The Bay State Banner
Below is an excerpt from a November 21 article published by The Bay State Banner.
Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts announced Nov. 15 that they are suing Boston police and the mayor’s office for the public release of the city’s gang database.
Carol Rose, executive director of ACLU Massachusetts and Kade Crockford, director of the organization’s Technology for Liberty program, told journalists gathered via conference call last Thursday afternoon that they, along with several other civil rights groups, including the Children’s Law Center of Massachusetts and Greater Boston Legal Services, have filed a public records lawsuit against the Boston Police Department (BPD), police Commissioner William Gross, the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) and the City of Boston, in the hope that law enforcement’s Gang Assessment Database, a list of suspected gang members about which very little is known, will finally be released.
“In Boston, we call our city a sanctuary for immigrants, but behind the scenes, under cover of secrecy, local law enforcement profiling systems allow young people to be targeted and deported — even when they haven’t been suspected of engaging in criminal activity,” said Rose.
Read more at The Bay State Banner.
