SWAT teams aren’t going to tell you when or where they’ve deployed, because they think they don’t have to.
As it turns out, a number of SWAT teams in the Bay State are operated by what are called law enforcement councils, or LECs. These 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 it’s here that we run into problems. According to the ACLU, the LECs are claiming that the 501(c)(3) status means that they’re private corporations, not government agencies. And therefore, they say they’re immune from open records requests.
. . .
Hiding behind the argument that they are private corporations not subject to the public records laws, the LECs have refused to provide documents regarding their SWAT team policies and procedures. They have also failed to disclose anything about their operations, including how many raids they have executed or for what purpose . . .
So, not only do they think they have the right to break down doors and terrorize people pretty much whenever they feel like it, they also think they don’t have to explain anything about their operations, or training, or staffing, or lots of other things.
I’d like to thank The Boston Globe for alerting us to this situation. Unfortunately, they either didn’t know about it, or didn’t think it was newsworthy, so we’re hearing about it from The Washington Post.
I’d also like to thank our Attorney General for standing up to the bullies in SWAT uniforms and defending the citizenry’s right to know, but that didn’t happen either.
…and accountable to the law enforcement agencies. Therefore, the notion they should be subject to these laws and standards is to me a no-brainer.
Good find, kirth.
Do we really want to make law enforcement even less accountable? These “LEC”‘s sound more like vigilante outfits, and should be legislatively banned.
It’s worth your while to read the article about the ACLU study of police militarization linked Post story.
You can also read the study itself. (PDF)
I have been trying to raise awareness on this subject myself, particularly in the wake of a SWAT-team killing of Eurie Stamps, an elderly retiree shot in his own home by Framingham police. They were trying to arrest a nephew or somthing who wasn’t even home, some small-time drug-dealer. More recently, there was a horrendous case in Georgia of a SWAT team practically killing a toddler with a flash grenade, again looking for some piddling amount of drugs.
A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
The title should warn you that it’s not pleasant. No graphic pictures, but the description of the child’s injuries is gut-wrenching, and the cops’ reported behavior is infuriating.
Please tell me why I shouldn’t be making comparisons to Gestapo, Stasi, and similar groups? Please tell me why being angered and repulsed by such police abuses makes me a “cop hater”.
Please tell me why any “progressive” believes we need such organizations here in Massachusetts. We do not.
That said, what’s the point of using SWAT teams for something like this? It seems to me they should only be used if there is a hostage or terror situation, with imminent danger to others, especially innocent bystanders. Searching a house for drugs should just require the local police serving a routine warrant. Ditto child porn which I have heard of cases using SWAT teams as well. Is this a matter of finding excuses to use them out of concern that they will not be able to keep them if they don’t use them?
They’ve gone way beyond the imminent-danger situations. There was a story from a couple of years ago about an art institute in Detroit that was holding a fundraiser where they served wine and had dancing. Since they neglected to get permits to dance or serve alcohol, the local SWAT team was sent, and had 130 art patrons on the floor with automatic weapons pointed at them. SWAT teams not infrequently attack the wrong address, which they never acknowledge until after the residents are thoroughly terrorized, if then. innocent people have died when SWAT mistakenly broke down their door.
Maybe one should be careful about an Internet “law” about the inevitable instance of Nazi references arising in discussion threads. If that’s what you’re worried about, so be it. I’m more worried about adrenaline-charged combat squads breaking down people’s doors when there is not otherwise any threat of violence.
…whether media or an elected official, inquire as to what someone thought was the justification for using SWAT at the fundraiser? I would love to have heard that answer. Besides, permits for dancing – really?
i was just wondering about a permit to dance. I’ve never heard of such a thing.
I did learn that the cops impounded 44 cars during the action. It cost their owners $900 apiece to get the cars back. Here’s a Detroit Free Press story about the mess.
The point of Godwin is to prevent *false* comparisons.
