North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council

The North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council or "NEMLEC" is a private corporation formed by 58 police agencies in Middlesex and Essex County, Massachusetts.[1] It pools police resources to provide specialized units in its service area. NEMLEC units include;[2]

The organization is headquartered at 314 Main Street, Suite 205 in Wilmington, Massachusetts.[3] In 2014 its president was Michael Begonis, the chief of the Wilmington Police Department.[4] By the next year, press reports indicated the president was John Fisher, chief of the Carlisle Police Department.[5] As a private corporation, NEMLEC claimed in 2014 that it was able to keep its internal organization and operations out of the public's view.[6] It would not respond to open records requests.

As a result of a lawsuit by the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, in 2015 it changed policy and released documents requested by the public.[7] Days later the Washington Post published an article based on the documents describing an "excessive" use of SWAT teams for routine police matters.[8]

In late 2014, the group took down its website offline after the media noticed its “mission statement” page.

“The disorder associated with suburban sprawl as people migrated from larger cities, the development of the interstate highway system, the civil rights movement and the growing resistance to the Vietnam War threatened to overwhelm the serenity of the quaint, idyllic New England towns north and west of Boston,” NEMLEC mission statement[9]

Agencies that belong to NEMLEC include:[10]

References

  1. ↑ NEMLEC official web site, accessed 28 June 2014
  2. ↑ NEMLEC official web site, accessed 28 June 2014
  3. ↑ "Official web site". NEMLEC: The Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council. NEMLEC: The Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council. Retrieved 6 November 2015.
  4. ↑ NEMLEC official web site, accessed 28 June 2014
  5. ↑ Quemere, Andrew. "Massachusetts SWAT Group Still Won’t Abide by Public Records Law Despite ACLU Lawsuit". Photography is not a Crime. Retrieved 6 November 2015.
  6. ↑ Massachusetts SWAT teams claim they're private corporations, immune from open records laws, by Radley Balko, 26 June 2014 Washington Post
  7. ↑ Manning, Allison (7 July 2015). "Here are the SWAT documents one police agency wanted kept secret". Boston.com. Retrieved 9 July 2015.
  8. ↑ Balko, Radley (8 July 2015). "Documents show excessive use of Massachusetts SWAT teams". Washington Post. Retrieved 9 July 2015.
  9. ↑ Regional police agency pulls website despite suit; by Keith Eddings, 15 December 2014, Glouster Times
  10. ↑ http://www.massmostwanted.org/index.cfm?ac=MetroLEC, accessed 27 June 2014

http://www.gloucestertimes.com/news/local_news/regional-police-agency-pulls-website-despite-suit/article_5c16100c-26cc-5336-83e6-57d891d44f3d.html

http://www.newburyportnews.com/news/local_news/agency-takes-down-controversial-website/article_ef2fe5ff-aae0-5292-ac52-38960fb08665.html

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