Wednesday was the day that the contentious intelligence-gathering division of the Boston Police Department received approval from the Boston City Council for grants totaling around $3.4 million.
With this kind of money, the Boston Regional Intelligence Centre will be able to bring on board an additional eight data analysts. The centre was established in 2005 with the goal of reducing crime and preventing terrorism through sharing intelligence with local, state, and federal law enforcement partners. Its headquarters are located within the Boston Police Department.
The vote brings to a close a political battle that has put the left side of the body against Mayor Michelle Wu, who was previously seen as the progressive standard-bearer for the council.
“We are moving backwards on police reform,” said Councillor Kendra Lara, one of the measure’s opponents. “The status quo will not do.” Lara suggested that an increase in spending on the police intelligence unit will lead to the targeting of Black, Latino, and Muslim people of the community by law enforcement.
The intelligence centre has a broad goal to scan for “all threats and all hazards,” and the data that it collects is routinely used in anything from homicide investigations to probing recent bomb threats at local hospitals. The mission of the intelligence centre is to assess for “all threats and all hazards.”
However, it has been subject to criticism from civil rights campaigners for many years. These advocates accuse the centre of conducting disproportionately more surveillance on communities of colour. The office of the Attorney General in Massachusetts is conducting an investigation into charges of racial bias in the gang database maintained by the Boston Regional Intelligence Centre.
Concerns over the database prompted councillors, including Wu, to propose two years ago that the organisation receive funds in the form of a block grant. During her run for mayor, Wu made another campaign promise: she would eliminate the gang database.
But over the past month, Wu has been advocating for increased financing for the intelligence centre, even going so far as to reapply for a grant that she had previously opposed.
Lara accused the mayor of doing an “about-face” on the funding, saying Wu’s criticism of the center and its gang database had helped win her vote in the mayoral race, “a vote that I will not soon be giving her again,” she said.
Before the meeting on Wednesday, Wu explained the shift in her opinion on the centre, which is commonly referred to by its initials, BRIC. She sent the letter to the council in advance.
“Several consequential policy and leadership changes have been implemented such that the BRIC and Boston Police Department operate in a significantly different environment today,” stated the journalist. Wu drew attention to the recently passed rule governing surveillance oversight in the city, the newly established Office of Police Accountability and Transparency, as well as various changes to the gang database.
At the meeting on Wednesday, Councillor Michael Flaherty stated his agreement with the mayor’s points.
“This is a different BRIC, this is a different police commissioner, this is a different mayor,” claimed the politician. “Give them the opportunity.”
In the end, the grants were given the go-ahead with a vote of 7-5 from the council. Several of the progressive councilors pointed out the racial breakdown of the vote: The council’s seven white members voted for the police funding; the five no votes all came from councilors of color.
After the vote, Muslim Justice League Executive Director Fatema Ahmad said she saw the result as a blow to the movement for criminal justice reform that was ignited after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.
“Now that they don’t have thousands of people protesting, and they don’t have a moment to pretend that they care about these issues, they’re mo
