8 ms·

Massachusetts SWAT teams claim they’re private corporations

• bjelkeman-again 12y ago
  The developments in the US around surveillance, domestic use of force and the way the politicians allow this to happen reads more and more like the introduction chapter to a dystopian science fiction novel.
  • jacquesm 12y ago
    By a spectacularly bad writer, after all, who would ever believe all this nonsense.
    • wmf 12y ago
      Maybe we could get a more interesting future by electing science fiction writers. Stross-Doctorow vs. Gibson-Sterling would make for some fun campaigning.
      • totalforge 12y ago
        The election is here, it's just not evenly distributed.
        • DrewRWx 12y ago
          I can't find the most recent stats, but you are right[1]... at least for the House of Representatives. [1] http://www.datamasher.org/mash-ups/people-representative#table-tab http://www.datamasher.org/mash-ups/people-representative#tab...
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    • onewaystreet 12y ago
      The privatization of the police and military is right out of the pages of Snow Crash.
      • rodgerd 12y ago
        Snow Crash was written long after Robocop and the Sprawl series. Sheesh. Kids.
    • pekk 12y ago
      If the question is who would believe ALL of it, the answer is: people who are very credulous, and people whose prejudices are catered to by these stories. It is very easy to forget that just because some stories of a certain kind are true, not all of them are true.
  • unchocked 12y ago
    It seems the government has gotten really good at using the complexity of law to provide inane justification for shocking activities.
    • esbranson 12y ago
      The government has gotten really good at making access to the law impracticable for anyone except those who have already read it (lawyers). The law is the most expensive set of books you will ever memorize yet never own and never read. See my other comment on why.
    • bmelton 12y ago
      "It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow." — Alexander Hamilton
  • sybhn 12y ago
    One has to wonder if this is a repeat of history in the U.S. or if this has really no precedent. Either way, the future of this nation looks bleak.
    • ISL 12y ago
      If this is a repeat of history, then the future of the U.S. is bright.
      • justizin 12y ago
        explain?
        • mpyne 12y ago
          That "rubber stamp" court at FISA was created in response to far worse breaches of power (and the law) by various LE agencies and NSA itself which were revealed in the late 1970s. The actions of an NSA trying to keep up with rapidly changing technology in a way that doesn't violate the law (even if only technically so) is a far cry from the abuses that led to the Church Committee. So if this (like last time) is the low that we will improve from after the bright light of transparency was shined on the enterprise, then the U.S. will be in great shape.
        • barry-cotter 12y ago
          He's analogising it to the American Revolution. I find this more than a little strained for a number of reasons. 1. Imagine the horror of a world where the USA looked more like Canada and slavery probably ended without the bloodiest war in North America's history. 2. British tyranny was light. At the time of the American Revolution the Crown's North American subjects were richer and less lightly taxed than its British ones. 3. Military and transportation technology have advanced radically since that time. No European power managed to subdue trans-Atlantic rebellions from established settler states. The US armed forces are designed for fighting two major wars at a time and have oceans to east and west and client states to north and south. They would have no problem subduing "terrorists" or "seditionists".
  • x1798DE 12y ago
    Don't forget to read Greg Lukanioff's Unlearning Liberty[1], a very detailed examination of basically the same forces at work in education and free speech. I read it not long after reading Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain[2], and was really disturbed by the parallels between what's happening naturally in universities (basically because individual actors such as administrators have no personal disincentive against violating the rights of their students) and what the soviet union systematically did to the universities when they were establishing their foothold in the Eastern Bloc. There's a whole chapter on education in Applebaum's book, and it's essentially a perfect description of what's happening in US universities. It's deeply chilling, and the same thing is causing the militarization of the police - individual police are never held liable for wrong-door raids, for killing innocent civilians, for violating the rights of US citizens, so they have no incentive to try and stop it happening. 1. http://www.unlearningliberty.com/ http://www.unlearningliberty.com/ 2. http://www.anneapplebaum.com/iron-curtain-the-crushing-of-eastern-europe-1944-1956/ http://www.anneapplebaum.com/iron-curtain-the-crushing-of-ea...
