As Fall River Mayor Paul Coogan weighed four internal candidates for police chief, he said Kelly Furtado emerged as a popular choice among the department’s rank and file.
Furtado comes from a police family: her father, husband and son have all served as Fall River police officers. She had also worked alongside the mayor at the city’s high school as a school resource officer while Coogan was still a vice principal.
On Tuesday, Coogan announced Furtado as his latest pick to lead the police department — his fifth police chief in just five years — at a press conference that emphasized her groundbreaking role as the first woman in Fall River’s history to hold the position. In a short speech, Furtado vowed to make officers feel more valued on the job.
“I want to foster collaboration and teamwork, something that’s been missing in recent years,” said Furtado.
Furtado’s remarks, delivered to a room of a few reporters and close to 50 police officers who crowded into the press conference to signal their support, appeared to reference the outgoing chief, Paul Gauvin. The city’s police unions recently announced a vote of no confidence against Gauvin, who promptly reached an agreement with the mayor to step down.
In an interview, the mayor acknowledged that the votes prompted him to reconsider whether Gauvin belonged in the position long term.
“The key to this,” Coogan said, “is that you cannot have a department that’s not cooperating with the chief.”
The city’s police unions did not issue any public statements explaining their disapproval. Instead, Coogan said the unions privately showed him a press release they planned to share if he did not take action.
“The things that they highlighted or talked about were respect, lack of communication, honesty — personal characteristics that are very tough to define in a job evaluation,” Coogan said.
City Administrator Seth Aiken, one of Coogan’s top officials, said he interviewed more than 40 police officers this fall to better understand the rising tension.
“Most of the issues were a little more personal,” Aiken said. “It seemed to come down to two sides that just, over time, had decided that they just didn’t like each other.”
No recent accusations of misconduct had been made against Gauvin, and he faced no formal grievances from the city’s police unions. In performance reviews, Gauvin said the mayor’s administration recognized the department was meeting the law enforcement metrics used to measure success.
Gauvin said his relationship with police union leaders deteriorated as they negotiated over changes to how the department operated. Still, in an interview earlier this week, he credited the department with making improvements since he began as chief in December 2021.
“I think for any community, when you look at your police department, you want to say, does my police department have the ability to police itself?” Gauvin said. “And when I first came in, I don’t think we could say that.”
Gauvin, a former internal affairs investigator, said he led the department through accountability reforms at a time when the police force was short staffed and facing increasing scrutiny from the public and the media.
Gauvin mandated that officers wear body cameras, conducted audits of the station’s drug and gun evidence vaults, and pushed his internal affairs investigators to document even relatively minor infractions.
“Those things make police officers paranoid sometimes,” Gauvin said.
Gavuin’s tenure also overlapped with the creation of Massachusetts’ police oversight agency, and the conviction of two Fall River police officers for excessive force.
Gauvin will take several months of paid leave before returning to his former rank of captain next year.
Furtado will begin her tenure as chief on an interim basis, though Coogan said she could win a long term contract in May when the city expects to decide on a permanent replacement for Gauvin.
“Obviously, she’s got a six month running start,” Coogan said. “We’ll see how she does.”
