Greater Boston; State Troopers Discrimination, Rembrandt Paint Chip

Good evening, we're going to tackle two topics tonight. We'll talk to the expert who says he believes paint chips sent to him were the real thing, Rembrandt, and might be part of the collection stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Then we'll turn our attention to the four pregnant state troopers who claim their forced job modifications are discriminatory. But first, the saga of the artwork stolen from the Gardner heated up again this week. The last installment was two weeks ago when the Boston Herald reported that several unnamed experts looked at photos of the stolen works and said they looked authentic. The same day the Boston Globe reported that authentication from photographs or paint chips was close to impossible. Then yesterday, the Herald quoted by name a Chicago -based scientist who looked at the paint chips under his microscope and pronounced them Rembrandt, and the Globe now agrees a return may be imminent. All right, joining me now are Boston Herald reporter Tom Nashberg who broke the story that there's a deal in the works to return the artwork and Professor Michael Henschman, a professor of chemistry at Brandeis, and by telephone

Dr. Walter McCrone, who authenticated the chips earlier this week. And my first question is to Dr. McCrone, I want to know who sent you the chips. They were brought here by Tom Nashberg. Aha, and Tom, where did you get them? Well, they came into the possession of the Herald by a circuitous and clandestine means that we can't really comment on, on advice of attorney. Dr. McCrone, how do you go about doing an authentication like this? Well, you start by thinking you know what it would be if it was authentic, and then you look for reasons that it can't be authentic, the mistakes that the forge you might have made, the things that shouldn't be there but aren't, or things that shouldn't be there that are. Well, like what? How can you be sure that your microscope is more real than, you know, that science can prevail in this case? How do you know? How can you even pinpoint a date? Well, the pigments and paintings are let's say a

roughly 50 pigments that hardest use nowadays and have use for some time, and they were all invented at particular periods. The Prussian Blue, 1704, Emerald Green, and 1888, and so on. So we know if we find Emerald Green that painting couldn't have been done before 1888, and the same with all of the other pigments along the way. Were you surprised at what you found? I was, yes, particularly because it fitted so well what I would have expected to find if it was a real Rembrandt. Michael Henschman, you were a student of Dr. McCrones. Tell us a little bit more about the process how you go about looking at painting. Well, I think that Dr. McCron has given a very good summary of this, and he has looked at these chips in very great detail, not only has he identified the pigments but he's looked at the habit of the pigments, the habit of the grains which are very distinctive in

certain cases, and the whole body of evidence is certainly consistent as it seems with Rembrandt. Okay, now that we're at this step in the process, where do you go now? Does this go get thrown back to Miles Conner who's in jail, the art theft, and the young work character who's looking to broker a deal? If what Dr. McCrones says is true, what is the next step in returning the artwork? Well, you have to begin with the premise that the people that made these chips available to the herald did not just happen to have some spare Rembrandt chips lying around, that the chips came off of the Rembrandt's that have been stolen from the gardener that were stolen seven and a half years ago. So, Dr. McCrones is a remarkable scientist and he gave me quite an education in paint chips, and I was able to look at the material that he looked at, and I mean, basically he can recognize certain materials, base materials used in creating the paints that

Rembrandt himself used, and so we can, I think, with great confidence say that these chips are Rembrandt's, and we can, with great confidence, now say that the people who say they can broker the return of the art are in fact genuine in that offer. And have you talked to them further about this? Have you talked to the museum? Actually, Dr. McCrones, I want to ask you that. Have you talked to the museum directly about what you found? I haven't talked to them, no. They're not curious what you know and what you think. Do you even think you know which particular painting those chips came from? I'm not sure of that at all. I was interested in analyzing the pigments period and the background behind it wasn't particularly important to me. And whether it was the Sea of Galilee or one of the others, you couldn't really be sure. Right. I have one question, Dr. McCrones, which is of interest to me, taking chips out of

paintings is a highly professional skill and I'm interested in the quality of the chips you were given. Were they taken by a professional or were they not taken by a professional? Well, there are samples and samples. These particular ones, the chips were obviously not taken by an expert. They were just what you might expect if somebody took a pair of cheers and went up through the painting. Those are the kinds of things that we chip off alongside any cutting instrument, a stylus or a razor blade even. So in other words, we know that some of the paintings were cut out of their frames. The two Rembrandt's were cut. And this could have been some of the chips from when that happened. That's right. Yeah, I mean that would be a sad fact of the crime that their paints did chip away. And in fact, I mean, Dr. McCrones was cautious to use only the most minute sample and was able to preserve the vast bulk of the chips in case there to be used in a restoration once the art is