    • personlurking 12y ago
      Sorry if this is not exactly related but the words Unlearning Liberty made me think of The Anatomy of Slavespeak, a document on questioning words we use and hear all the time (like liberty). It's easily found by putting the title into a search site. In the least, it's an interesting exercise in how we give shared meaning to words we often don't think twice about using.
• ryanobjc 12y ago
  When you file with the IRS with a LLC, and you are the sole member, the IRS doesn't consider that a 'real' corporation, and you have to take that earnings on your 1040. Likewise, just because these police organizations are using 501(c)3 to provide a corporate shield, a reasonable judge should say that the shield is unlawful. I kind of get a feeling that national security will eventually be trotted out here.
  • k2enemy 12y ago
    An LLC (limited liability company) is not a corporation. So no, it does not have the tax treatment of a corporation.
    • mpyne 12y ago
      I think the general principle still applies though. And even without the tax analogy, acting as an agent of the government does not get rid of the responsibilities of the government in the behavior of their contractor, which is why the government can't simply get around the Fourth Amendment by having a contractor (or allied intelligence agency) do the search for them.
    • nitrogen 12y ago
      Last time I checked, an LLC could elect to be seen in various different ways by the IRS (e.g. corporation, disregarded entity, etc.). Unfortunately italicizing one of the words in the expansion of an initialism doesn't really tell us anything about its meaning.
  • joshuaheard 12y ago
    The IRS may not consider an LLC a corporation for tax purposes, but this has nothing to do with whether a court will consider the LLC as an entity that provides its owners with liability protection. Courts do not give IRS classification any weight. Tax liability and liability for other corporate debts are not the same thing. (It is a common misperception, though.) However, that is not the issue here. The ACLU is arguing (rightly) that even though these entities are corporations, they are acting as agents of the government, and thus should be required to follow laws pertaining to government agencies.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• JackFr 12y ago
  Seems foolish, on the part of the LEC's. IANAL, but I assume they that if they are non-governmental organizations, it dramatically changes their profile regarding lawsuits, that is no personal immunity, etc. Anyone who is a lawyer know?
  • dragonwriter 12y ago
    IANAL, but I think I can address that somewhat. While the organization itself may not have governmental immunity as a private corporation -- which it probably doesn't, having incorporated as a 501(c)(3) -- the individual police officers are still government employees and still have the immunity they would have in that role.
    • ghayes 12y ago
      So the answer is to fire them from their governmental role.
      • justizin 12y ago
        unfortunately police officers are _almost_ _never_ _fired_ _for_ _any_ _reason_ _whatsoever_.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
• opendais 12y ago
  It seems Massachusetts currently employs Omni Consumer Products tactics and a private police force. Wow. Maybe I should work on founding the OCP today...
• frostmatthew 12y ago
  If they consider themselves private corporations wouldn't that mean their "employees" are breaking laws by a) using the weapons they have access to b) breaking into people's homes and c) arresting people...
  • Paul_Dessert 12y ago
    That's what I was thinking too. How could an arrest hold up in court? This could go both ways.
    • justizin 12y ago
      it seems that they are employees of the particular law enforcement agencies, but the equipment and activities related to SWAT are managed within these corporations.
      • hamiltonkibbe 12y ago
        Breaking into someones house and discharging 70+ rounds of ammunition is an 'activity related to SWAT' and would land any employee of $DEV_SHOP, Inc. in jail, why are these corporations any different?
        • ewoodrich 12y ago
          Because, as justizin and dragonwriter [1] explained above, the actual SWAT team members are employees of the police. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7951933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7951933
          • hamiltonkibbe 12y ago
            So these are government employees, acting in the context of their duties ...as government employees, but records pertaining to their actions, expenditures, etc. are not required because the 501(c)3 owns... what exactly? Either you're kicking in the door and killing an elderly man in a poorly executed search for 0.2g of marijuana and a man in the backyard as a law enforcement officer, in which case you should be bound by the same requirements every tax-funded police department is, or you're doing it as an employee of a tax-exempt corporation, in which case you should go to jail for B&E, Homicide, possession of an automatic weapon, possession of marijuana, etc.
