and rumor and was not corroborated by objective investigative evidence developed during the investigation.”
The record does not contain any documentation of a recusal, reassignment, or written disclosure. There is also no indication that police officials discussed whether such measures were warranted, and LCG found no evidence of a rationale for foregoing them.
“The review also considered concerns regarding the Nantucket Police Department’s command staff relationship with a witness who later reported that an individual had admitted responsibility for the vandalism,” the report continues. “Rather than withholding the information, the investigative record reflects that the command officer documented the witness’ statement, advised this individual that confidentiality could not be guaranteed, and promptly referred the matter to detectives for investigative follow-up. Detectives subsequently documented the information and incorporated it into the investigation.”
The report is the result of a process that began in 2024, when Town Meeting approved a non-binding citizen petition sponsored by Gail Holdgate that instructed the Select Board to fund a new independent investigation of the crime and review the original investigation. The Select Board declined to fund a new investigation, but did proceed with a review of the initial investigation. An initial effort to draw up proposals for that review was controversial, and the Select Board formed the African Meeting House Procurement Work Group, which included several prominent community critics, to select an investigator.
But the Work Group’s process has hardly been free from controversy itself. Work Group members have excoriated the Select Board for sharply limiting the Work Group’s role in the review process, and Work Group member Clifford Williams has routinely appeared at recent Select Board meetings to level criticisms at the Board.
The Work Group had asked for routine updates from the investigator, but the Select Board determined that the request was outside the scope of the Work Group’s mandate and quietly vetoed it, limiting the Work Group’s role to responding to direct questions. The Work Group felt this unfairly limited their input, while the Select Board contended the Work Group had only ever been intended to choose an investigator. The investigator did submit some questions, but they were answered by town counsel John Giorgio, not the Work Group.
Work Group members also pushed back against an error in the initial request for proposals for an investigator that excluded a review of town administration from the scope of work. The town claimed that the error was made inadvertently, and it was corrected with an addendum to the request.
Investigator James Brigham previously served as the emergency preparedness and threat mitigation operational chief for Vermont, and has also worked as a police detective.
His report is based on a review of “investigative reports, supplemental reports, dispatch records, audio recordings, photographs, evidence records, departmental policies, publicly available records, and other materials provided by the Town of Nantucket and related agencies.”
While LCG reached out to agencies outside Nantucket, they were less forthcoming. The Cape and Islands District Attorney’s office told LCG that the matter was considered closed, the state police did not produce records, and documents provided by the Attorney General “yielded no materially substantive information.”
Several members of the work group were reluctant to comment in the hours after the release of the LCG report.
"My mother always said if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it," work group member Rocky Fox told the Current.
The report also includes a detailed description of the investigation and a timeline of events. It notes that “the Department was operating with staffing vacancies while investigators were simultaneously managing numerous other serious criminal investigations and routine public safety responsibilities.”
The report ends with a bevy of recommendations to address concerns raised in earlier sections, many relating to documentation and standardizing police procedures.