Comment by daniel-levin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by daniel-levin | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The Massachusetts police have privatised part of their operations. And the 'general counsel for the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association' has said that they're immune to information requests because they're private corporations. The article positions the purpose of the privatisation as secrecy. This seems like a very Bad Thing, so it's not surprising that the ACLU have stepped in.

But I'm going to play devil's advocate, because I want to know the truth:

I wonder if there are other, possibly more important reasons for forming these private corporations. Maybe the existing police system doesn't function optimally, and provisioning resources (such as trained officers with appropriate equipment for drug busts) is a process that's too slow, or inadequate. Maybe this is a way of detouring the bureaucracy and systemic bullshit that encumbers civil servants whose job is ultimately to keep people safe.

The article says that Tewksbury, MA paid $4600 for membership to NEMLEC. That town has a population of around 28 000. It doesn't make sense for a small town like that to have a police force with a dedicated SWAT team, computer crimes unit and schools incident response team. It also doesn't make sense for a larger jurisdiction to serve the smaller community when it [the smaller community] needs it, and get nothing in return. It seems as though it's a way for police departments to share resources. I'd imagine that if a small town's police department found themselves unable to deal with a time-critical scenario, like a shooter in a school, they'd call in backup pretty damned quickly. Perhaps the quality of response a small town could get through NEMLEC would be better than going through traditional police channels?

To me it seems like the primary purpose of forming these private NPCs is not secrecy. As the article says, government police agencies already do that - "police agencies have broadly interpreted open records laws to allow them to turn down just about every request."

So, if it is actually easy for police agencies to turn down requests in the first place, why go to all the effort to form, finance, and manage a 3200 member [1] corporation?

[1] http://www.nemlec.com/who.htm

edit: clarified a sentence by adding 'through NEMLEC'

I don't think the article positions secrecy as the primary, let alone sole, purpose of this effort at all. It is clearly, as you say, to get around all sorts of 'inconvenient' things in government bureaucracy.

The thing is that a lot of that bureaucracy is there explicitly to slow down and provide scrutiny over one of the most vulnerable to corruption parts of government. The people who enforce the law, without supervision, can easily become the law, and that's extremely dangerous for civil society.

That's why, in a sane world, there'd be a state-level organization that does the things that are too big for small towns, not a private corporation. The excuse is that the state authorities are too backed up - essentially, that they're underfunded. How transferring tax money to a private LEC helps with that is not entirely clear to me.

The most important question here is, who exactly authorizes the use of force by NEMLEC? This, as is, allows undisclosed use of force whenever the powers that be (I believe police chiefs) feel like it, without the need for disclosure.

This is essentially an unregulated regional army. Paid for with taxes, but not actually beholden to the tax payer.

Why would somebody form that? That depends on how paranoid you want to think.

You do realize that all the officers that are on the LEC SWAT team are employed by local police agencies, none work for NEMLEC. Mutual aid emergency services teams comprised of members of multiple agencies are common all over the country. "Northwest Regional SWAT" just sounds less scary than NEMLEC. All the individual police agencies that are members of nemlec would still fall under whatever open records laws apply in that state. You can see which dept chiefs lead which units here: http://nemlec.com/units.htm

> "Northwest Regional SWAT" just sounds less scary than NEMLEC.

Wrong. It all sounds like a militarized police force with little to no responsibility. For example, the SWAT launched a flash bang grenade in the crib of a 2 year old. But you know, the SWAT response was a botchet attempt at finding a non-violent drug crime.

The kid still has a hole in his body that hasn't healed. And they are unsure of brain damage. It's likely though.

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/24/a_swat_team_blew_a_hole_in_m...

I'm getting really tired of the repetition of the 'SWAT team throws grenade at infant' line used as though this is now routine policy in these teams, babies are getting blown up left right and centre across the US, and so on. That was a terrible mistake, not a fucking policy decision.

That was a terrible mistake, not a fucking policy decision.

Using heavily armed SWAT teams to conduct raids on family homes for small-time drug offenses seems like a policy decision to me...

There's a reasonable way of handling drug crimes.

Have 2 cars with 2-4 cops go arrest everyone and then look for drugs, given an appropriate warrant. If you see heavy arsenal, THEN calling in heavy guns can be called for.

But you dont just show up at someone's house with SWAT by default and do whatever you want. That's just wrong. But that's done. Just go look up the new phenomenon "Swatting".

> All the individual police agencies that are members of nemlec would still fall under whatever open records laws apply in that state.

You do realize that the article highlights the fact that regardless of the employment of the officers involved, the argument is being made that "an operation" was conducted as NEMLEC, a private corporation not beholden to open information requests.

Off duty officers shoot people. Some times they are just acting as private citizens. Sometimes they are uniformed private security. Other times they are just plain old moon-lighted security. The legal protection carried by the civil police force to the officer varies under each of these scenarios. The actual police force that the officer is on the payroll of is "usually" not obligated to defend the officer under any of these considering the scenario of a lawsuit, wrongful death, civil liberties, or misconduct. Further, there is usually some Union (non-government entity) involved with similar obligations/exceptions for defending the officer.

Despite the argument that the operation is being conducted by NEMLEC and not the city, it should be noted all of the activities of NEMLEC involve on duty officers - a reading of either the article or the NEMLEC website makes this clear.

The Massachusetts police have privatised part of their operations.

I don't think the term "privatize" reflects the situation as described in the article or as described in the organization's website. According to all the descriptions, everyone involved in the organization is a public employee acting in their official capacity. This makes all of it's activities the activities of the government.

Maybe, this consortium was originally formed to save some money. Police and fire departments band together in a variety of forms. But contrary to your line of reasoning, this is neither a justification for secrecy nor is that a reason not to be interested in this situation. What is important and disturbing is that this isn't privatization as such but rather this is a public entity relabeling activities as private and claiming immunity to public scrutiny on that basis (not that overt privatization doesn't have it's own problems).

Disturbing as the present efforts to evade scrutiny are, we should take note that this sort of deceptive relabeling of government activities can potentially open the door to local government evading any and all regulations that the courts and state laws might place on them (though hopefully this stuff will fall apart "in the light of day").

The military and government in general makes extensive use of contractors for specialized tasks, but manages to audit and limit their behaviors to the degree that they're performing work on behalf of the government, recognizing that contracting out government work doesn't make it not government work.

How are these any different?

Even if they are contractors for specialized policing (something I find dubious, but am not sure is actually a bad idea), why wouldn't they still be subject to regulation as government employees while performing government work?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com