• gohrt 12y ago
  One expects that judges will sort this mess out. In the meantime, what is the governer's statement on this? The only acceptable response to a 5-minute inquiry is "Massachusetts Police Departments are hereby ordered to publish their LEC records or withdraw from LECs immediately"
  • betterunix 12y ago
    "One expects that judges will sort this mess out" Who expects that? Judges failed to stem the growth of militarized police forces for decades.
    • maxerickson 12y ago
      I think things could be a lot worse if we didn't have judges involved. The real cynical view is not that judges are feckless, it is that people in general don't care about things that don't much affect them.
• fleitz 12y ago
  YES! This is brilliant, fuck the records requests, file conspiracy to murder charges.
  • justizin 12y ago
    I like the way you think, but too many judges are inclined to see things through the eyes of law enforcement. A friend of mine had his feet put to the fire during sentencing by a federal judge over whether he thought it was 'funny' to bring a 'department of injustice' sign to a protest where he was later arrested for assaulting a marshall, who in fact kind of stumbled into him and then created a melee. The judge seemed quite clearly to believe that he was a part of the 'department of justice', though the DoJ was the plaintiff in the case before him. Even when you get a precedent set about the role and behavior of law enforcement, it's very difficult to get judges to apply it sanely. "Well, you see, in this prior case the defendent had yellow shoes, so..." That said, something has to be done.
    • fleitz 12y ago
      Yeah, you're supposed to take it seriously so no one finds out what a joke it really is. Only a judge could see that building corporate headquarters is a public use, or that growing a plant in your basement is interstate commerce. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."
• hamiltonkibbe 12y ago
  Either the automatic weapons used by the SWAT teams belong to the police --in which case the SWAT teams are certainly government entities,-- or they belong to the 501(c)3, in which case we should lock everyone up for just as long as we would lock up a gangbanger who's killed multiple people and gets caught with a fully automatic weapon.
  • 67726e 12y ago
    I obviously do not know how these LECs are setup legally speaking, but it is possible to own and operate fully automatic weapons legally as a civilian or business. You can get a tax stamp from the ATF for a few hundred dollars. As an example, my local commercial gun range offers rentals for fully automatic assault rifles and submachine guns at their ranges. That said, this LEC charade is sickening and they should be punished as severely as the law allows. Of course it's America and the police can and do get away with murder so that'll never happen. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Firearms_License http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Firearms_License http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act
    • hamiltonkibbe 12y ago
      Not if that civilian/business has committed a felony...
      • mey 12y ago
        Can a business commit a felony? Edit: Legally I mean. Typically the felony falls on the chain of command in my limited legal understanding. Edit2: In the US
        • hamiltonkibbe 12y ago
          Well no, but people acting as agents of a business can
          • 12y ago
• esbranson 12y ago
  Its actually part of a larger problem. The government regularly gives public property to private entities and claims they no longer have possession. Then they make a contract so they can have access. (Obviously, you don't get access without paying the price.) They do this with The Law (tm)(c) for example. California (the Office of Administrative Law) doesn't even have possession of the codified regulations they make (the California Code of Regulations). Which is why you have to be wealthy to have bulk access to California law (regulations are a form of secondary or delegated legislation) or otherwise have to agree to a license for the "free" (as in beer not as in freedom) Internet version where you give up your rights to your first unborn child etc. (Though the website is practically unusable for any layman who hasn't already read most of it. Of course to encourage you to buy the CD-ROM.) Which of course leads to a breakdown in law and order.
  • parley 12y ago
    Pardon a foreigner. I'd like to understand this. Are you saying that there's law in California (i.e. something you can violate that the justice system has the authority to punish you over) that is not freely (as in freedom) available to any citizen (for whatever purpose, reading, distributing, etc)?
    • dllthomas 12y ago
      It's not at all unique to CA, though as I understand it this is on its way out (thankfully). http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/07/should-legal-codes-be-copyrighted-lets-sue-to-find-out/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/07/s...
