Wednesday was the day that the contentious intelligence-gathering division of the Boston Police Department received approval from the Boston City Council for grants totaling around $3.4 million.
With this kind of money, the Boston Regional Intelligence Centre will be able to bring on board an additional eight data analysts. The centre was established in 2005 with the goal of reducing crime and preventing terrorism through sharing intelligence with local, state, and federal law enforcement partners. Its headquarters are located within the Boston Police Department.
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The vote brings to a close a political battle that has put the left side of the body against Mayor Michelle Wu, who was previously seen as the progressive standard-bearer for the council.
“We are moving backwards on police reform,” said Councillor Kendra Lara, one of the measure’s opponents. “The status quo will not do.” Lara said that an increase in spending on the police intelligence unit will contribute to the targeting of Black, Latino, and Muslim residents by law enforcement. She said this since these groups are more likely to be Muslims.
The intelligence centre has a broad goal to scan for “all threats and all hazards,” and the data that it collects is routinely used in anything from homicide investigations to probing recent bomb threats at local hospitals. The mission of the intelligence centre is to assess for “all threats and all hazards.”
However, it has been subject to criticism from civil rights campaigners for many years. These advocates accuse the centre of conducting disproportionately more surveillance on communities of colour. The office of the Attorney General in Massachusetts is conducting an investigation into charges of racial bias in the gang database maintained by the Boston Regional Intelligence Centre.
Concerns over the database prompted councillors, including Wu, to propose two years ago that the organisation receive funds in the form of a block grant. During her run for mayor, Wu made another campaign promise: she would eliminate the gang database.
But over the past month, Wu has been advocating for increased financing for the intelligence centre, even going so far as to reapply for a grant that she had previously opposed.
Lara accused the mayor of making a “about-face” on the financing, adding that Wu’s criticism of the centre and its gang database had helped win her support in the mayoral contest. “A vote that I will not soon be giving her again,” Lara added, indicating that she would not give Wu her vote again anytime soon.
Prior to the meeting on Wednesday, Wu provided the council with a letter in which she explained the shift in her viewpoint.
She noted that because of “several consequential policy and leadership changes that have been implemented,” the Boston Regional Investigative Centre (BRIC) and the Boston Police Department are now operating in a significantly altered environment. Wu drew attention to the recently passed rule governing surveillance oversight in the city, the newly established Office of Police Accountability and Transparency, as well as various changes to the gang database.
At the meeting on Wednesday, Councillor Michael Flaherty stated his agreement with the mayor’s points.
“This is a different BRIC, this is a different police commissioner, and this is a different mayor,” he said. “This is a different mayor.” “Allow them the possibility to succeed.”
In the end, the grants were given the go-ahead with a vote of 7-5 from the council. Several of the progressive councillors brought up the issue of the racial makeup of the vote, which was as follows: all of the councillors of colour voted against the financing for the police department, while the seven white members of the council voted in favour of the funding for the police department.
by the voting, the Executive Director of the Muslim Justice League, Fatema Ahmad, stated that she believed the outcome dealt a blow to the movement for criminal justice reform that was sparked by the shooting of George Floyd by police officers in the year 2020.
“Now that they don’t have thousands of people protesting, and they don’t have a moment to pretend that they care about these issues, they’re moving backwards,” she added. “Now that they don’t have thousands of people protesting, and they don’t have a moment to pretend that they care about these issues.” But, she said, “I think that the community is not.”