returned. I mean, this is frustrating at this point. Obviously, whoever has his artwork wants to get it back. What are they going to get in return? They're not going to get money. They're not going to be able to hold up the museum for a return. Well, the situation now is a lawyer's game. That's how you have to look at it. Smart lawyers representing the museum, the federal authorities, the two men offering to broker the return need to get together and start negotiating about what can be done. They can begin from the premise that the two men who are offering to help with the return could not possibly have been the thieves because they were in prison at the time. So they can begin by saying, well, we're not negotiating with the thieves. And that gives you at least some leverage to begin talking. Because after all, there is a $5 million reward on the table. What good is the reward if you don't use it to bring back the art? In your opinion, Mr. Henshwin, how important is the

authentication of the chips in the process of the return? Could it any negotiation have taken place before that happened? Well, my view is a little bit different. I'm just delighted that the pictures are safe. Whether we get in the back bar or in 20 years' time is a secondary matter, and they might have been destroyed. How do we know they're safe? Because we have this sample which is compatible with what we would expect of this Rembrandt painting. Dr. McCrone, did you look at the photographs also? Were you able to verify any of them for their authenticity? I looked at them briefly, but I couldn't draw any conclusions from that. I didn't know what painting it was supposed to be. And again, my particular interest was getting at those flakes and seeing what they were, what they contained. What other pieces of art have you ever been asked to verify for authenticity? Anything famous that we would recognize? Well, the last supper is a fairly important season of work. Why would they have asked you to do

that? Was there any question about whether it was the real thing? No. It was taken for granted that was real. The question was, get good pigment samples from the last supper and then compare them with another painting which was hopefully a Leonardo. Yeah, and it is, I mean, you can basically tell. I mean, Dr. McCrone is very well trained through many years and he can recognize a sample as indicative of a certain artist because he's seen so many and he's come to recognize almost instinctively which artists, samples look like what under a very powerful microscope. How did you find him? He was recommended to us by Constance Lowenthal who runs a foundation for the restoration of lost artwork in New York City. Okay. What is the next step? You seem to be right in the thick of this. Tell us what's going to happen next. Well, the next step is, are the federal authorities going to be willing to sit down and negotiate or are they going to take a hard line stance and say

we will not negotiate. We will do everything we can to solve the crime by conventional means arrest and prosecution because if they take the hard line stance of arrest and prosecution, they may well succeed but the more likely development would be that the art would not come back for many years. You haven't seen it again, have you? No. Okay. All right. Dr. McCrone, thank you very much for being with us and thank you. Thank you. Okay, one we return. Four pregnant state troopers are forced to accept job modifications. Is this discrimination or common sense versus program note? No.

No. No. Earlier this week, four pregnant Massachusetts state troopers filed an discrimination complaint with the U .S. Equal Opportunity Commission. The troopers are protesting a new policy which forces them to go on temporary modified duty which means they can't interact with the public, drive police vehicles or work any paid details even though their own doctors say they are capable of performing these regular duties. The issue has entered the lexicon of public debate because while many people sympathize with the women, there's also a feeling that the policy may be common sense. The state troopers accompanied by state police association attorney Timothy Burke

met with the press yesterday to further explain their positions. Well, essentially, benefits have been taken away from me then prior previously I had had before it was discovered that I was pregnant. These benefits include the use of a unmarked cruiser any overtime which if you're involved in cases obviously you'd need to use the overtime, it just naturally you generate overtime, additionally you have limited contact with the public which I still haven't kind of reasonable answer about what exactly that means. In addition to the car being taken I am still have to drive my own car and I am still required to respond to an emergency situation so that would be in my own car which obviously doesn't have the benefit of having lights, siren or medical assistance in it. Until September of this year there was no formal modified duty policy troopers

were simply placed on light duty and the women say now the state police are trying to enforce a task list upon them something they say no other trooper has ever been asked to perform. The women should be capable of juggling the snow in the barracks or mowing the lawn, roping a large animal, lifting a 800 pound motorcycle off of the highway or pushing a car by themselves off the highway. We don't believe that those particular functions have any reality or correspondence to the actual performance of their duties. They give you a list of tasks that you're no one and I agree I've been on 10 years and from the time that I went through the state police academy until a year ago when I less than a year ago when I became pregnant I have not had to perform these tasks nor have I seen this task and it's interesting to know three of us are married to troopers and they have never seen these

