Pubdate: Wed, 08 Jul 2015
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2015 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: http://services.bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340
Website: http://bostonglobe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Jan Ransom

ACLU CRITICAL OF HOW SWAT TEAMS ARE USED

Newly released records show that tactical units with the state's 
largest regional law enforcement organization are being used far too 
often for drug raids, according to the American Civil Liberties Union 
of Massachusetts, in what it calls an inefficient use of resources in 
the war on drugs.

But the documents show that the tactical units are used for a variety 
of incidents, the law enforcement coalition's president said, and 
scrutinizing the drug raid reports doesn't tell the whole story.

A special weapons and tactics team is called in when a situation is 
deemed dangerous and the "SWAT team makes the scene safe," said 
Carlisle Police Chief John C. Fisher, president of the Northeastern 
Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council.

According to the documents released Tuesday, the council, which 
provides specialized police operations including SWAT to communities 
in Middlesex and Essex counties, deployed its tactical units 79 times 
between August 2012 and June 2014.

Thirty-three of those deployments were to serve warrants, and 21 were 
for drug-related raids.

"The single-most reason for deployment wasn't for public safety 
concerns, but for drug offenses," said Jessie Rossman, staff attorney 
with the ACLU, who said that the figures mirror a national trend.

The council provided about 900 pages of documents Tuesday after the 
ACLU filed a lawsuit in June 2014. The data also listed a variety of 
military-style equipment the agency has, including two armored 
BearCat vehicles that together are worth more than $386,000, 
night-vision goggles, grenades, and high-tech firearms.

Besides search warrants, the agency's SWAT and regional response 
teams have aided in crowd control, suicide prevention, search and 
rescues, arresting armed suspects, and other incidents that accounted 
for 57 percent of all deployments.

Such deployments are becoming more standard, said Thomas Nolan, a 
former Boston police officer who is now a criminology professor at 
Merrimack College. But in some cases - such as when a person is 
suicidal - Nolan questions whether a tactical unit is needed.

"In some of these situations it's like swatting a mosquito with a 
sledgehammer," he said. "It will continue to be used in a manner more 
and more routine. We don't want military-style equipment used" with 
local law enforcement.

However, the ACLU's primary concern is the use of SWAT teams in 
drug-related search warrants - and the relatively small drug seizures 
that result from them.

Of the drug-related search warrants the agency's SWAT team assisted 
in executing, the tactical unit reported recovering drugs only five 
times, Rossman said. In other cases, only small amounts of drugs were 
recovered by the SWAT team, the ACLU found. "This is not an efficient 
or effective method to address the drug crisis," he said.

Fisher said measuring drug seizures isn't a fair assessment, however. 
He said the police departments his agency helps often find "all kinds 
of things" that might not be listed in reports by the SWAT team, but 
would be listed in a local agency's report.

"Once that scene is safe, it's not uncommon that our guys are long 
gone before the narcotics are discovered," he said.

Jack McDevitt, director of Northeastern University's Institute on 
Race and Justice, said there should be a conversation about which 
warrants should be executed by local police departments.

"People are getting warrants served on them every day, but you don't 
need SWAT teams to always do that," said McDevitt. "How are people 
evaluating when to bring in a unit like SWAT so that it maximizes the 
unit and minimizes the cost?"

Fisher said his tactical unit officers ensure that scenes are safe, 
and local police typically only reach out when a matter reaches a 
certain level of dangerousness.

"It needs to be vetted," Fisher said. "Is it dangerous? Is it 
something officers may not be trained to do? Law enforcement 
regionalization is a best practice - it's not antiquated."

The Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council is a 
consortium of 58 police and sheriff agencies that serve a host of 
communities, including Cambridge, Gloucester, Lowell, Lynn, Salem, 
and Somerville.

"They provide resources to the community in their catchment area that 
otherwise they would not have access to," said former Plainville 
police chief Ned Merrick.

Member police departments designate at least 10 percent of their 
resources to council units, and must pay $4,825 annually in 
membership dues. The agency's budget as of the fiscal year that ended 
June 30 was $388,458.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom