The Natick Select Board on Thursday accepted the resignation of James Quilty as a police officer following his guilty plea to 3 counts of indecent assault and battery in Middlesex Superior Court earlier this week.
The charges stemmed from an incident in April 2020 when Quilty repeatedly touched a Natick Police Department dispatcher against her will at a post-midnight shift gathering on Easter morning. Department members drank in a gravel parking lot near the Henry Wilson Shoe Shop on West Central St.
Quilty’s brief resignation letter preempted a Select Board executive session (closed door meeting) slated for Thursday afternoon during which the Board was to consider Quilty’s discipline or dismissal.
The Select Board, Town Administration, and Natick Police Department determined that Quilty had become ineligible to serve as a police officer in the town or state due to his conviction for a felony. His resignation will be reported to the state’s POST Commission, which oversees certification and decertification of officers, as well as the National Decertification Index.
Quilty, a sergeant at the time, was put on paid administrative leave on July of 2020 and suspended without pay this past January.
The town issued a statement that includes links to supporting documents, including an independent investigation report from September of 2020 that concluded Quilty’s advances were unwelcome and against the town’s sexual harassment policy and police rules. It documents the April 12 incident, summarizes interviews with department members (noting that it appears officers coordinated their accounts before being interviewed) , and provides a timeline of what was and wasn’t reported, including by Lt. Cara Rossi, now Ashland’s police chief.
