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Massachusetts SWAT teams claim theyre private corporations, immune from open records laws
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Washington Post
Posted: July 1st, 2014
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/06/26/m...
As part of the American Civil Liberties Unions recent report on police militarization, the Massachusetts chapter of the organization sent open records requests to SWAT teams across that state. A number of SWAT teams in [Massachusetts] are operated by what are called law enforcement councils, or LECs. LECs are funded by several police agencies in a given geographic area and overseen by an executive board, which is usually made up of police chiefs from member police departments. Some of these LECs have also apparently incorporated as 501(c)(3) organizations. And its here that we run into problems. According to the ACLU, the LECs are claiming that the 501(c)(3) status means that theyre private corporations, not government agencies. And therefore, they say theyre immune from open records requests. Lets be clear. These agencies oversee police activities. They employ cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure and kill. They operate SWAT teams, which conduct raids on private residences. And yet they say that because theyve incorporated, theyre immune to Massachusetts open records laws. The states residents arent permitted to know how often the SWAT teams are used, what theyre used for, what sort of training they get or who theyre primarily used against. From the ACLU of Massachusettss report on police militarization in that state: "Due to the weakness of Massachusetts public records law and the culture of secrecy that has infected local police departments and Law Enforcement Councils, procuring empirical records from police departments and regional SWAT teams in Massachusetts about police militarization was universally difficult and, in most instances, impossible."
Note: The author of this article, Radley Balko, is the author of the book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. For more on this topic, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
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