Attorney General investigates allegations of racism in Boston police gang unit

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The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office has launched an investigation into allegations of racial bias within the Boston Police Department’s Youth Gang Unit and its associated database, according to a statement from the office released late Monday.

The investigation by the Civil Rights Division of State Attorney General Andrea Campbell will examine an alleged pattern or practice of racist policing within the Youth Violence Strike Force, the gang unit of the department, state officials said. A Boston police spokesperson said the department would cooperate with the review.

State officials said the review would look at the task force’s work since 2018 to reform gang unity, following calls from civil rights advocates who want the database be abolished, citing alleged racism and a lack of transparency. It comes amid a nationwide review of similar units following the death of Tire Nichols in Memphis, who was killed during a traffic stop by five members of that city’s now disbanded gang unit.

“The Boston Police Department’s gang database is flawed and should not be relied upon to make consequential decisions about people’s lives,” said Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, one of numerous civil rights groups that sued the police department last year to release more information about the database. Database overwhelmingly targets black and Hispanic youth, who have been labeled as gang members for little more than wearing popular brands or even becoming victims of gang violence, Attorney General is right to investigate .

A gang is defined as three or more people who, individually or together, engage in criminal activity, frequent a specific location, and share a common name or identifier, such as a color or symbol, according to the rules and procedures of the services of Boston police. Gang members are active if they meet the criteria for gang association, have had contact with another gang member, or have been involved in gang activity in the past five years.

A summary provided by the department in response to the ACLU lawsuit in 2019 showed that 90% of the 4,700 individuals in the gang database at the time were black or Latino.

Young people have been monitored in Dorchester and Roxbury for wearing a certain type of hat or hanging out in a certain corner of the neighborhood, said Janhavi Madabushi, director of the Massachusetts Bail Fund. There’s just such a low threshold for what puts you on a list, and anything that puts you on that list is something that warrants you being watched or monitored for as long as the unit deems necessary.

An association with the gang database can prevent remand inmates from accessing bail for months or even years, Madabushi said.

We are seeing an increase in dangerousness hearings, where a prosecutor and a judge can determine through a random set of criteria that a person is too dangerous to be released on cash bail, she said. Inmates make plea deals to limit prison sentences in what Madabushi described as a dangerous pattern of pre-trial detention of supposedly innocent people until proven guilty, but not this time.

The investigation is ongoing and has not yet resulted in any findings or conclusions. If issues are discovered, the goal is to work with the police department to reform the unit and the database, a Campbell spokesperson said.

Madabushi says it’s unclear if the investigation will result in the kind of victory that members of our community need and want to see, and will force the attorney general’s office to seek out those directly affected, many of whom may be reluctant to manifest.

I’m a little afraid to rejoice before I understand how the [attorney generals office] going to conduct this investigation, what are their considerations, she said. But hopefully this brings out what community members have been saying for a very long time.

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