The Boston Police Department has agreed to end its longstanding practice of failing to respond to public records requests that the department is required by Massachusetts law to respond to within ten days. The agreement follows a lawsuit filed by the Lawyers for Civil Rights charging that the department routinely takes months to respond to public records requests from journalists, attorneys, and ordinary citizens seeking police incident reports.
This has been an intentional and deliberate effort on the part of the BPD that goes back decades in an effort to avoid any type of meaningful accountability, transparency, oversight, and even basic routine inquiry. The BPD views the news media as its enemy and it's unlikely that this sentiment, hardwired into the BPD subculture, will change any time in the near term, settlement agreements and lawsuits notwithstanding. Stay tuned—

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