Throwing a flash grenade into a baby’s crib, then preventing the obviously distraught mother from attending to her badly injured baby, all during a home invasion that should never have happened, strikes me as a legitimate (rather than false) comparison.
definition of SWAT teams is overly broad. How many people are on the team? How are they all equipped? Do they send fifteen people to serve a warrant or three? I’m only guessing, but I would guess that they would assemble a team for task at hand. And the process for sending in a team has plenty of places to break down–in the intelligence collected before the entry; in the communication process that starts with whoever gives orders; and the behavior of the team itself.
The LECs are deliberately opaque about the answers to the questions you raise. They don’t want us to know. I was struck while googling these organizations just how little information about them is available. Maybe they think we’ll spill the beans to the
enemybad guys, who will get assault vehicles of their own, or something.The ACLU report tells us that the decision to use SWAT often results from a mere suspicion that there might be firearms in the place being searched. Given the very large percentage of American homes that house firearms, I think they need more restrictive criteria.
used that often. It looks like it was the Framingham police force that killed Eurie Stamps. If so, Framingham’s government is accountable to its citizens. They aren’t part of the LEC.
It’s not clear from the articles whether the Framingham cop whose weapon discharged was a member of the SWAT team, but they were there, and SWAT tactics were used. It was those tactics that led to the shooting.
It looks like the guy was on the Framingham SWAT team. He had a rifle and was one of the first in the door. This was probably less the cop’s fault than the people who sent him in there. When you have people running around with automatic weapons, etc., accidents are going to happen. Which is to support what everyone’s been saying about bureaucracy and accountability.
I was talking to my police chief about it today. These LEC’s cost a lot of money to join. As I said, we call the state police. They aren’t perfect, but they have specific training for this stuff.
I have a theory, which is only a theory, that private weapons contractors have found a way to showcase their stuff. So, they virtually give away some things, with the implied promise that the towns will staff up the equipment. And once a few towns have it, the others are likely to buy some.
JUST A THEORY, I could be wrong. But I’m hard-pressed to think of another reason why a private corporation needed to exist, other than — um — “flexibility.”
with Patriot Act money or Homeland Security grants in the post 9-11 hysteria. Now, overarmed, they forces looking for a deployment such as the Marathon bombing.
…I think it started with a reasonable idea that got overtaken by a bureaucratic urge to grow bigger. The idea, way before 9/11, was that suburban communities would combine resources to develop SWAT / Emergency response that small police forces do have. (Why the state police don’t do it…I don’t know).
Even before 9/11 there were plenty of federal grants that would fund these things and a couple of the Sheriff Depts got involved to oversee the regional groups. And with grant dollars comes empire builders. Then of course combine that with 9/11 and the money that followed from that and you have these regional para-military organizations that, apparently, believe they are above the scrutiny of the public.
I still don’t see where the corporate angle comes in. Regional sheriffs, sure. But since when do groups of public entities form corporations?
…they have a practical problem how centralizing the funds from different sources (various communities, state and fed grants) so they figure they can create a 501 c. First with the sole intent of administering money, but that slowing evolves into a whole lot more…like this crazy point of view that theses public officials, using public dollars are somehow immune to public oversight.
Could it be the secrecy of the corporate veil is to keep weapons trades, such as Fast & Furious, hidden from the public? I see too much of “lost or stolen” police weapons articles to think there is anything innocent going on. Police departments lose contact with light machine guns without much public notice but if a 50-cal were disappeared would it not raise some eyebrows? Better those public eyes remain blinded?
“These bastards who run our country are a bunch of conniving, thieving, smug pr*cks who need to be brought down and removed and replaced with a whole new system that we control.” — Michael Moore
Did you see this (also from the Post) about the increased militarization of police?
Brookline PD are featured training for military-type situations, training they perform 2 times a month.
Brookline has had three murders since 2000.
