Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office says it’s investigating the Boston Police Department’s gang unit and gang database after it received allegations of racially biased policing.
“Our Civil Rights Division is reviewing the Youth Violence Strike Force and its Gang Assessment Database based on allegations that, between 2018 and the present, there may have been a pattern or practice of racially biased policing,” Campbell’s office said in a statement Monday. “We have received the full cooperation of the Boston Police Department and our review is ongoing.”
The Youth Violence Strike Force is the official name for what’s colloquially referred to as the department’s gang unit. The department’s website says the strike force is intended “to reduce the criminal activity and anti-social behavior of youthful offenders and youth gangs through directed and community-based policing strategies.”
A Boston police spokeswoman said in an e-mail, “We are aware of the review and will continue to cooperate with the Attorney General’s Office.”
Campbell’s office said the investigation is ongoing and has not reached any findings or conclusions. A spokeswoman said that if the office does find that there’s a problem, Campbell would take it to the police department and aim to reform the unit.
A 2020 police reform law gave the attorney general’s office the authority to investigate allegations of patterns of racially biased policing. The Peace Officer Standards & Training Commission, a police oversight panel that was created through the most well-known part of that law, can refer allegations to the attorney general’s office, but the attorney general also can initiate an investigation on its own under the new rules.
Campbell’s office said it’s aware of a flyer with the attorney general’s logo on it announcing the investigation, but a spokeswoman said the flyer is a “forgery” that was neither produced nor distributed by Campbell’s office.
The gang database has long been a flashpoint for activists who say it focuses too much on Black and Hispanic young men, placing a scarlet letter on them that’s hard to shake and results in overpolicing based on scant information that’s sometimes wrong. Some critics, including several city councilors, want to get rid of the database completely.
Proponents of the list say it’s an important tool to keep tabs on known gang members in the city and the people who are perpetrating violent crime. As of last year, it included more than 3,000 names.
Campbell is a former Boston city councilor and served a term each as the body’s president and its public safety chair. Then the district councilor from Mattapan, Campbell ran for mayor in 2021 on a platform that included reform and budget cuts for the city’s police department and plans to decrease the number of officers in specialized units, moving people out of entities like the gang unit and back onto patrols.
Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com.Follow him on Twitter @cotterreporter.
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Attorney general investigating Boston police gang unit and database - The Boston Globe
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