MA SWAT Teams Are Private Entities

asroc said:

This is a pretty misleading article. (The author apparently has a book to sell.) The ACLU’s concerns are perfectly valid and there are many things wrong with NEMLEC (IMO it only exists because the smaller PDs can’t stomach the idea of asking for help from the State Police), but all those cops are still employees of their respective police departments, same as any other police officer. So no, you can’t shoot them.

Quote:
Originally Posted by backslashbaby

The first thing that came to my mind was Boston's police problem [...]

Which is?

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January 9, 2013
The Boston Police department in its latest routine round of awarding officers for “outstanding performance” of their duties during the past year has named among its many recipients 3 officers in particular who were involved in some of the departments most highly publicized and controversial cases, all of which include elements of race and police brutality and use of excessive and/or deadly force.
These officers are: Brian R. Dunford, Michael T. McManus, Christopher R. Carr
These awards send a message of disregard and disrespect to the Black Community....

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The Complaint Jar Runneth Over

Hundreds of citizens are waiting—and waiting—for the Boston Police Department to respond to allegations of wrongdoing. Will they ever get answers? —Edward Mason and Tom Mashberg

Boston Magazine | April 2014

...
The numbers are more alarming if we focus on the most serious offenses: the complaints against officers for using “unnecessary force.” As of March 2012, 113 of the 114 open cases sat unresolved for more than 180 days. Six of those were more than 1,000 days old. One use-of-force case filed in July 2007 was not resolved until January 2012. Also as of March 2012, 86 of 92 pending cases of civilian mistreatment, a separate category that generally involves non-physical abuse, had been open for more than 180 days.
We asked the department to tell us how many of the use-of-force and civilian-mistreatment cases still open as of March 2012 had been closed in the intervening two years. They didn’t say....

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...It’s been more than a year since the City of Boston paid out over $200,000 in settlements to people who were falsely arrested and charged with felony wiretapping for video-recording cops, but Boston police still haven’t learned their lesson.
The wiretapping law makes it illegal to secretly record conversations, however, Boston police have arrested a number of people over the years for openly recording and charged them with wiretapping.
Last year, the taxpayers of Boston were forced to pay $170,000 to Simon Glik and $33,000 to Maury Paulino. Both men were arrested — Glik in 2007 and Paulino in 2009 — by Boston police officers for openly video-recording cops making arrests in public.
Last month, Boston police again used the wiretapping law as their excuse for arresting someone who was recording them. This time the victim was a Northeastern student who used his cellphone to record the police during the celebration after the Red Sox won the World Series....

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