A year and a lawsuit later, regional police agency agrees their records are public
Residents of 59 Massachusetts communities will finally get to know what their SWAT team is up to.
On Monday, the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council conceeded that it is a public agency and subject to the Commonwealth’s public records laws, a year after the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts filed suit.
Staffed by police officers and paid by taxpayers, NEMLEC, the largest law enforcement consortium in Massachusetts, had maintained that it didn’t have to hand over anything related to their SWAT team’s activities.
“NEMLEC is an entity whose records are subject to the Massachusetts Public Records Law,’’ today’s joint motion for entry of judgement filed in Suffolk Superior Court says.
The police agency, one of several similar so-called law enforcement councils across the state, handed more than 900 pages of documents over to the ACLU as part of the settlement, which still needs to be approved by a judge.
“We really applaud NEMLEC for recognizing that their documents are subject to public records laws,’’ said ACLU staff attorney Jessie Rossman, who worked on the case. “We’ll be sending follow-up requests to other law enforcement councils in the state, and hopefully they follow NEMLEC’s lead.’’
Carlisle Police Chief John Fisher, the current chairman of NEMLEC, couldn’t say specifically what led to the change of heart.
“This isn’t the time to point fingers,’’ said Fisher, who has been leading the agency for six months. “This is a time to move forward, and this is the right thing to do.’’
“We agreed that we’re subject to the public records law,’’ he continued. “It’s not anything more complicated than that.’’
Rossman said the requested documents, which include incident reports, deployment statistics, after-action reports, and budgets, will help the ACLU document the “militarization of local police and understand these regional efforts throughout the Commonwealth.’’
“The law enforcement councils are operating in our names and in our communities, and it has always been our argument that the public deserves to know what’s going on in its name and in its communities,’’ Rossman said.
The decision is only binding on NEMLEC. But this agreement could send a message to other regional agencies, including Metro-LEC, SEMLEC, and CEMLEC, that they, too, should consider themselves subject to public records laws, Rossman said.
While today’s agreement is a win for the ACLU, Rossman said the issue never should have gotten this far.
“We shouldn’t have had to file a lawsuit to get these records in the first place,’’ she said.
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