Gang database target of debate
Police intel funding tied to changes, mayor says
Mayor Michelle Wu said new leadership at the city’s police department and efforts to clear names that were no longer relevant from its gang database caused her to change her earlier view, and support funding for BPD’s investigative arm.
The flip-flop has the support of the city’s largest police union, but has been criticized by criminal justice advocates, feedback that the mayor addressed yesterday.
“There were lots of questions about the gang database, how it was being used to potentially feed information to further a school-to-deportation or school-to-prison pipeline,” Wu said on WBUR’s Radio Boston. “I did not believe that the gang database in its form at that point with the structures there should continue because it was causing active harm.”
As a city councilor, Wu said she opted to vote against an $850,000 grant for the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, based on a recommendation from then-City Councilor and current Attorney General Andrea Campbell, who was unhappy with the answers she received when chairing a committee hearing on the funding.
Wu said her “no” vote two years ago stemmed from a lack of clarity on how the funds would be used. That year, while campaigning for mayor, she stated support for abolishing the BRIC and dismantling its gang database.
Today, Wu is on the opposite side of the latest City Council vote to reject funding for the BRIC. Following the body’s 7-5 vote to pass on $2.5 million in state grants earlier this month, the mayor quickly refiled the three rejected $850,000 grants, for fiscal years 2021, 2022, and 2023, and filed an additional $850,000 grant from FY20.
The four grants, totaling $3.4 million and earmarked for the purpose of improving technology aimed at fighting crime, gangs and terrorism, will be debated at a Friday hearing of the City Council’s Public Safety and Criminal Justice committee. The funds will then come before the full body for another vote.
“Fast forward to today,” the progressive mayor said of her change in policy, there’s new leadership at the police department and new structures in place as well.
The city has implemented an Office of Police Accountability and Transparency, she said, and a similar undertaking has occurred at the state level, through the Peace Officer Standards and Training, or POST Commission.
Further, Wu said she spent “many hours” in her early weeks as mayor discussing the BRIC and its gang database with the police department, meetings that were aimed at “understanding some of the changes they were making.”
“One change, for example, was around names that were inactive in terms of any interactions with law enforcement, but had somehow gotten into the database and were just there, always affecting someone’s future potentially,” Wu said. “They’ve changed their procedures around how that database has been maintained, so thousands of names have been removed. Inactive names are regularly taken out.”
The mayor also addressed this month’s City Council vote, which was slammed as “petty” by Councilor Michael Flaherty, who had called for bypassing a hearing to immediately vote on the grant funds and will chair Friday’s session.
“We were, on the administration side, not expecting that it would be immediately put up for a vote; we expected that it would go into a hearing,” Wu said. “We’re very much and remain prepared to go through that entire legislative process to be clear about what these funds will go to.”
She added, “Even if I were on the Council, I would hesitate to support something without adequate information.”