Project to publish Massachusetts police complaint data two-thirds complete
Mass Transparency founder says he’s starting to “see the light at the end of the tunnel” for police transparency project
Jeff Raymond of Mass Transparency, who has been diligently working to make data about complaints against all police officers in Massachusetts available to the public, tweeted on Saturday that he’s starting to “see the light at the end of the tunnel for this particular project for the first time.” Raymond said he has received data from about two thirds of the state’s police departments.
All police departments in the commonwealth were required to submit spreadsheets with this data to the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, which was created by a police reform law passed by the state Legislature in 2020. The POST Commission has thus far refused to publish the data, but Raymond has been collecting it in piecemeal fashion by making records requests to individual departments.
Despite facing pushback and having to make about 260 appeals to the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Office, Raymond has obtained data from most of the agencies.
After requesting records from all 351 municipalities in the state, the 13 sheriff’s departments, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, and the Massachusetts State Police, Raymond has received complete responses to about 250 requests and is waiting on responses to about 120, he said.
If you want to see whether your local police department has released its POST Commission data, check out the spreadsheet here.
Raymond also recently appeared on The Weed Out podcast to talk about his project. You can listen here:
On Monday, Raymond wrote that he is planning other transparency-related projects and will announce the next one this week. He said he hopes to expand Mass Transparency and is looking for volunteers who are experienced with data.
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