Like how much extra pay these folks make for training and overtime. Stonewalling a FOIA for something like this makes me suspect there is a whole lot more they want to keep hidden and I bet, at the very least, it will be outrageous and probably illegal.
So has our Attorney General commented on this?
Excellent question.
n/m
I realize that your phrasing is just shorthand, but it seems to me that this semi-public record should be annotated:
Ms. Healey worked for Ms. Coakley. In every office I’ve worked in for more than forty years, if the big boss asks for something you do it regardless of your job title — being a “team player” and all that.
I think it is fair and reasonable to ask Ms. Healey her opinion of this, her opinion about the proper role of the AG in this, and about any differences between that opinion and the conduct of the current AG.
Since supporters of Ms. Healey argue that she will continue the “fine record” established by Ms. Coakley, this seems like fair game to me.
In early May, David asked me to clarify what I mean by “militarization of police”.
This is a good example of the sort of thing I mean.
Militarization entails substitution of military technologies, command structures, rules of engagement etc. for civilian policing.
As I see it the issue here is the outsourcing of that militarized policing to private groups to avoid complying with laws created to regulate the regular police.
wondered if it were the case in my neck of the woods. As far as I can tell, LECs don’t seem to be an issue in Western Mass. What does Granby use on the rare instances when we need a SWAT team? The state police. They are perfect, but they are public.
I don’t know if Springfield has it’s own SWAT team, but Hampden County has a task force for big drug operations. One of my friends retired from the Agawam Police Department was on the Hampden County Narcotics Task Force. These are the guys who break down doors and bust big dealers. Not an LEC.
If you need regional law enforcement isn’t that what county sheriff’s departments are for? Even non-existent counties still have sheriffs and I know Middlesex has a fair amount of resources at its disposal in this regard.
is that rather than a bunch of municipalities trying to invest in the equipment and training to carry out SWAT tasks, they regionalize. Sheriff’ departments in Western Mass are responsible for jails. Aside from the occasional road detail, they don’t do any other law enforcement. Porcupine said they do law enforcement in Barnstable County, but I think that’s atypical of the state.
I know everyone seems to be thinking about weapons here, but equipment costs a bunch as well. I can’t remember how much we pay for bullet-proof vests, but it’s in the hundreds of dollars and they have expiration dates. SWAT teams have more equipment than vests. Training is often expensive too. There are the costs of the actual education, but the police who take the training need to have their shifts covered, sometimes at time and a half. Most of the places belonging to the LECs have a very limited need for SWAT teams. But any community, regardless of size or demographics, can experience the need for a SWAT team. For Wilmington, regionalizing would be cheaper than trying to support a SWAT team they may never need.
…and as I alluded to at least here successive sheriffs have seen their role as including supporting communities with law enforcement tools as needed where it would not make sense for individual towns to have them. DiPaola especially seemed proud of what he could do in this regard and was not shy about campaigning on it.
One of the orgs in the post, NEMLEC apparently includes the Middlesex and Essex Sheriffs.
Somehow, there seems to be a lack of civilian oversight in that last part. Whether DiPaola or any of the other chiefs is proud of their ability to provide what they see as needed applications of force is not really much comfort when talking about an unaccountable military force operating in our communities. Yes, I said military. Have a look.
But only up to the point where these consortiums are as transparent and subject to civilian review and control as any individual police department would be. They can’t be private, or even quasi-private; that contravenes the fundamental principle where our elected government has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. We push this far enough when we tolerate private security that’s authorized to use force to protect specific private property or spaces. Licensing a nonpublic entity to use paramilitary force throughout a county is pushing the principle until it breaks.
counties, but in the West, the sheriff’s departments are not equipped or trained to support law enforcement. Correctional officers are NOT police. The Middlesex Sheriff’s site makes it look like they do policing, but I’d be surprised if they do more than provide guys to direct traffic. Campaigning on making sheriff employees available for policing sounds great, but I’m skeptical whether that offer is taken up by communities. Most police don’t want to be backed up by correctional officers. That’s nothing against the COs, but they do a very different job.
