A police officer was shot last night in Boston; he is expected to make a full recovery, but that's pure good luck. If the Herald's account is accurate, the suspect was then shot twice by a trooper, but got right up and laughed about what he had done.
Life in prison isn't long enough.
There's a nice article about a Boston Police dispatcher by Suzanne Smalley in the Boston Globe. A good dispatcher makes all the difference in policing -ask any cop anywhere- and it sounds like Brenda Ortiz is one.
Remember that low profile Dodge Charger in Massachusetts State Police livery from the IACP show last year? Well, I've seen two on the highways within the past two days. Someone in D Troop has one, and someone on the Turnpike, as well. So there are probably more around the Commonwealth.
The next time you see a Dodge Charger coming up fast, your first thought shouldn't be, "what a pretty shade of blue."
"Oh, shit," is more like it.
The Rhode Island State Police are seeking the power to obtain phone and internet records without court order or oversight. That is a bad plan. Local and state police around the country (though not here in Massachusetts) have been running up a poor record of respect for civil liberties as they staff out "anti-terror" units, SWATs, and other special response or investigative units. Such agencies generally don't have the training, the culture, or the internal controls to allow them such broad powers.
The Boston Police are expanding the applicant pool. That is a good plan. The more applicants they have, the pickier they can be. Some of the worst police corruption scandals of the last 20 years around the country can be directly traced to lax hiring standards or poor background investigation. A diverse police department is a good thing, but the diversity mustn't come at the expense of standards, as it sometimes has in some departments.
I'm not commenting on any specific case here, but I want to mention Boston Police Commissioner Davis's new personnel policy: after three suspensions, you're fired. My first thought was to hope the new policy draws a distinction between serious misbehavior and mere administrative lapses. My next thought was that three strikes is two too many for serious wrongdoing (such as lying on a police report or falsifying a detail slip). But then I figured it out.
The new state police DNA plan is the first slip down a treacherous slope toward a society where everyone is known to the state and there's no privacy except in the darkest corners.
Or maybe it's just a new crime-fighting technique. I'm on the fence, really.
I've covered this before, but there's news today. The state's highest court ruled that Alexander Pring-Wilson is entitled to a new trial, one in which he'll be allowed to introduce evidence of his alleged-victim's violent past in support of his self-defense claim. Pring-Wilson is the former Harvard graduate student sent to prison for killing one of the two convicted felons who attacked him four years ago.
I had hoped Gerry Leone wouldn't pursue this case the way Martha Coakley did, but I guess he's protecting his political future too. Middlesex DA is a launching post for political careers.
Combine that with the utterly irrational knee-jerk liberalism of Cambridge and you've got a real good reason not to go there.
Over two hundred thousand dollars a year as a State Police lieutenant? That's crazy. And a lot of it wasn't paid details - it was overtime, because it took place on a Mass. Turnpike Authority road. But that kind of overtime is just as wasted as the paid detail money: paid to a guy sitting in a car reading a newspaper, in the middle of the night, behind traffic barriers, in a closed tunnel.
In a rational society, that money would be spent paying police officers to fight crime, so vigilantes don't have to volunteer.
Curtis Sliwa is obnoxious, and I doubt the Guardian Angels bring any more to crime fighting than the Hells Angels brought to concert security in California. Curtis Sliwa is a publicity hound who stages crimes. Police union president Thomas Nee, another publicity hound, wants them to stay home and is calling for more cops on the streets. He says we should leave the policing to the police. I tend to agree. But we'll have to get a bunch of them off their details first. Nee's not for that.
If you want your own beret, you can get one here.
The Boston Police are not actually getting their own helicopter, as this article in the Boston Globe explains, but they will be flying in one. The State Police are supplying the helo, the fuel, and the pilot. This is a great deal for the city. There is a crime problem here, the helicopter can help, and the cost is borne by the whole state.
Boston police are already girding for criticism about noise and intrusion from city residents who are now accustomed to having copters whirring overhead only in the case of a manhunt or disaster.
Who would criticize? It's not as if they'll be setting it to hover over one house at a time. It's a great idea. My only concern was that the Troopers and the Boston cops inside the
cockpit might kill each other, because the inter-agency rivalry has
been known to boil over on occasion. But it seems everyone is playing
nice, and that's to the benefit of the city.