tasks. But once it's take here is more than just holding on to their jobs. The modified duty means a loss of benefits, no access to a car and no chance to work paid details. They see it as punishment. I think what we're looking for is just a fair not discriminatory pregnancy policy. The modified duty is what we say and it's not applicable to pregnancy. The state police is a multifaceted organization. We all contribute to public safety. We each have a unique function and work together as a team and to take out part of that team the equation doesn't add up anymore. That's the problem. You know public safety is more than just being on the road and driving the freezer up and down a highway and making arrests and making road stops all the time and stopping speeders. We all have a function and I think we all have an important function. But being on the road and being a pregnant trooper is an image fixed in many minds thanks to last year's Oscar winning movie Fargo. A very pregnant Francis McDormand plays a

state trooper investigating a grizzly triple homicide in zero degree weather. So we got a trooper pull someone over. We got a shooting. These folks drive by. There's a high speed pursuit ends here and then this execution type deal. Yeah. I'd be very surprised if I suspect was from Brainerd. Yeah. Fargo images aside there is a school of thought that says common sense might be the best approach. That's how the Boston Police Department has handled it. No policy just work it out case by case. Okay the attorney for the four women advised them against appearing on our show but that's not going to stop us from debating the issues. Joining me are Mary Sullivan, the lawyer who successfully represented a female Boston police officer in a sexual harassment case. Journalist Florence Graves who has reported extensively on sexual harassment cases and broke the Bob Packwood story. ABC News producer Kelly Crosley and on remote from Springfield PBS station

WGBY Springfield Police Chief Paula Nira. Paula welcome. We'll start the debate with you. Tell us what kind of a policy does Springfield have with pregnant police officers? Well actually there's a no department requirement beyond the notification that's required by state law on a case by case basis officers notify the chief of police office when they feel that the time has come that they can no longer perhaps fit into their uniform so they need to modify their clothing. If they feel that they no longer want to perform street duty then they just notify the office and we take them off the street and give them inside duty but they don't lose benefits and it's not a punitive type situation. There are other officers myself included who worked until the day before we delivered our child and most of those were investigative duties. I don't know of anyone who was

able to work uniform until for that period of time but it's it's primarily how the person feels and how they if they feel they are able to continue doing their job. All right let me ask the group here should this be strictly up to the person who's enduring the pregnancy or are there some common sense rules that ought to be applied here about when it's inappropriate to be you know Francis McDorman they are chasing people down the highway at nine months pregnant. Well she did a great job of chasing him down the highway at nine months pregnant. You know it it's in our lifetimes that we went to school and we didn't have a married or pregnant teacher because people thought that you shouldn't be able to be a school teacher and then go with the public and have children see you pregnant and I think that this rule with the state troopers kind of smacks of that old system that we thought had gone by if a person's capable of doing the job they should be able to do their job. Well

I've yet to see the state troopers hierarchy explain what is the public safety issue and I it would also be curious about what precipitated this policy it sounded to me like some consultant sat around and said let's write a policy on pregnant troopers and I think the common sensical approach would be one where there may be a policy at some point in time in terms of of as their pregnancy progresses but to just tell these women that immediately the day they announce that they're pregnant that they have to go to limited duty doesn't seem to be common sense today. I think it's a couple of issues mixed. Mary can correct me but I believe there was a Supreme Court ruling some years ago for women who were protesting not being able to work in certain factories and they said that this they might be affected if they were of childbearing age and the women protested that because there was obviously more money to work in the factory but the basic thing was there was a paternalistic attitude that we'll tell you

where you can work if you are going to have a child or thinking about it or if you're pregnant there's some of that going on here. On the other end I have to say there you know I'm not certain I want to see Francis McDorman out greeting me on the highway in sub -degree weather or whatever and there could be some liability issues that need to be addressed but I'm with Francis here what precipitated this what what happened in the past that brought about this new policy because on it's it's a mixture of maybe liability underneath it maybe but also a paternalistic attitude which you know that's what we got the vote for hello. I have to say my feeling as this gives discrimination suits a bad name I don't think this is something to really go after in that fashion I mean pregnancy talking about my check it is pregnancy you know I mean I that's the bottom one there are certain things you can't do when you're eight nine months pregnant and you can't run as fast you're certainly carrying a very valuable other life with you you're not going to risk your life and the life of another child to go you know chasing a murderer down the road it's common sense

