After a shooting in San Bernardino, California left 14 dead on December 2, the United States fell into panic mode, with a national call for increased security, more weapons, and a heightened sense of fear. Yet in parts of inner cities of America, including Boston, families and communities have been dealing with another kind of terrorism; with thousands murdered every day within their own neighborhoods. “You look at the statistics across the country, of how many people are shot or murdered… there’s a sort of terrorism at home, every day,” Boston Police Commissioner William Evans told Boston Public Radio in an interview on Tuesday. “Look at Chicago, 2700 people have been shot already this year. It’s like a war, basically. We’ve had about 200 shot [in Boston]—I think we had 34 homicides this year, which is down from last year, which isn’t anything to be proud of, but it’s a wake-up call that this stuff goes on every day in our cities.”
This month, a video was released of a Chicago police officer, Jason Van Dyke, fatally shooting 17 year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014. According to reports filed by at least five other officers, McDonald moved or turned threateningly toward officers. The release of the video disproved their claims, showing McDonald walking away. Evans says this displays a larger issue within the force.
The reports, released by the city late Friday, show that Officer Jason Van Dyke and at least five other officers claim that the 17-year-old McDonald moved or turned threateningly toward officers, even though the video of the October 2014 shooting shows McDonald walking away.
“You can call it murder,” Evans said. “I’m disgusted by the video, I’m disgusted by the whole chain of events. The whole idea that six officers filed reports that [McDonald] was lunging at the cops, and then on the day that the video is being released, that’s the day that they charge him? Sometimes I wonder how stupid they think the public is.”
Evans said the events in Chicago made all law enforcement departments look bad. “Sometimes when people get fearful of us, I understand why,” he said. “It took them 13 months to uncover that? That’s troubling to me.” The falsified reports tie into the perception that police officers cover for each other, known as “the thin blue line” or the cone of silence, Evans said. “I like to think we’re getting away from that,” he said. “The whole idea of officers covering up for each other, I hope those days are gone.”
In a recent visit to Scotland, Evans said he observed policing methods he wants to implement in Boston, and possibly bring to a national scale. “In Scotland, there’s a five year mandatory if you’re caught with a [gun],” he said. Envisioning a world without weapons, Evans said, “it would make our job a lot easier.”
Despite these efforts, some local groups aren’t happy with policing here in Boston. In an interview last week with Boston Public Radio, Carol Rose, the Executive Director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, said that the Boston Police were not cooperating with community members. “He mentioned NAACP on your show,” Rose said, “but I called over there, and they said no. He actually hasn’t shown them anything, and they’ve been saying [Evans] needs to bring in other community members.”
“Carol never has a good word to say anything about the police department,” Evans responded.
“I remember when we showed those videos after [Usaamah Rahim] got killed. And after Officer Moynihan, and after the choking in Revere—we had everybody in that room, and they still were beating us up, calling it “transparency by selection.” People raved about what we did there...Michael Curry has sat to my left—he’s the head of the NAACP of Boston, so I don’t know what [Rose is] talking about. The Urban League, Darnell Williams, is there. Professor Ogletree of the Harvard Law School, is on that committee. Unless the ACLU is actually at the table, obviously she’s upset. But they can be very disruptive. They’re for body cameras, but they don’t want cameras on buildings. They’re for everyone filming us at protests, but we can’t have cameras out there. I just never know how to make them happy, we tried working with them on this FIO policy, but they used it to their advantage, they took the whole context of the study out to make us look as bad as we possibly can, in a very sensitive time, when Ferguson was going on, and I thought it was very irresponsible. Ever since then, when we were working together, our relationship has soured. But it wasn’t because of us...and they’re always—no matter how hard we try—they’re always against us.”
Despite police conflicts across the country, Evans said he’s still proud of the conduct of his officers. “The other day I was in the Mattapan community health center,” he said. “We had a bishop pastor meeting, and as I was leaving, a middle aged African-American woman yelled to me, going out the door.” Evans said the woman stopped him and asked to shake his hand, and he asked her why. “She said back in July, there was a shootout on Bowdoin Ave. She said, ‘my son had the gun pointed at officers, and you didn’t shoot him.’ This is no lie—she gave me a big hug, and she said, ‘you guys saved my son’s life, and now he’s doing very well, he’s got his life back together.’ I had goosebumps after that. That sort of signifies the type of work we’re doing out there.”
To hear more from Boston Police Commissioner William Evans’ interview with Boston Public Radio, click on the audio link above.
