Boston Police Commissioner William Gross caused controversy when, on his private Facebook account, he criticized the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts for their Nov. 15 lawsuit against the Boston Police Department and the City of Boston.
According to the filed complaint, the ACLU took legal action because they believe the BPD has not been transparent about its system of monitoring suspected gang members, which, they said, disproportionately targets black and Latinx people.
“No ACLU when officers are shot. No ACLU when we help citizens,” Gross wrote in the Facebook post, according to The Boston Herald Nov. 25. “But always hiding and waiting for a slow news day to justify their existence.”
Carol Rose, executive director of ACLU Massachusetts, said in a statement that Gross’s post was a distraction from the issues raised by the lawsuit.
“Commissioner Gross’ accusations appear to be nothing more than an attempt to divert attention from the serious issues raised by a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and other groups seeking to uncover whether the Boston Police Department is unfairly and arbitrarily targeting people of color through its gang database and sharing false information with federal immigration officials,” Rose said.
According to the lawsuit, children can be put in the BPD’s Gang Assessment Database and can be labeled as active gang members based on clothing they wear or classmates they are seen with.
“Being labeled as a gang member can have catastrophic consequences for a young person’s life, including being targeted for surveillance and police stops, facing harsher outcomes in the criminal justice system, and-for noncitizen youth- being detained and deported,” the lawsuit said.
The ACLU requested information about the policies of and the entries in the database in May, the lawsuit stated. The lawsuit also stated that the ACLU has only been given a handful of records from BPD.
“In fact, the Commissioner’s post does not explain why the Boston Police Department has failed to comply with the public records law, and does not answer basic questions about the BPD’s use of its gang database,” Rose said.
According to the lawsuit, details about the gang database surfaced when information from the database was used by ICE officials in immigration court.
Tracey Maclin, a professor in Boston University’s School of Law, said the police’s tracking of possible gang members may not mean that racial profiling is taking place.
“It may be true that they are profiling gangs, but that doesn’t mean that it is done for a racial or an ethnic reason,” Maclin said.
The BPD uses a point system to determine if someone is put on the Gang Assessment Database, the lawsuit states. If someone has between six and nine points, BPD labels them a “Gang Associate.” If they have 10 or more points, they are labeled a “Gang Member.”
Bruce Ridgway, 29, of East Boston, said he thinks the plaintiffs are doing the right thing by filing the lawsuit.
“I think if they’re going to be invading people’s privacy like that, they should be very transparent about how they’re going about doing that and who they’re targeting and why,” Ridgway said.
Ridgway said he disagrees with Gross’s opinion of the ACLU and believes the lawsuit was made out of necessity.
“If the ACLU is concerned about it, there must be something,” Ridgway said. “They wouldn’t go for a lawsuit for no reason.”
Shelby Guffey, 22, of Allston, said she thinks the point system is not a poor way to handle the gang database.
“It sounds like that’s not a good system at all, like based on points or just your visual, it can’t be totally reliable,” Guffey said. “I’m totally for them suing and figuring out what the deal is.”
Many factors can be used to assign points, the lawsuit states, including four points for associating with a gang member or making a hand gesture believed to be a gang sign, and eight points for being the victim of gang-related violence.
According to the lawsuit, four points can be assigned for wearing clothing deemed by the BPD to be gang-related, such as Chicago Bulls caps.
The plaintiffs claim in the lawsuit that the BPD’s database mislabels a significant number of people as gang members, a majority of whom are black and Latinx.
“Because the criteria for gang membership are vague enough to be used in nearly any situation, they are readily applied to things that are popular among certain Black or Latinx youth,” the lawsuit states.
Sophia Dorsainvil-Johnson, a junior in BU’s Wheelock College of Education and Human Development, said she thinks the point system is flawed and agrees that it targets minorities.
“That’s profiling, literally looking at somebody and saying, ‘You look like you’re in a gang,’ or, ‘You seem to be doing stuff that is gang affiliated,’” Johnson said. “It’s obvious that black and brown people would have a higher chance of being targeted for that.”
Natalie Patrick contributed to the reporting of this article.