    • esbranson 12y ago
      As a practical matter, no, its not freely available. There is a reason why no one knows the law, and its not because no one tries, but because their efforts to know the law that binds them are actively thwarted by its publishers. It is available online, but its unusable for the layman due to ridiculously bad design. You must agree to a contract to use it ("terms of use", "license") and promise never to repeat what you read. Purposely bad design in my opinion. Its 30,000 sections of regulations we're talking about here (there's a further 150,000 sections of California law, 50,000 sections of federal law, and 30,000 sections of federal regulations), and you only know it doesn't apply after you read it. Its javascript-based and uses session cookies, so if you take longer than 5 minutes to read a 30 page section with a bad layout that uses intensely complex verbiage, the next click will "close the book" in your face, and if you have no idea where you were, well, tough luck, there's always prison. If you try and open multiple windows, say, to read another section which is referred to, each window will interfere with each other. (Even trying will likely close the book in your face.) Each click is unbearably slow to load. (29,999 bottles of beer on the wall, 29,999 bottles of beer, take one down, can't pass it around, 30,001 bottles of beer on the wall.) There is no way to give a permalink to your grandma or on your blog, because there are no permalinks. Grandma will have to try and navigate the horrible website herself, and when she likely fails, well, tough luck, there's always prison. It is available as bulk data on CD-ROM (in California) for a significant price, on the order of $3000 per edition. Did I mention it changes almost constantly? Obviously, no permalinks for your blog. California is better than most in that the government was sued and forced to release the statutory law on the web.[1] Other states are not so lucky. [1] http://maplight.org/pr_lawsuit http://maplight.org/pr_lawsuit
• Zigurd 12y ago
  This is why cops and prosecutors should be bonded. Bonding would track and price individuals' risk. It would pay for settlements up front, and not rape the taxpayer for cops' misdeeds, and it would enable liability to function as it should.
  • justizin 12y ago
    that is interesting, i will say that the reason i haven't sued the city of oakland over my treatment at the hands of their police is that paying out more settlements per year than SF and LA combined has not done anything to change their course, and surely hurts the local education budget.
  • jqm 12y ago
    That's a great idea. Far too many bad actors blend back into the group and repeat their misdeeds over and over again.
• pdonis 12y ago
  If they're private corporations, shouldn't they be open to competition from other private corporations? I.e., shouldn't any organization that wants to be able to incorporate as a 501(c)(3) and have the same law enforcement privileges they do? If their answer to that is "well, we have this special contract from the government...", then they are agents of the government and can't hide behind the "private corporation" shield for activities they undertake as such agents. Certainly that's how it works for Federal government contractors: if the GAO audits a Federal program, the contractors who implement it can't hide their records from the auditors with the excuse "oh, we're private corporations".
  • justizin 12y ago
    I think this is more like if you and your software engineering buddies incorporate some kind of organization to own your kayaks, and then someone asks for the log of the kayaks' usage, and you're like: "we may have paid for those kayaks, but we gave them to this other organization that is basically us, but it is not the organization that owes you transparency, so fuck off."
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• bsder 12y ago
  If they're private corporations, they don't have governmental exemptions and everybody should get prosecuted accordingly. That will stop this cold.
  • deciplex 12y ago
    You're operating under the assumption that there are rules in place here that are the same for everyone, and that everyone has to follow the rules. The sooner Americans stop fooling themselves into believing that nonsense, the sooner they can start to fix their broken country. Until then (and it will probably be a long time), try to avoid cops, because they can shoot you for free.
    • tedks 12y ago
      It's hilarious this is being downvoted. It reminds me of a time one of my liberal co-workers tried to mock libertarians by saying "But laws are for the weak, right?" I don't think they realized how utterly true they were.
• zipwitch 12y ago
  Kill them. Kill them with fire. While we still can. If we still can.
• charonn0 12y ago
  If they're private organizations, then they have no lawful authority to use force.
• daniel-levin 12y ago
  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 http://www.nemlec.com/who.htm edit: clarified a sentence by adding 'through NEMLEC'
  • DerpDerpDerp 12y ago
    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?
• trhway 12y ago
  private prisons, private torturers and army (without any limits by any law) in foreign lands, now private army inside the country... I'd think that FOIA wasn't the main law they were setup to dodge, it is just a side benefit. My bet would be about some finance related limits/laws.