I get the sense that the assistance the Middlesex Sheriff’s office provides is more about equipment and less about personnel, and to the extent that it is personnel they are not sending out people who are corrections officers.
The Middlesex County District Attorney seems to think that MSO has its own SWAT team, separate from NEMLEC.
I don’t know if the Sheriff’s SWAT team are corrections officers, or something else. I find the possibility disturbing.
I know this is a little vague, but the website says:
You will sometimes see the MSO van which carries equipment not usually found in local police departments at major crime scenes and it does seem to me that SWAT at the county level makes sense.
There obsolete jobs, protected by the MA Constitution, are focused on running the county jails. With LEC’s they saw the ability to grow their empires; go after grants; hire more staff and expand their powers.
As Mark mentions, the State Police can play the role of emergency tactical response for communities without these resources. County Sheriff Departments are one of the biggest waste of tax payer dollars. Merge the county jails into the state DoC and have the state police provide regional public safety protection/services and get ride of these patronage-sucking offices.
We merged the MDC Police and the Environmental cops into the SP, and there’s no reason to have these LECs at all. The SP already cover the entire state. They have the weapons and the training, and have civilian oversight. They should perform the SWAT function in those rare cases where it’s needed. You give a local org a SWAT team, and pretty soon they’re using it to serve warrants and respond to barroom brawls.
I am still waiting for a justification for county government in Massachusetts. Eliminate the sheriff, probate, commission, the whole thing. County government has a place in a state with unincorporated land, but in 2014?
Maryland has a very functional county system, in comparison to MA. I think the “unincorporated land” aspect is less necessary than you might think.
In Massachusetts, we pay an enormous overhead for duplicating police, fire, and schools in most of our 351 cities and towns. We also have essentially no means of doing regional planning for transportation, land use, and so on. While the beautiful town hall on the green is a quaint, picturesque, and traditional New England hallmark, it is an enormously expensive luxury in a time when we say we “can’t afford” pretty much anything.
An effective county system can solve those problems.
I think a better alternative is to strengthen and modernize our existing county government, so that we can enter the twenty first century with a first-world state.
that do extractions. My cousin is on the SWAT team in a federal prison in New Jersey. Sometimes there are riots, but it takes a team to extract some prisoners from their cells.
these offices is that they can be more sensitive to the regions they serve. We don’t have county government with county commissioners anymore.
I can sort of see that, except that if their main function is corrections, there’s no real need for regional sensitivity. The reason I said above that I find the prospect of corrections officers on SWAT teams disquieting is this: much more than LEOs, corrections officers spend their days dealing with the worst people in our society, It does not promote sensitivity or empathy in their outlook toward civilians. Using them, fully suited-up and heavily-armed, to serve a search warrant is begging for a tragic outcome.
In the case of the LECs, where is the sensitivity to the regions they serve? They don’t even want to tell us anything about how they operate. Who is accountable to the public for the actions of LECs? The sheriffs are elected, the police chiefs are appointed by cities and towns, but as a group, who is minding them? In the Framingham killing cited above by farnkoff, it was the DA, but he only investigated the specific incident. Nobody seems to be even questioning the wisdom of sending a combat team to execute a search warrant. They are without oversight, and out of control.
of the District Attorney. Hampshire County, for example, has somewhat different values than Bristol County. That said, I don’t see any problems with electing sheriffs and keeping authority local. I don’t really want to transfer more authority to the eastern part of the state.
Our sheriffs don’t execute warrants. They delivered a summons to me once (my select board was being sued), but local police departments execute warrants unless they’re for something big or they are working on a larger, coordinated investigation. Then the state police come in. In the last couple of years, we had a guy who was busted on pretty major child pornography charges. Our PD assisted. We had a guy dealing heroin. It was dealt with the same way. One of my friends, now retired, was on the Hampden County Drug Task Force. These are the guys that kick in doors. These are major busts. That can be pretty hairy. You wouldn’t want to send one or two beat cops to serve a warrant in a drug house where people are or could be heavily armed. You send a specially trained team when the warrant warrants it. Still the lines of authority in these situations are clear: the DA’s office is usually in charge.
