Digitizing Traffic Tickets to Look for Racial Injustice

In 2016 Brookline's Police Department requested and received a JAG Law Enforcement Equiptment grant from the State of Massachusetts to digitize traffic citation data. The intention was to use this data to "direct our enforcement activities and the ability to map traffic violations with crash hotspots" but more importantly "to look critically at the type of enforcement being conducted, by which officers, of which demographic of drivers, etc. The Department will be able to identify officers who may be stopping minorities at disproportionate levels and/or imposing stricter penalties on minority drivers".

The full text of the grant request was released under the Massachusetts Public Records Law after a request I made at the prompting of Kade Crockford of the Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU. The ACLU is concerned about police departments which may have used JAG funds to purchase privacy-invasive surveillance equipment. Muckrock has all of the successful 2016 grants for you to read, if you'd like to dig further.

The Bryne Justice Assistance Grant program under which Brookline received these funds (via a pass-through from an allocation to the State of Massachusetts) was the vehicle used for anti-sanctuary-city actions by the US DOJ back in April. Brookline did not receive any direct funds from the 2016 JAG program, but it did receive this pass-through grant from the State. Brookline has been actively pursuing sanctuary policies for the Town and its Police Department, primarily via a Sanctuary Working Group formed by the Commission for Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Relations.

C. Scott Ananian is a Town Meeting Member for Brookline Precinct 10. You can follow him (@cscottnet) on twitter for further updates on police oversight and sanctuary issues in Brookline.