to me that's some kind of restriction the question is should it be enforced it should it be voluntary and should they lose money well I see I'm wondering if maybe this isn't something of a smoke screen for the fact that they they've been taken off paid details that seems to be the real underlying issue that they're concerned about the fact that they're actually losing money. Well I don't think you can separate them now right because what's happening here is that people are assuming that they're disabled from their jobs because they're pregnant and what they're saying and what their physicians have apparently said and I only know what I see on the news and reading the paper is that they're not disabled from doing their jobs and that their jobs don't require them to run down the street after murderers at two o 'clock in the morning and if that's the case if there's a war ever in a cruiser and you have control of that cruiser you you have you have put yourself in harm's way you may be sent somewhere but that's my decision if I wouldn't if you get to dispatch calls you and says you're on your way Cali no no what I'm saying is that's the woman's decision if she's pregnant to be want to put in that position that's what I'm

saying so if the trooper next to me wants to do that I'm not going to I don't want to be the one to say no unless if I am the management that in somehow there's some some more liability at which point then I ask you as a woman in in that position to maybe sign something or agree that there's more liability and I'm not going to have to pick up the pieces if something horrible happens to her. She agreed to chief bank into this has this discussion here sparked a more discussion out in your own department about how things should be handled in the future when this comes up. No actually I have not heard any discussion on this this week but it's something that the police commissioners may decide that they may want to bring up as a result of this I I don't perceive any change of policy coming though because I think that what we have is working very well it's very individualized and it recognizes the fact that a pregnant person is not a sick person it's not somebody who's sick

or has an illness but yet somebody who's temporarily carrying another life. And what's wrong with making a distinction and recognizing that and saying for that amount of time you have something of a disability. Well I don't know that it is I to be very honest with you I know pregnant women that were better able to perform their duties and perhaps men that are considered not disabled. I can see I'm all alone on this one. There is a way they can do this if they want to say every six months somebody goes through a physical to ensure you can chase that guy a mile down the highway male and female and everybody asks to pass the same physical requirements then that's perfectly awful. By the way on that task list they weren't actually asking these pregnant troopers to go out there and you know rope a cow or

push a car 20 or 30 feet they simply were making the point they should have the ability to do that. But it made it sound like they were going to put them through the test. Exactly. And I would question how many men had done that recently but go ahead. Well they also said that in the jobs that they do finger printing investigating that they really don't have to do those kinds of tasks. They're asking them to do things that they really don't have to do in their daily jobs. So what's the point of that? I just want to talk to a minute though about some of the other cases. You represented Patricia Freeman in this really horrible case inside the Boston Police Department and Florence you've been involved with this Mitsubishi case. I mean these are real hard core really harassment discriminatory cases which are so different from something like this. This seems to be such more of a social issue and to take it all the way to you know court rather than working it out with with the department seems a little bit drastic. You know why I think it's important? I mean the reason it's

important is that because women historically have been discriminated against in the workplace on the basis of things related to their body and this is it's a slippery slope. I think it's important that they test this because I mean it used to be PMS you can't be president. You know you had an abortion you can't do that. You're pregnant you can't do this. I mean in the 50s women were given tranquilizers because they were menopausal and obviously depressed. They were depressed about the situation in which they were because of what the culture did to them. Not because of menopause per se. So that's why I think it really is very important. You need to know where you're drawing the line. Are you drawing the line legitimately? Are you drawing the line because of a cultural perception of something that's that's not quite legitimate or real. And I wonder what would happen if they said we'll pay you the benefits and the same money to do these limited tasks. Well boy I bet you'd hear some men saying wait a minute. I

just a minute here. You know because then that I mean all bets are off at that point you know you're not taking the money issue is removed at least from the table. Now you're familiar with Boston police. They say they don't have a pregnancy policy that they take it case by case is that true? I don't know I've tried to determine if they have a policy. What I am told by individuals who I know there is that once it is revealed that you are pregnant you are put on desk duty which causes you to lose details and overtime. Now I suspect on a kind of case by case practical basis some officers may want that at a certain point in their pregnancy but my understanding is that that may happen earlier than people want it. Police chief let me ask you are you do you feel discriminated against at all or do you feel somewhat that the troops look at you slightly differently because you were a woman. Do you have any feelings of disrespect? To

tell you the truth it's been a difficult climb through the department and I think that the issues have changed since the early days but when you're dealing with younger troops who come on growing up with girls and boys having gym class together and girls being involved in sports and they see women on television as doctors and they see they go to women that are doctors and they see women as judges and as attorneys and as police officers then I really don't think they have the have it bred within them the the attitudes that we originally came on with but the officers that we worked with years ago while they really did give us hard second looks and maybe few of them called in sick and didn't want to ride with us they eventually I see I'm being beaten up here you all making your point

thank you all for being with us that's it for greater Boston tomorrow night we have our regular Friday night media bash tomorrow's topic local morning radio fighting off the big syndicators I miss and stern stay tuned I'm Emily Bruney good night