I don’t have a problem with the regionalization of SWAT, but I see absolutely NO REASON for the lack of accountability. As I said, we do things differently out here in the West, but the governance of these LECs is very troubling. Who’s calling the shots if there are 15 communities involved in the teams? Who is responsible? If my community were involved in one of these, my authority as selectman would be very diluted. Who would be responsible if cops violated someone’s rights or was killed on one of these raids?
But, lo & behold, Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council Inc is listed on 501c3lookup. As a charity. Filing form 990 with the IRS. With assets. Claiming substantial income from the general public as well as government. It make one wonder who thought this up and who the “general public is and how much control they may exert on the organization.
Liability? If a police officer under the training and control of a LEC harms a citizen is there potential liability with the 501(c)3 organization? Grist for the mill of starving liability lawyers yearning to break new ground?
Anyone can file a 501(c)3 form but has the IRS audited these organizations when the IRS claims the charitable criteria is as follows:
What is so secret that what passes for law enforcement seeks such a subterfuge? Who is setting up the organizational infrastructure? Accounting has to be maintained of assets, form 990s must be filed yearly. (Penalty of up to $50 for failure to file this form.) Clearly, a larger exposé is necessary.
“The right thing to do never requires any subterfuge, it is always simple and direct.” –Calvin Coolidge
opps…
“but I gave at the office already.”
This strikes me as a significant story with “legs”. I get that the story will have more impact after the holiday.
I hope that the Boston Globe is putting together a story about this. In particular, I hope that our mainstream media outlets (are you reading, Mr. Braude?) will explore the implications of these groups with our candidates for AG and for Governor.
I think the question, for a gubernatorial candidate, is pretty simple: “Do you think taxpayer-funded private paramilitary organizations are a good idea for Massachusetts?”
Cities and towns cannot take actions that are not authorized by state law. Herewith, two definitions from Section 4J of Chapter 40:
“Governmental unit”, a city, town, county, regional transit authority established under chapter 161B, water or sewer commission or district established under chapter 40N or by special law, fire district, regional health district established under chapter 111, a regional school district or a law enforcement council.
“Law enforcement council”, a nonprofit corporation comprised of municipal police chiefs and other law enforcement agencies established to provide: (i) mutual aid to its members pursuant to mutual aid agreements; (ii) mutual aid or requisitions for aid to non-members consistent with section 8G of this chapter or section 99 of chapter 41; and (iii) enhanced public safety by otherwise sharing resources and personnel.
It seems clear that LECs are authorized by state law, and are governmental bodies. They are subject to the open meeting law and the public records law. As to the former, file a complaint with the open meeting unit of the AG. For the latter, complain to the Secretary of the Commonwealth.
I’d like to know when that language became law, why it was added, what process was followed, and perhaps most importantly — who proposed, sponsored, and moved it through the lege.
I’d also like to know what Governor approved the language and why.
This is a bad idea that I didn’t know about until this thread was published. Now I think we need to figure out how to undo it.
That would certainly seem to put paid to these organizations’ claims to be exempt from FOIA because they’re private corporations. Last time I looked, 501(c)(3) status, awarded on the basis of an organization’s filings with the IRS, didn’t act to alter the actual nature of that organization under the state law pursuant to which it was organized. I’m tempted to throw this out to our local candidates for DA, and see what they have to say.
They can make promises without pissing people off when they are campaigning and make changes saying the promised it.
More relevant is the definition of a public body in Ch 38 §18 of the General Laws (Ch 38 is the Open meeting Law).
I think it’s not quite as clear there, but it nearly is.