A disputed incident in Roxbury
A couple of weeks ago the Boston Police Department’s blog BPDnews.com reported on an incident that angered quite a few Bostonians: A rookie cop was allegedly assaulted by a crowd of partygoers in Roxbury, one of Boston’s black neighborhood (and also one of the city’s high-crime neighborhoods). Some bloggers commented on the partygoers in rather unfavorable terms, but I took a pass on the story for the following reasons:
1) The post on BPDnews.com was written in a style substantially different from that which the site’s writers normally use.
2) The claim in the post that 20 people kicked or punched the officer. It’s difficult to accurately estimate the size of a crowd under normal circumstances, and it’s probably a heck of a lot harder when you’re being pummeled, so the large but precise number of the crowd did struck me as odd.
3) The whole incident as described on BPDnews.com just seemed a bit strange, not unlike some of the stories in an early 20th Century collection of Boy Scout stories I read as a kid. Yes, cops do heroic things, no doubt about it, but occasionally they also make mistakes, just like people sometimes do.
It seemed prudent at the time to take a wait and see approach (not that I always do that, but…).
Today the free, weekly, alternative newspaper Boston Phoenix published an account of the incidentx that differs quite a bit from how BPDnews.com described it. I don’t know who’s right, and I’m not going to choose sides, so to speak, until the Boston Police has been given a chance to respond, but I think it’s worth noting that a markedly different take on the incident has been put forth. I think it’s important that we don’t dig ourselves in or rush to conclusions that conform to whatever prejudices we might have.
The permalink for the post on BPDnews.com is broken (probably a Wordpress issue - WordPress is quite fragile and it’s a headache and a half at times) but you can find it here if you scroll down (or do a Find on “rookie cop attacked”)
(Via Universal Hub)
