No Boston Police Officers have been killed in the line of duty in the 21st century, according to this website. This is good news.
However, this good news makes the bad news seem all the worse. By the time of this Globe article from 2007, police had shot and killed 5 people with varying degrees of justification "since 2002". If you believe this site, Boston police killed 8 people in the very brief span of time between 2000 and 2002. Justin Ronchetti was one of those who was shot by police in the early 2000's, according to this website. A "57-year old mentally ill man", Luis Gonzalez, was another. An apparently unarmed Willie Murray was shot point-blank by officer Shawn West in 2002. In this case, a grand jury was convened, but there was no indictment. The city paid Murray's son $75,000 last year to avoid a civil suit, with corporation counsel Bill Sinnott somehow admitting the shooting was accidental but not negligent on the part of the city. $75,000 seems to be very short money for a person's life, and I'm not sure what went on behind the scenes that convinced the man's family not to pursue a full-scale civil trial. I won't even speculate here.
Most disturbing, of course, have been the accidental deaths associated with police activity: Snelgrove and McNally.
Then, of course, there is the case of David Woodman, who died in police custody in the aftermath of the Celtics' championship victory and whose death is currently under investigation by the FBI.
In sum, from the year 2000 to the present, at least two utterly innocent people (Victoria Snelgrove and Ann Marie McNally) have died as a result of seemingly negligent actions taken by Boston Police Officers, while a total of 0 Boston Police Officers have died in the line of duty during that same time period. Additionally, Boston Police Officers have taken the lives of more than a dozen suspects/criminals, in situations where the use of deadly force was usually ruled to be justified. |
