On Wednesday, a contentious package of grants to fund the Boston Regional Intelligence Centre was given the go-ahead by the City Council of Boston by a razor-thin margin. The centre is a police data gathering and analysis operation that is better known by its acronym, BRIC. It houses, among other things, Boston’s database of individuals who are suspected of belonging to gangs.
After a debate that lasted for more than an hour and periodically led to heated exchanges, a grant application for $3.4 million was finally granted by a margin of 7 votes to 5. All of the city council members who voted in favour of the motion were Frank Baker, Liz Breadon, Gabriela Coletta, Sharon Durkan, Michael Flaherty, Ed Flynn, and Erin Murphy. All of the aforementioned councillors opposed the grants: Ricardo Arroyo, Kendra Lara, Ruthzee Louijeune, and Julia Mejia. Brian Worrell also voted against them. There was no sign of Councillor Tania Fernandes Anderson today.
The votes were split along racial lines, with councillors of colour voting against the motion and white councillors voting in favour of it.
Last week, the financing was the topic of a contentious hearing in which Boston police officials were called in to answer hard questions about BRIC and how they would boost openness in the organisation.
In a ruling that was handed down a year ago, a judge panel stated that the gang database utilised a “erratic point system built on unsubstantiated inferences.” Both the database and BRIC itself have regularly been the target of criticism for the possibility of infringing upon residents’ civil liberties and engaging in racial profiling.
The financing has been the subject of discussion for a considerable amount of time, stretching all the way back to when Mayor Michelle Wu served on the City Council. Back then, she cast her vote against the grants; nevertheless, more recently, she voted in favour of them. On Wednesday morning, Wu explained her decision to change direction in a letter that she had addressed to the City Council. In the letter, she urged the council to support the money and outlined the reasons for her change.
The four awards, each of which is worth $850,000, will enable the police department to hire eight additional analysts to work at the BRIC. According to Wu’s letter, four will focus on monitoring active events, two will coordinate with other law enforcement officials, and the remaining two will concentrate on the programme that BPD is undertaking to share information with the general public.
Following the hearing from the previous week, Councillor Flaherty, who serves as the chair of the Committee on Public Safety and Criminal Justice, suggested that the City Council go ahead and approve the funding. In a conversation that took place on Wednesday, Flaherty discussed the background of the facility and emphasised the fact that the work done at BRIC contributes to the resolution of a wide variety of crimes in addition to the detection of gang members.
“For the benefit of those who haven’t been here in past years, we have held a number of hearings on the BRIC. And if anyone in this room can vouch for it, it’s going to be me. The BRIC nations of today are not the same as the BRIC nations of two years ago, nor the BRIC nations of five years ago, nor the BRIC nations of ten years ago. Flaherty’s tone became increasingly irritated as he pleaded with the audience to “give them an opportunity to earn the trust and respect that we are willing to offer them.”
Coletta stated that she had numerous issues with BRIC, despite the fact that she ultimately voted yes. She stated that the data sharing that took place during the Trump administration between the Boston Police Department, the Boston Public Schools, and the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement was “abhorrent,” and she concurred that the previous method of adding residents to the gang database was flawed. She demanded that individual records maintained at BRIC be subjected to an independent audit and that the centre hold hearings twice a year to gather information on the center’s level of transparency and oversight.
Coletta highlighted demographic statistics of people who work at BRIC, which showed that between 16 and 17 percent of the workforce identifies as either black or hispanic.
“It is very evident that this needs to change. Lived experience is important, especially when making judgements on subjective behaviours that satisfy the requirements of’reasonable suspicion,’ as she put it.
Lara vehemently opposed the funding, arguing that she worked with young people who were unjustly targeted by gang classifications based on a defective system. She stated that she worked with these individuals.
“I got to see the damage that a BRIC classification does to a young person that is trying to turn their life around,” she said. “I got to see it firsthand.” “The only thing progressive about us, including the mayor, is that we call ourselves progressive. This is a step backward in the right direction.”
Lara singled out Wu and said that the mayor did not complete his pledges to get rid of the gang database. She went on to claim that she would not vote for Wu again because of this.
Mejia was one of several lawmakers who raised objections over the rapidity with which the financing was being put up for a vote. Instead of the Committee on Public Safety and Criminal Justice, she advocated for further hearings to be held in front of the Committee on Government Accountability, Transparency, and Accessibility. Mejia further stated that the issue is causing racial divisions to emerge inside the community as well as within the community Council.
“It is interesting that we are now, yet again, falling on a vote that will again uplift the deep racial divide that exists here in the city of Boston, that exists here in City Council,” she said. “It exists here in City Council.”
Baker was a strong supporter of the funds. He noted that the job that BRIC does is not limited to the city of Boston, and he added that he has family members who work in the police departments of neighbouring cities, and they have expressed to him how much they rely on BRIC.
“BRIC is the epitome of intelligence. “We want police officers with intelligence,” he stated.
