Massachusetts State Troopers Used A Phone App To Make Hundreds Of Illegal Recordings
Law enforcement says laws are the rules that apply to everyone, but especially to people who aren't in the law enforcement business. We have to follow the laws or face the consequences. But it often appears cops hold themselves to a lower standard. They only have to follow the laws that won't get in the way of them doing cop stuff.
State laws can be ignored. The Constitution can be shunted off to the side. Any other impediment to efficient" policing should be ignored in pursuit of this peculiar interpretation of justice."
In Massachusetts (which has been home to plenty of law enforcement scandals in recent years), more lawlessness by law enforcement has been uncovered, as Brad Petrishen reports for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
More than 60 Massachusetts state troopers made covert investigative recordings" in recent years that were never turned over to prosecutors and in many cases violated the state's wiretapping law, documents obtained by the Telegram & Gazette show.
The recordings, which mostly appear to have been made during drug investigations, were made in more than 250 criminal cases, the documents show, including cases brought by local, state and federal prosecutors.
A local court has already referred to these revelations as shocking," which is a bit of an understatement but one you don't often see being made by state district courts.
The illegality here works on two levels. The first involves the obligation to turn over evidence to criminal defendants. These secret recordings were withheld from defendants, even as the information gleaned from them was used against them.
The second involves state law. While most covert recordings in most states are allowed due to one-party consent laws (meaning only one person has to have knowledge the conversation is being recorded), law enforcement in Massachusetts isn't extended the same privilege. In this state, covert recordings during criminal investigations are governed by the state's wiretap law, which requires warrants before these recordings can be made.
Those weren't obtained in these cases. But the troopers have an excuse and it's one we've seen used to try to justify literally any form of police misconduct.
Troopers testifying in LoConto's hearings said they've been using Callyo for about five or six years. Their prime goal, they said, was to monitor the application, which allows real-time streaming of audio and sometimes video, to ensure officer safety during drug buys.
Once again, officers are elevating officer safety above all applicable laws, including the US Constitution. State law is supposed to prevent this sort of thing. The Constitution, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, adds obligations to turn over all evidence to people being prosecuted. Both were violated here.
Fortunately, the judge overseeing one case involving these illegal recordings isn't buying the officer safety" excuse. Judge LoConto asked why the recordings were used for investigative purposes when the stated goal was officer safety." He didn't get any straight answers. Instead, he got a bunch of excuses by troopers and state police officials in which they all tried to make it look as though this was someone else's fault.
Troopers, including a supervisor, told LoConto and defense lawyers that different drug units had different practices on report writing and undercover work, and gave answers to probing questions that the judge found lacking.
It's shocking to me that these are the answers I'm getting," he said at one point when speaking to a state police lawyer about his efforts to get answers to some questions he saw as basic regarding responsibility for turning over evidence.
These are relatively simple tasks to complete. Producing evidence, turning over evidence."
It's very simple," LoConto said. And no one's in charge, and no one's responsible."
The simplest answer is this: no one was in charge and no one was responsible because doing either of these things would create a paper trail for the illegal recordings and/or eliminate any form of plausible deniability.
And thanks to modern technology, it was easy to (almost) get away with it. No doubt the vendor contract contains boilerplate that says everyone involved will only use the tech lawfully. But the easier something can be abused, the greater the chance it will be abused.
The recordings under scrutiny are connected to aMotorola-based smartphone application, Callyo, that law enforcement across the country use during drug investigations.
The application, which supplants use of the more dangerous physical wires police formerly used, allows officers to use their phones as covert recording devices, marketing materials show.
To be sure, this isn't on the vendor. But one would like to think a vendor that discovers a customer is using its product illegally would make sure that this customer no longer has access to their tech. And that it would start taking a long, hard look at the rest of its customers to ensure its name doesn't get dragged down along with its misbehaving users.
The real villain here is the Massachusetts State Police. It gave troopers access to this tech and then spent years refusing to provide training, craft policies to control it, and - when asked about it in court - simply told the judge that this was all probably someone else's fault. And everyone questioned made that same excuse, turning this testimony into an especially perverse circle jerk of responsibility abdication.
No one breaks the laws quite like law enforcement. And, unfortunately, no one gets away with it quite so frequently. This case may end up being tossed, but you can be for damn sure the State Troopers will waste more of the public's money defending the other few hundred violations that have yet to make an appearance in court.