Suspicions have begun to circulate that police officers in the Boston area are going undercover as concertgoers in order to break up local house shows, according to several news outlets.
The suspected undercover police officers used Facebook and Twitter accounts to message local venues that host house-shows, saying things like, “Patty’s day is a mad house I am still pissing green beer. The cops do break balls something wicked here. What’s the address for Saturday Night, love DIY concerts.”
The Boston Police Department has declined to comment on any possible involvement.
David Rossman, Boston University Professor of Law, said if Boston police officers are going undercover to monitor house shows, it is perfectly within their rights to do so.
“There are police officers that pretend to be drug users to catch drug dealers, police officers that pretend to be prostitutes in order to catch that sort of thing,” he said. “They can basically go undercover to do anything, certainly if they’re not invading someone’s privacy.”
Rossman said if police entered the home as undercover agents, there might be regulations.
“There may be constitutional problems with going undercover and having someone invite you [a police officer] into their home if they’re inviting you in, not to participate in a crime, but because you pretend to be some innocent third party,” he said. “But if all they’re doing is setting up something like a Facebook page, they’re not invading your privacy by doing so.”
Grant Gochnaur, 26, a musician from Pennsylvania touring Boston with his band, Eyes Wide, said he wondered if police were entering house shows while still undercover.
“Are they going into someone’s home without consent?” he said. “In areas that are kind of bad, and you have vandalism and stuff like that, I can see patrolling the area, but I don’t think going into houses is the way to do that.”
Rene del Fierro, a 28 year-old musician and producer who lived in Boston for about nine years, said he thinks people feel uncomfortable about police allegedly going undercover because of the legal aspects.
“It’s a weird topic that doesn’t really fit into a law, so that’s why many people feel strangely about it, because it’s kind of ambiguous,” he said. “But if people are advertising and trying to sell tickets, then the city technically has the right to shut it down.”
Brandon Gepfer, 25, a musician touring Boston with his band, Placeholder, said there are more important issues for the police to focus on.
“I think it’s [expletive] that the cops are doing this,” he said. “In a city the size of Boston, there are probably a lot bigger things, like the war on drugs or, you know, murders – real things that are happening, not shows where 20-year-olds are just drinking and having fun, doing nothing to harm society at large.”
Tim Johnson, 19, a sophomore at Emerson College who has attended house shows and basement shows for about three years, said police are harming the local music culture.
“The police have valid reasons for breaking up these shows,” he said. “But the reality is that by shutting down these shows, they’re destroying local culture, because these acts can’t get booked at clubs or venues, and being booked at bars restricts people under 21 from being able to attend.”
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