Smoke leads T cops to alleged juvie with a knife

It has nothing to do with wanting or not wanting to hang around with cops. Nothing is stopping them from, off-duty, joining us in the community and making acquaintances and friendships. For example, playing in pickup sports games, having coffee at JP Licks and meeting people, etc. They could participate in the festivals and events like First Thursday. But they don't. When the uniform comes off, they go home, and home isn't where they work. They're not social in the communities they police, they're not invested in the communities they work in. Our community is their workplace. The only time I see a BPD officer is when they're driving by in their cruiser or going into a shop for their meal. I've never run into one on the street walking a beat EVER, and I've lived in Boston for 4 years.

I don't trust or value BPD because every time I have (or a friend has) needed them, the officers have made it clear they don't give a damn, and have done fuck-all to help. Every time, it's "there's no point in us filing a report" or "so what do you want us to do about it" or "there's nothing we can do." The police reports are littered with so many errors I've seen ones that were not even consistent page to page and demonstrated the officer didn't even know the area he supposedly worked in...and his supervisor just rubber-stamped it without reading it. Basically, the front line doesn't give a fuck- whatever involves the least paperwork.

Then, when they screw up, their first reaction is not self-examination and discipline but major ass-covering and falling in behind the infamous Thin Blue Line. Remember the lady at First Thursday, in a crosswalk, whose baby bounced off the front of an E-13 paddywagon? The report contained only statements by the officer driving the vehicle, no witness or victim statements- the Globe and Herald and WCVB didn't seem to have trouble finding witnesses. The report basically said "she threw her child in front of me, there was nothing I could do, I brushed the child" when reality was that the kid went flying through the air.

It also doesn't impress when you fire an officer for calling a Harvard professor names, but when an officer hits a baby in a crosswalk and then lies in the report to protect himself, he gets driver ed and desk duty for a month.

And then when half a dozen people are mugged within a half mile of your district station house in one night, all on the same street, in one case while you're still supposedly on-scene barely blocks away...and you can't manage to catch anyone, we know you're completely useless and we might as well fend for ourselves.

When we see your officers run red lights (or flip on their lights just to run stop signs and lights), not stop for people in crosswalks, fail to ticket people parking in the bus stops, park illegally around your station houses...we know you think you're above the law because you are the law, instead of following the law to set an example.

So pardon me if I don't feel like having a beer with you and your over-paid, overly-union-protected, lying, privileged, self-entitled officers, Mr. Davis. For chrissakes, your officers won't even wear name badges on their uniforms!