MASSACHUSETTS – Police militarization has reached an all-time low in Massachusetts. Not only are they armored and armed as well as any military unit in Afghanistan, they apparently now are not held accountable for their actions. The ACLU of Massachusetts claims a weakness in the Massachusetts public record laws.

Recent tweet by ALCUM

According to articles from the Boston Globe and Washington Post, various police forces are combining into groups called law enforcement councils, or LECs.

According to Boston.Com, the ACLU requested certain records concerning the police organizations:

As part of an effort to document regional policing operations, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Massachusetts (“ACLUM”) requested documents concerning NEMLEC’s SWAT Team and RRT in July 2012. The request sought NEMLEC’s training materials, incident reports, deployment statistics, guidelines, procurement records, budgets, agreements with other agencies and documents relating to the structure of the SWAT team and RRT.

The North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, or NEMLEC, refused on the grounds that they are a private, non-profit 501(c)3 group that is not required to produce records for the public.

The Washington Post article stated:

Let’s be clear. These agencies oversee police activities. They employ cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure and kill. They operate SWAT teams, which conduct raids on private residences. And yet they say that because they’ve incorporated, they’re immune to Massachusetts open records laws. The state’s residents aren’t permitted to know how often the SWAT teams are used, what they’re used for, what sort of training they get or who they’re primarily used against.

In the 2005 ruling of Gonzales v. Castle Rock, the Supreme Court ruled that police are not Constitutionally obligated to protect you even to enforce a restraining order.

A follow-up tweet by the ACLUM concerning the militarization of Mass. police.