PODCAST: Suing the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office for public records
An in-depth discussion of The Mass Dump’s police transparency lawsuit
First, I’m now on Bluesky — so please give me a follow! (Sorry, but I don’t have any invites yet.) You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Mastodon.
I appeared on The Weed Out podcast to talk about my public records lawsuit against Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan’s office, which is refusing to release the names of police officers accused of crimes and other misconduct. Thanks to hosts Joanna Mae Boody and Spencer Fox Peterson for having me on again.
Listen here:
I’ve appeared on The Weed Out a few times before:
In a January episode, I talked about my investigation of an alleged police brutality incident in Berkshire County.
In a February episode, I discussed problems with the Massachusetts public records law.
And in a March episode, I shared my advice about what to do when you are denied access to public records.
You can read more about my public records lawsuit here:
If you’d like to keep The Mass Dump running, please consider offering your financial support, either by signing up for a paid subscription to this newsletter or sending me a tip via PayPal.
Introducing MassTransparency
Jeff Raymond, the founder and editor of the Millbury-based Bramanville Tribune, announced a new project called MassTransparency on Monday. The website aims to host data about complaints against all police officers in Massachusetts. Currently, it has data from more than 200 police departments.
The Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, which was established by a 2020 police reform law, has been collecting this data from every police department throughout the commonwealth. The POST Commission has said it plans to include this information in a public database but has delayed publishing it several times and scaled back the amount of information it intends to include. The POST Commission has also refused to release the data in response to public records requests.
Raymond has been gathering the data in piecemeal fashion by making records requests directly to individual police departments. In April, he wrote for the Bramanville Tribune about how the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association has been advising departments that they could refuse to comply with his requests by citing an irrelevant lawsuit.
Raymond didn’t give up — he has filed countless appeals and documented the problems he has encountered on Twitter.
In his first post for MassTransparency, he highlights the importance of easy access to information about police misconduct:
One municipality, in its response to me, said that these records didn’t have any real public interest, and POST’s misguided choice to not publicize them was proof. As I sorted through the records I received, however, other stories of police conduct made their way through the media. It became a habit of mine to check on the records for the officers in hot water and see if it told us anything interesting. As always, people are innocent until proven guilty, but, for example:
In Duxbury, Steven Amado was indicted on charges of falsifying a police report and witness intimidation. The Boston Globe, who I believe broke the story, describes Officer Amado as “a 24-year veteran of the force.” Duxbury’s POST records, in contrast (which, by the way, I had to appeal to the state to get), show an officer with 13 prior reported incidents, six of which were sustained. Prior to this year, there was no immediate way for the people of Duxbury or anyone who gets to visit their beaches to know that one officer makes up nearly half of the reported incidents in the town. I completely understand why the Duxbury chief wouldn’t want this public, because that’s a real condemnation of the department that kept letting this officer get away with it. But why wouldn’t POST want people to know this?
If you want to see whether your city or town has released its POST Commission data, check out the spreadsheet here. Make sure you subscribe to MassTransparency for future updates.
I previously released POST Commission data from the Boston Police Department and the Massachusetts State Police, which was incorporated into MassTransparency.
At the end of the podcast, we discussed Bill Shaner’s must-read piece about the class-action lawsuit against the Worcester Police Department for its violent, out-of-control response to a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest. Read it here:
Again, please consider supporting The Mass Dump!
If you have any story ideas or want to invite me on your podcast, let me know — you can email me at aquemere0@gmail.com.
That’s all for today.