Powered by Google
Home
Listings
Editors' Picks
News
Music
Movies
Food
Life
Arts + Books
Rec Room
Moonsigns
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Personals
Adult Personals
Classifieds
Adult Classifieds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
stuff@night
FNX Radio
Band Guide
MassWeb Printing
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Work For Us
Newsletter
RSS Feeds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Webmaster
Archives



sponsored links
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
PassionShop.com
Sex Toys - Adult  DVDs - Sexy  Lingerie


   
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

VICTORIA SNELGROVE’S DEATH
Discipline, but no answers
BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

Last fall, when the Phoenix asked Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen O’Toole about several revelations of perjury by Boston police officers earlier that year, she said she had zero tolerance for it. "I think I owe it not only to the residents but to the police department as well to speak out in the loudest possible terms" when an officer is caught lying to authorities, she said.

Last week, however, O’Toole made no mention of allegations of dishonesty when she finally revealed the punishments for five officers in relation to the death of Victoria Snelgrove during last October’s Red Sox ALCS-championship celebration on Lansdowne Street. In fact, she said nothing, issuing a press release at 4:00 Friday afternoon, without a press conference, as a hurricane bore down on Boston.

The superintendent who botched the fatal evening’s operational plan got booted down to captain and banished to Jamaica Plain. The officer who shot Snelgrove as he sniped for a bottle-thrower dodging through the crowd, and the officer who fired 12 shots at a man who was seeking medical assistance, will each serve 45 days of suspension. Another officer will serve a five-day suspension, and two others received written reprimands. Robert O’Toole, the commander on the ground, chose to retire.

Neither the commissioner nor District Attorney Dan Conley, who earlier in the week announced his decision to bring no criminal charges, addressed the issue of whether the officers tried to get in the way of the truth. The report released in May by the independent commission led by former US Attorney Donald K. Stern suggests they may have. The public still awaits an answer.

Deputy Superintendent Robert O’Toole’s version of his actions on Lansdowne Street was "in contrast" with the findings, the report says. Officer Samil Silta gave his version of shooting Paul Gately, but "Mr. Gately’s version is quite different and is supported by other witnesses." Officer Rochefort Milien, who fired the fatal shot, claimed that he did not fire his weapon in Snelgrove’s direction, and that he carefully sighted the weapon prior to shooting at his intended target. "Video evidence" belies the latter claim, the report says, and concludes that Milien did in fact fire the fatal shot at Snelgrove.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they lied. "There can be a difference in perception and memory without someone being untruthful," Stern points out to the Phoenix.

Nor was it necessarily a deliberate attempt to hide evidence when the officers, after dispersing the remaining crowd, returned their FN303s to the equipment truck, where Officer Thomas Gallagher immediately reloaded and restacked them, making it impossible to distinguish who fired which weapon, and how many times. As Stern suggests to the Phoenix: "The treatment of the evidence may have been part and parcel of the way people were thinking of this weapon [the FN303] — not like their regular firearms."

That’s more plausible than the explanation the officers gave to investigators: that they did not realize that Snelgrove’s injuries may have been caused by one of the roughly 60 to 70 rounds they had just fired off in the immediate area. Perhaps they couldn’t hear the man who, according to a Boston Herald account, stood by the body shouting at them: "Are you happy? Murderers!"

There may indeed be innocent explanations for all of this. But then there are two other officers, unnamed, who did lie to investigators — so said the BPD’s own Internal Affairs Division (IAD) head, Al Goslin, to the Boston Globe in June. According to the Globe, the two officers are friends of Robert O’Toole’s, and are alleged to have threatened their own subordinates against cooperating with the Snelgrove investigation. They are still under IAD investigation.


Issue Date: September 23 - 29, 2005
Back to the News & Features table of contents
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
 









about the phoenix |  advertising info |  Webmaster |  work for us
Copyright © 2005 Phoenix Media/Communications Group