Less than a week after the state banned Tewksbury Hospital security staff from using defensive tactical weapons, a hospital worker was assaulted by a patient.
The incident Tuesday morning required a response from Tewksbury police, who charged a 59-year old patient with assault and battery against a hospital staffer.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health instituted the new security policy last week at the 370-bed state facility, which provides long-term care for adults with complex chronic medical and behavioral health needs. It is one of four hospitals operated by DPH.
The ban came months after a patient standoff in September 2025, which resulted in a security officer using pepper gel on a patient. The new policy prohibiting pepper gel, batons, handcuffs and other defensive weapons came despite a long history of violent patient encounters.
State Rep. David Robertson, who represents the town of Tewksbury, said his requests to rescind the policy even before this week’s incident have gone unheeded. He says there’s overwhelming concern that now, after Tuesday’s assault, there will be more violent episodes.
“I don’t want to say we told them so, but that is exactly what happened,” he said. “They rolled back what we spent the last 18 months working on to come to the minimum safety and security expectations at the campus.”
The hospital population includes what are known as forensic patients, or individuals undergoing psychiatric treatment who’ve been referred there by the criminal justice system.
A preliminary investigation into the Tuesday incident determined that the patient was acting erratically and standing in a fighting stance when staff approached. The patient then struck a staff member in the face. Police said it took multiple people to restrain the patient, and staff administered medicine prior to their arrival. The patient is said to be known to police for a previous incident of threatening hospital staff, and was issued a summons to appear in Lowell District Court.
Last week, when Tewksbury Hospital CEO Amy Dumont announced the new policy banning defensive tactical weapons, she said in a letter to state officials that it was crafted “after extensive review, research, and consultation with clinical leaders, security professionals and state agencies.”
“Tewksbury Hospital is a place of healing,” Dumont said in the letter, adding that the policy was needed even though “the Tewksbury staff sometimes faces workplace violence and aggression from some patients.”
Dumont added, “I want to assure nurses, clinical staff, support staff, and others who work with patients; your safety matters deeply. This policy does not weaken our commitment to protecting you. It means we are relying on approaches that work best in health care.”
On Thursday, a spokesperson for the state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services told GBH News that the new policy reflects advice from the American Psychiatric Association that weapons in clinical settings conflict with the therapeutic mission of hospitals.
“Updating the Tewksbury State Hospital security policy to eliminate the use of pepper gel and other weapons balances our therapeutic mission with our responsibility to keep patients and staff safe,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We are in close communication with local police and actively monitoring the implementation of this policy change to make sure our staff are equipped with the most appropriate tools and de-escalation strategies to keep themselves and others safe.”
The spokesperson said the change in policy came after months of negotiations with the hospital security union represented by AFSCME, which agreed to the ban. The state also said it worked with leaders and local police on a “sweeping modernization” of security operations, and determined that Tewksbury police are best suited to respond to incidents of violence.
Robertson said he’s baffled as to why the sudden policy change after the pepper spray incident last September.
“We’ve all been scratching our heads and we can’t figure out why DPH won’t listen to our common sense of reasoning and simply revert this and not revisit it,” Robertson said.
Since 2023, state and DPH officials have worked with Tewksbury Police Chief Ryan Columbus and a host of security and hospital clinical leaders as part of the broad review of security operations.
Columbus said in a statement, “I was surprised by the discussion regarding the removal of less-lethal tools from public safety officers.”
“I struggle to understand the rationale behind such a decision. In my view, this change will place public safety officers, hospital staff, patients, and the Tewksbury community at unnecessary risk,” Columbus said.
Tewksbury police responded to 26 assaults at the hospital in 2025, Columbus said in his statement. Meanwhile, the hospital’s public safety staff responded to 478 assaults on the 800-acre campus during that time.
“To put those numbers in context, the Massachusetts Department of Corrections responded to 711 reported assaults in the entire prison system in 2025, “ he said.
James Mackey, a Tewksbury selectman, is seeking a pause in the new security policy and said the issue is not budgetary, nor about extra staffing from the town’s police or fire departments.
“The primary concern is public safety. It is the safety of Tewksbury residents. It is the safety of staff at Tewksbury State Hospital, the safety of the resident population inside of the hospital itself. None of these things were being considered,” he said.
Mackey said the data from emergency calls to the hospital demonstrates the increase in violence and forensic patients escaping or leaving the hospital without permission.
According to the Massachusetts Nurses Association, the state’s largest union for registered nurses and health care professionals, 70% of the population at Tewksbury are forensic patients.
MNA spokesperson David Schildmeier said the hospital is facing an epidemic of violence due to an increase in forensic patients — those with criminal backgrounds and mental health issues — being admitted.
The MNA has put together a lengthy white paper documenting what they consider the “root cause” of the problem. It cites a 2017 report showing a 76% increase in the number of forensic patient admissions to state hospitals between 1999-2014. The report also includes state data from 2018 to 2023, showing an accelerating trend of forensic patient admissions to Tewksbury Hospital and four other state-run facilities; Fuller Hospital, Lemuel Shattuck Hospital, Taunton State Hospital and Worcester Recovery Center.
“We have been trying for over two years to get them to pay attention to the core issue — the underlying issue that is driving this crisis,” he said. “And that’s the dramatic increase in the patients entering the facility who come from the courts or the jails with mental health backgrounds.”
Schildmeier said the hospital is understaffed and under-resourced to properly care for that type of patient population.
“Until we do that, we’re going to just go in a circle and have this cycle of violence continue,” he said. “The staff right now feel abandoned. They feel like [the policy] created conditions that put us in danger every day.”
Mackey emphasized this is not a “political issue,” and said that the state has ignored his request to pause and review the new security policy, further straining the relationship between state and local authorities.
“It was lip service ... everyone was feeling like we were being placated,” he said. “The only commitment we could get was we will continue to monitor the situation.”
