Campus police in Mass. are exempt from public records law
They dump out Solo cups filled with jungle juice and confiscate fake IDs, but campus officers are more than just underage drinking police. Sworn campus police are academy trained, and can carry weapons, make arrests and use force, just like any other police officers can. The difference is, campus police are called “special state police officers,’’ which means they’re exempt from Massachusetts public records law.
In a report for Muckrock, Shawn Musgrave points out why this is a problem. Massachusetts law requires that all police departments maintain a public log. And, under the federal Clery Act, all educational institutions that receive federal funding must publish an annual report on campus crime, as well as a daily crime log. But, as he found out, the 21 colleges in the Boston area with sworn police officers take different approaches to these mandates.
All 21 schools publish their annual Clery reports online, but only Harvard and MIT post crime logs to their public safety websites, Musgrave found. He also said 10 institutions refused to send copies of their daily logs by email, and a handful more only did after multiple requests.
Whereas reports filed by local or state police are considered public records, reports filed by private university police are not. For example, in June, after a Massachusetts state police officer shot a man wielding a knife near BU’s campus, Boston University police rejected a request for reports that were filed by BUPD officers.
Campus police aren’t the only departments that push the boundaries of open records laws. Earlier this year, state police won the Investigative Reporters and Editors “Golden padlock award,’’ which recognized them as the most secretive publicly funded agency in the country. And, the ACLU is currently suing the Boston police department for records.
Still, as of June 2015, there were 1,500 “special state police officers’’ across the state, most of whom work at colleges and universities. Musgrave pointed out that Harvard has 77 sworn officers on its roster, followed by Boston University with 67 (plus an additional 29 officers for its medical campus), and MIT with 59.
There is legislation in the works to open some campus police records. State Rep. Kevin Honan filed a bill that would make campus police officers subject to the state public records statute. The bill stalled in the legislature after a hearing in May.
You can read more of Musgrave’s report here.
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