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Policing the police
Victoria Snelgrove’s death was not an isolated event. It’s time to start asking some tough questions about the Boston Police Department.

THE UNFORTUNATE and unnecessary death of 21-year-old Victoria Snelgrove was just the latest in a series of troubling incidents involving the Boston Police Department. Surely no one intended such a tragedy. But the very fact that police officers were firing "less lethal" weapons at innocent bystanders such as Snelgrove serves to emphasize that there are serious, fundamental problems that must be addressed.

As David S. Bernstein and Adam Reilly report in the Phoenix this week, police commissioner Kathleen O’Toole, who was named to her post earlier this year, presides over a department in deep need of reform. The Snelgrove shooting did not take place in isolation. This past summer, police shot and killed 40-year-old Bert Bowen in Roxbury, claiming he had threatened them with a gun; two witnesses contradicted that story. Luis Gonzalez, 58, mentally ill and physically frail, was shot and killed in his South End home by officers who had been dispatched to subdue him. In neither case have the findings of investigators been made known.

Nor is the dubious use of force the only issue. Last January, Stephan Cowans was cleared in the non-fatal shooting of a police officer — a crime for which he’d served nearly seven years — after it was learned that his conviction was based on a faulty fingerprint match. When officials began to probe more deeply, they found a scandal: a latent-fingerprint unit whose employees were completely unqualified, unable to pass even the most basic test of their competence. Commissioner O’Toole was forced to shut the unit down.

O’Toole has also had to contend with abuses of overtime and details, with more than 20 officers caught getting paid for working regular shifts and outside details at the same time. Several officers have been indicted for, and in some cases convicted of, committing perjury to win convictions — a shocking breach of public trust. All this has taken place against a backdrop of rising violence within the community, and a union whose tone and tactics suggest that it routinely places the desires of its members over the needs of the public.

Though she has been in charge for only a short time, it is not too soon to start asking Kathleen O’Toole some tough questions as well. It was she who reinstated Robert O’Toole (they are not related) as deputy superintendent, a move that placed him in a position of responsibility the night Snelgrove was killed. It was soon learned that Robert O’Toole had been demoted after he was caught slapping a handcuffed prisoner outside Fenway Park during a disturbance at the 1986 World Series. At the very least, Robert O’Toole’s involvement in Snelgrove’s death so soon after his career had been resuscitated raises serious questions about the commissioner’s judgment.

Which is why, ultimately, the civilians who run the police department must demand answers and take action. It is hard to know for sure what Mayor Tom Menino, Suffolk County district attorney Dan Conley, and members of the Boston City Council are thinking. Criticizing the police is not generally a smart move politically, and no doubt these elected officials genuinely respect the police for performing a difficult, often thankless job. But, just as the botched investigation into the Carol DiMaiti Stuart murder more than a dozen years ago led to the formation of the St. Clair Commission — and to a decade of reform that moved Boston to the forefront of fighting urban crime — so must action be taken again today.

What’s taking place now is bad enough. To wait for something even worse would be tragic.

What do you think? Send an e-mail to letters[a]phx.com.


Issue Date: November 5 - 11, 2004
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