This story was originally published by The Shoestring
It isn’t often that the federal government’s “Joint Terrorism Task Forces” make the news. But the multi-agency partnerships between FBI field offices and other law-enforcement agencies raised concerns among civil liberties groups late last year — and not for the first time — after President Donald Trump issued a directive instructing JTTFs to focus on those whose ideologies include “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.”
Those concerns were heightened again this month when the White House released a new National Counterterrorism Strategy that has singled out “anti-fascists,” “anarchists,” “left-wing” groups, and those who are “radically pro-transgender” as targets for terrorism investigations together with groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS.
Using a Freedom of Information Act request, The Shoestring has obtained a roster of the agencies that are still part of the Boston Joint Terrorism Task Force, which covers most of New England. Almost all of the local agencies that once participated in the group have left since 2014, when the American Civil Liberties Union sued the federal government to first unveil the list of the Boston JTTF’s members.
But one local agency remains: the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office.
In addition to the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office, other members include federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement; bigger-city police departments in Boston, Worcester, and Cambridge; the Massachusetts State Police; smaller departments like the Hopkinton Police Department and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Department; and the state’s Department of Corrections.
Hampden County is also the only sheriff’s office on the current roster.
Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have long urged agencies to leave the FBI-led JTTFs, saying that they have a history of targeting communities of color and protesters.
Kade Crockford, the director of technology and justice programs at the ACLU of Massachusetts, told The Shoestring that Trump’s recent directives have instructed JTTFs to prioritize work that includes participating in the government’s mass-deportation efforts and the “political weaponization of law enforcement” to go after opponents of the president as if they’re terrorists.
“That’s deeply concerning,” Crockford said. “There’s this insinuation from the higher levels of federal law enforcement that being transgender, advocating for transgender rights, opposing fascism, makes you a fascist in the eyes of the federal government or a potential terrorist.”
In a statement, Rob Rizzuto, a spokesperson for the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office, said that the department has participated in the JTTF for more than a decade. There is currently one deputy assigned to assist with “federal investigations involving credible threats to public safety and criminal activity at the local level,” he said.
“Sheriff Nick Cocchi would not support — nor would this office participate in — any effort to censor protected speech or criminalize lawful dissent,” the statement said. “Our participation is focused on legitimate threats of violence, not ideology or political expression.”
As an example of the work that the sheriff’s deputy has done as part of the JTTF, Rizzuto cited the prosecution last year of a Wilbraham man who allegedly threatened on social media to kill elected officials, police officers, and their families.
“Our office has proudly assisted in investigations involving violent threats against public officials and law enforcement officers, regardless of political affiliation,” Rizzuto said. “Our focus remains on protecting public safety while respecting the constitutional rights of the people we serve.”
It’s unclear why the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office remains the only western Massachusetts member of the Boston JTTF. In 2014, the ACLU of Massachusetts had to sue the federal government to obtain a list of Boston JTFF members, which at the time included police in Amherst, Springfield, Ludlow, Holyoke, West Springfield, Pittsfield, Chicopee, and the UMass Amherst Police Department.
In the subsequent years, however, all of those departments seem to have quietly left the Boston JTTF. The Shoestring unsuccessfully attempted to reach former police chiefs from those departments to understand why they made the choice to depart the task force. Previously, current police chiefs from those departments either could not be reached or told The Shoestring they were not knowledgeable about the departments’ reasons for leaving.
Rizzuto suggested that budgeting could be a reason.
“I know that a lot of different law enforcement agencies have had real trouble with staffing and that has limited their ability to play a part on a number of different task forces,” Rizzuto said. He added that if lawmakers further cut the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office budget, task force assignments could possibly be on the chopping block there, too.
Elsewhere in the United States, municipalities have chosen to leave the JTTF because of concerns about surveillance and accountability.
In Portland, Oregon, for example, the City Council voted in 2019 to withdraw from the JTTF — the second time the city had done so — because of its lack of civilian oversight to ensure the city’s officers abided by civil rights laws, according to reporting from Oregon Public Broadcasting.
“The current president has made clear his animosity toward Muslims, immigrants, and people of color,” City Councilor Amanda Fritz said, according to OPB. “I found it hard to trust the JTTF under President Obama. It’s impossible now.”
Crockford said that any law enforcement agency that takes issue with a federal directive is free to leave the JTTF. But while becoming part of that partnership doesn’t surrender a department’s ability to withdraw its officers from an investigation it deems improper, Crockford said there isn’t any evidence that any Massachusetts department has ever taken that step.
“So it’s all well and good for officials to say, ‘We wouldn’t do that,’” Crockford said. “But these operations are so secretive, we don’t have any evidence that entities have said ‘that goes too far’ or ‘this doesn’t align with our views of people’s constitutional rights.’ We just sort of have to take their word for it.”
Crockford said that is why the Trump administration’s weaponization of the Department of Justice is so dangerous.
“State and local law enforcement agencies in New England that care about democracy and that want to assure their residents that they’re not engaged in those activities are in a really difficult position,” they said. It’s hard to convey to people that an agency wants to protect their rights, Crockford added, when that agency is actively partnering with an organization that is “so clearly” signaling that it intends to violate those rights.
Rizzuto, however, pushed back against that notion. He said that absent any specific instance of somebody’s rights being violated, discussion of the possible infringement of constitutional rights is a “strawman” argument. He said that if the office’s task force member begins an investigation but doesn’t find any credible threat exists, “a case won’t go any further.”
“It’s easy to make academic arguments based on principles without any actual tangibles,” he said.
Brian Zayatz contributed reporting to this article.
