By Sheri Qualters, From The National Law Journal

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and the ACLU’s national organization have sued the Boston Police Department to obtain records about encounters with civilians since 2010 as part of probe about race and law enforcement.

The ACLU groups, assisted by pro bono counsel Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, brought the case on Thursday in the Massachusetts trial court against the department and Police Commissioner William Evans.

The ACLU said it’s been waiting since last September for information that the state’s public records law requires Boston police to produce in 10 days.

The Boston Police Department said they are working with the organization.

“We’ve been in touch with the ACLU and are looking forward to resolving this issue expeditiously in the interest of transparency,” said James Kenneally, a public information officer with the department.

The lawsuit said the release of data is “especially urgent” in light of June 15 report, co-authored by four professors, which detailed “racially disparate treatment” against people and communities of color from 2007 to 2010.

The police department’s failure to produce the data “hamstrings public debate about whether the [department’s] purported reforms are sufficient to address these problems,” stated the lawsuit.

The case seeks preliminary and permanent injunctions ordering defendants to disclose the records, plus plaintiffs’ costs for bringing the case.

The ACLU is looking for so-called “FIO reports,” which refer to reports about field interrogations, observations, frisks and searches.

The complaint said the police agreed to an academic study of police-civilian encounters from 2007 to 2010 in exchange for the ACLU of Massachusetts’ deferral of a 2009 records request. The lawsuit seeks information about police conduct after 2010.

The report, “An Analysis of Race and Ethnicity Patterns in Boston Police Department Field Interrogation, Observation, Frisk, and/or Search Reports” found racially disparate treatment of Blacks and Hispanics.

The report co-authors are Columbia Law School professor Jeffrey Fagan; Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice professors Anthony Braga and Rod Brunson; and University of Massachusetts, Lowell associate professor April Pattavina.

One of the study’s findings concluded that African-Americans comprise about 25 percent of the Boston populace, yet experienced more than 63 percent of the FIO encounters from 2007 to 2010 involved them.

The ACLU of Massachusetts filed the suit because it has been trying to learn about the city of Boston’s stop and frisk practices for years, said Adriana Lafaille, a legal fellow for the organization.

“We brought the suit because that information is really essentially to determining whether the racially disparate treatments of blacks and Latinos has continued after 2010,” Lafaille said.

In an email, report co-author Fagan declined to comment on the lawsuit.

“[It’s] best for me and my colleagues to remain apart from any litigation in Boston, since ours was a cooperative and collaborative project,” he said.

IMAGE: Boston-area police officers in 2014. Photo: Elise Amendola/AP

For more on this story go to: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202734225171/ACLU-Sues-Boston-Police-Over-CivilianEncounter-Records#ixzz3iQREOl9D