What the Heck is a LEC?

In most of the news coverage of the Saturday Pleasant Street situation, involving a mentally distressed individual, only a passing mention was given to MetroLEC, which played a major role as events unfolded i from just before 11 am until around 3pm.

But what is MetroLEC and what are LECs in the first place?

According to the organization’s website, the MetroLEC, (or METRO-LEC) is a consortium of “more than 46 police and sheriff departments” largely located south or southwest of Boston. It is an area with nearly a million, covering more than 600 square miles.

MetroLEC consists of several divisions, namely:

• Canine Unit (K9)
• Child Abduction Response Team (CART)
• Computer Crime Unit (CCU)
• Crisis Negotiation Team (CNT)
• Criminal Investigation Division (CID)
• Mobile Operations Motorcycle Unit (MOP)
• Regional Response Team (RRT)
• Special Weapons & Tactics (SWAT)
• Marine Unit

In each case, those units are typically too specialized for most individual departments to operate on their own. So, instead, they share them through MetroLEC, which is organized as a consortium.

In the case of Franklin’s call for help to MetroLEC on Saturday, the direct cost was “zero,” according to Franklin Police Chief Thomas Lynch. Indeed, Lynch noted, “we do not get charged by the LEC for a response; we pay $4,500 per year in dues.”

“That’s money well spent for the services, personnel and resources we receive when we request assistance when experiencing a critical incident,” he added.

In Massachusetts there is also a Southeastern Massachusetts LEC (SemLEC) and a Norteastern Massachusetts LEC (NemLEC).

LECs have not been without controversy. Established as private corporations, in the past, LECs have declined to share information about budgets, processes, or even policing activities. This reticence led to a high-profile lawsuit by the local branch of American Civil Liberties Union against NemLEC in 2012.

The matter was eventually resolved in 2015 when NemLEC changed its policies. The organization itself and its member agencies adopted a new public records policy in which they agreed to be subject to public records disclosure and to comply with public records requests under Massachusetts G.L. c. 4, § 7, Twenty-sixth, and G.L. c. 66 § 10.

NemLEC and ACLU dropped legal actions at that point.

As a result, NEMLEC and the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts have jointly filed for an entry of judgement, ending the ACLU's lawsuit against NEMLEC. However, the documents ACLU was then able to obtain, ended up forming the basis of an unfavorable article on NEMLEC in the Washington Post, which asserted that NEMLEC had led to excessive use of SWAT teams and other practices it found questionable.

However, no such concerns have been expressed regarding MetroLEC.

However, MetroLEC and other law enforcement organizations were part of a “recall” of military-type equipment initiated by the Obama administration, reversing, to a degree, what some had seen as a militarization of policing. 

For example, in 2016, the Boston Globe reported that the Norfolk Police Department had returned an armored vehicle it has operated since 2009. The Norfolk Police Chief, at the time, explained that it was the only armored vehicle operating within the MetroLEC communities.

Since then a more modern, wheeled armored vehicle, a Bearcat, has been added to the MetroLEC arsenal, he told the Globe.