• r0h1n 12y ago
  We already knew America's police was getting militarized at a rapid rate. Now they're getting corporatized too. Its prisons are already corporatized. The full circle is almost there. Living in a developing country like India, I'm sometimes half-thankful that our police is inept, woefully ill-equipped with weapons and government-controlled.
  • DrewRWx 12y ago
    The decentralized abuse of the free market is far more terrifying than an omnipresent government power. Also, while the school to prison pipeline is a dire issue in parts of the country, private prisons are still a fraction of total US prisons.
    • nateabele 12y ago
      Please explain how potential harm from entities you voluntarily engage with is in any way comparable to the harm of a single entity that can ruin or end your life on a whim regardless.
      • gress 12y ago
        You don't voluntarily engage with police or prisons whether they are government run or private corporations.
      • arg01 12y ago
        You are not volunteering to engage, you are an externality in someone else's transaction. It's comparable in the outcome to your life. Though admittedly there is a difference in that the single entity purports to obey rules that they claim are for your good while the other multiple actors aren't likely to have expressed any concern for you at all.
      • audunw 12y ago
        It's funny how libertarians think that once you remove government, all human interaction will be voluntary. Humanity is barely keeping itself in check in a complex system that has developed over time, with multiple forms of organization, and multiple levels of checks and balances. Most attempts at massive restructuring has failed horribly, either if it's been in the direction of socialized organization, or private organization. Both were supposed to lead to flatter structures and less abuse, but in fact lead to the polar opposite. But at the quip of an internet comment we're expected to realize in a flash of insight that "oh! it's so simple! if we just do it like this it will all be perfect."
• Calcite 12y ago
  Washington Post has a very bad mobile experience. How am I supposed to read this? http://imgur.com/DyePAYJ http://imgur.com/DyePAYJ
• Calcite 12y ago
  Washington Post has a very bad mobile experience. How am I supposed to read this? http://imgur.com/DyePAYJ http://imgur.com/DyePAYJ
• andywood 12y ago
  Don't let reporters mystify you with all these things people "claim" and say. It's just one PR department relaying a message from another PR dept. It's all the US. It's all the current system. Yes, the constitution has been drastically weakened by money interests. Yes. I went to Austin, TX a couple weeks back to be my Brother's best man. I didn't realize he was marrying a cop's daughter in a rural area outside the city limits, because all he told me about the guy was he's a skydiver. I fly paragliders, so I figured we had a lot in common. There's a really good reason all the souveneirs in the area say "Austin City Limits"! It's because if you're a beta male, you really shouldn't stray too far outside into the Red State. You really, really shouldn't. Within an hour of getting to the house, I got in a minor verbal spat with my own sister. My ridiculous mother decided to call the police department to ingratiate herself with my brother's new family. Well, I'm 150 lbs (but still pretty tough) and a 270 lb gorilla showed up to learn me some manners about how to act when in Rome. He practiced some Krav Maga on me, probably something he just learned and was aching to demonstrate. He twisted my carpal tunnels around, bend my injured knees around a bit, damaged nerves in my left hip and left wrist. Stood on my scoliosis, stretched a tendon in my left shoulder.... And then the police department itself put me in a hospital! I could have walked it off in a couple hours, but the cops run this hospital. They have the doctors and orderlies continue to be very abusive so as to keep you in shock for days (5 for me) and then they try to have a doctor threaten you with institutionalization because you had a delusion about police persecution! That's their system, and apparently the Red Staters really truly like it that way. Keeps the outsiders and Mexicans out! Or so these fools think. They think they can keep the Mexicans out! They'll be in for quite the shock themselves when they find out Rupert Murdoch has been lying. And that it's them that have to learn spanish after all. Glad I speak it, that's for sure.
  • afandian 12y ago
    What's Rupert Murdoch been saying in the US?
    • anaptdemise 12y ago
      Rupert Murdoch -> News Corp. -> Fox News "RNC mouthpiece" /sarcasm? [clarification] Is /sarcasm on on either misunderstanding replier as such or my "RNC mouthpiece"?
• Fuxy 12y ago
  So wait private corporation are allowed to have SWAT teams now? That sounds safe...