Our reporting on the ongoing transparency disaster in Massachusetts from last year won one of this year’s Foilies, an award given be the EFF for outstandingly poor transparency.
All in News Notes
Our reporting on the ongoing transparency disaster in Massachusetts from last year won one of this year’s Foilies, an award given be the EFF for outstandingly poor transparency.
If the point of “Blue no matter who” is to defeat Trump in the general at all costs then the only criteria you should use to vote in the primary is “who is the most electable candidate”. That means it’s time to embrace Bernie Sanders and get excited that he brings enthusiasm and support from independents with him.
It's bewildering to watch the Democrats place their head on the executioner's block only to be granted a stay of execution by Mitch McConnell.
Why bother follow the law when you’re a police department? Cambridge Police Department doesn’t have a Records Access Officer despite being required by law to have one.
After some discussion with Crit.news the DA’s office has agreed to fix their website to bring it into compliance with the records law
A year and a half later it turns out the premise of my award winner piece was proven correct… the Boston police were quietly assisting ICE in the shadows made by our state’s terrible public records law
Michael Wilk, the Chicopee Police Department’s Public Information Officer who runs the department’s social media accounts, has been destroying public records. I have referred this apparent crime to the Secretary Galvin’s Office.
A deputy police chief, from the Braintree Police is complaining about the mayor’s choice to hire the next police chief from outside the department. I remember her from years ago when she was an unprofessional lieutenant who didn’t know several laws (one she was breaking and the other she was trying to falsely claim I was breaking).
CriticalMA filed two records appeals with Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin’s office. Our two requests date back nearly a month. The first request is related to a Dartmouth police officer who was arrested and charged with child rape. The second request is related to the tasing of a pastor in Worcester
Due to the ongoing public records access crisis in Massachusetts it has become functionally impossible for CriticalMA to provide the type of public records based coverage we used to. Since requests can easily take a year or more to resolve, and can end unresolved when the state simply fails to enforce the law, it’s impossible to predict if or when publishing a final product will be possible on any given story.
NBC10 paid Facebook to push a story about Michelle Kosilek framed to incite a nasty group bashing of her. Their post received 550+ responses ranging from calls for murder to offers to mutilate Kosilek to save taxpayers from having to pay for the surgery.
Our records show that the same type of overtime abuse that caused the current Mass State Police overtime scandal occurred back in 2007.
Boston College has hired William Evans weeks after his department came under scrutiny for allegedly giving a Boston Public Schools student’s information to ICE. The information was used against the student in a deportation hearing and the student was deported.
News Notes is going to be a less formal posting ground than the major investigative articles that Critical MA produces.
