Boston Police

BPD: Feds never told us about the brothers.

FBI: Did too. Well, sorta. BPD had full access to an FBI database and could've looked up Tamarlan at any time.

LA Times: Boston was warned of Marathon threat.

BPD: Was not.

Boston Police report:

Mark Cohen, a 28 year employee of the Boston Police Department and Director of the Hackney Unit, has been placed on paid administrative leave as a result of an internal complaint.

These allegations bring into question the overall management of the Hackney Unit. Accordingly, until a full review of the Hackney Unit is completed, Cohen will remain on leave.

Bribery, shortchanging and a city government that doesn't care, the Globe reports.

The Herald reports BPD is now investigating the incident, which happened as tensions are rising between dog owners who keep their pets leashed in the park and those who don't.

The Globe reports.

Slate compiles the evidence that detectives posing as scenesters are trying to ensnare organizers of house parties through online messages that are just off enough to tip the organizers off:

You don't have to be a local-music Agent Smith, though, to tell that some of these emails smell pretty fishy. "Hey there, local P native here," wrote one probable imposter to a local band, (who probably meant to type JP, slang for Jamaica Plain). "What is the Address for the local music show tonight?"

The local music show tonight? Who talks like that about a DIY show? Someone not used to talking about music, that's who. Another message: "Is there any chance I can get the address for this party you are playing tonight? I believe I was once driven to the Drive-In by a friend, (all I know is that it was a JP party space that wasn't Whitehaus), but it's all very foggy."

BPD, Slate reports, declined to comment.

Earlier:
Note to organizers of Allston house shows: Police are watching your online posts.

Some notes on last night's Boston's Finest:

The Herald reports, adds the Massachusetts Civil Service Commission upheld the firing of four other cops who tested positive, in a 134-page ruling (which you can read in the attachment to this post).

Watched the first episode on TNT tonight and it was an interesting, fun experience. Interesting to see what goes on on those calls that I hear broadcast on a police scanner, fun to see what places I could recognize or look up (at one point, a guy gets arrested at Olympic Pizza in Wolcott Square - hey, I've been there! - the show ends with the arrest of a guy who walked out of this building in Roxbury - where, jeez, there was a shootout early this morning).

Who couldn't love a show that posits "coffee and chicken pahm" as a cop's cleanse and asks the question: "Why do you think it's OK to take your penis out of your pants on Hyde Park Avenue?"

The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today that a state trooper will get his day in court to make the case that two Boston detectives libeled him in a report on overcrowding at a nightclub where he sometimes moonlighted as a DJ.

In its ruling, which overturns a lower court's ruling against Trooper Anthony Dear, the court said a report by detectives John Devaney and Kevin McGill of the BPD licensing division did not have "absolute immunity" against a defamation claim.

CommonWealth examines police misconduct and the gradual dismantling of a program that was meant to get cops help before they got in trouble - a program established after the Carol Stuart debacle in 1992.

The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today that Boston Police Officer Paul Durkin lost his right to a city pension the night he pulled out his service revolver and shot another cop who was trying to get him to stop stumbling down VFW Parkway in West Roxbury after a night of drinking.

It cannot be gainsaid that police officers, who are extensively trained in the use of firearms, and who carry their service revolvers with them while off-duty, have a high degree of responsibility to which the public deserves and demands adherence. Simply, an officer who consumes an excess amount of alcohol and uses his service revolver to shoot, without any justification whatsoever, a fellow officer from a distance of a few feet, has sadly breached that trust.

A woman injured during a brief but furious gun battle between a man she was talking to and police has filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the city and the police officers involved, alleging she's been left with permanent physical and mental scars because of the "unreasonable and excessive" force used even after the man was down.

Niquel Reid's filed suit this week in US District Court in Boston against 13 police officers involved in an incident on June 14, 2011, when Tyrone Cummings shot a police officer - who, along with other officers returned fire, leaving Cummings with injuries that led to his death a month later.

Cummings, authorities say, had shown up at his girlfriend's apartment on Dunbar Avenue intent on killing her. In her suit, Reid says the girlfriend is her sister and that as Cummings raged in the apartment, she called Reid. Reid said she drove over get her sister and her young daughter.

Her suit says she arrived to see Cummings exiting the building, and the two were talking when police showed up. According to the suit:

Boston Police report Officer Henderson Parker was arrested late Sunday night after a woman told police he'd raped her at a Roslindale residence.

Parker, 45, has been suspended with pay and had his service firearm confiscated pending the outcome of the case against him.

Parker has been an officer for 18 years. The Globe reports Parker was suspended for 30 days in 2002 following "a physical confrontation of a domestic nature that resulted in injuries."

Parker lives in Roslindale himself; authorities declined to say if the alleged rape happened at his home.

Parker was arraigned today in West Roxbury District Court. Prosecutors asked for bail of $2,500 on the charges of indecent assault and battery and rape; a judge set bail at $1,000, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports. He is next due in court Feb. 22.

Innocent, etc.

This time the Walhberg involved is Donnie and the violence is supposed to be real.

It's probably too much to ask that the cops on this show intersect with the family on Southie Rules, but that would be an awesome crossover.

Via BostInno.

The Globe reports Boston School Police, who do not have guns, but who, of course, want them, have a radio system that cannot communicate directly with actual Boston Police - which has its own dedicated school unit. In an emergency today, school guards would have to call their own dispatcher, who would then contact Boston Police.

The Globe reports on the commendation for Officer Edward T. Norton for his action in saving a woman who wound up in Fort Point Channel on Friday.

ACLU of Massachusetts says yes. Boston Police say no.

The ACLU reports the results of a public-records request to Boston Police on its use of automated license-plate readers:

While the BPD says it "safeguards the legitimate privacy concerns of law abiding citizens" through its license plate reader program, the policy details say otherwise. Police should not retain the location information of thousands of people against whom no crime has been alleged, and should impose a finite retention period on those pieces of data it stores for legitimate investigatory purposes. The data should not be held in a corporate database, where it may be accessible to hundreds of agencies nationwide. Most importantly, police should not be able to collect and indefinitely retain revealing personal and location information on people accused of no crime under the catch-all "intelligence" justification.

But those practices are allowed under BPD license plate reader policy.

A federal appeals court has upheld the right of Massachusetts police departments to deny people the right to bear certain arms if they lie on their permit applications.

The ruling means former Boston police officer Stacey Hightower can no longer carry a concealed .38 caliber five-round revolver - or carry high-capacity weaponry.

New-York Tribune's view. From Library of Congress

At 5:45 p.m. on Sept. 9, 1919, Boston police officers walked off the job. They were fed up with inadequate pay - they had not received a pay increase in 60 years - work weeks that could last 96 hours and working conditions that required them to live in vermin-infested stations and to ask for permission just to go to Revere Beach on their days off. A decision by Police Commissoner Edwin Curtis to suspend several officers for seeking to form a union affiliated with the AFL proved the final straw, and union members voted Sept. 8 to strike.

Chris Casey spotted this sparkly new District A-1 Boston Police cruiser today on Centre Street in West Roxbury, wonders why BPD couldn't find a dealer closer than New York to buy them from.

Patty Neal arrived at Jackson Square around 7:30 this morning to find "police in SWAT jackets along with a camera crew at Heath Street."

Seems Donnie Wahlberg has a deal with TNT to churn out eight episodes of a reality show called Boston Blue, in which cameras follow members of the BPD gang unit.

Note corrected time: It begins at 8 p.m.

The Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers is hosting an open meeting tonight, to discuss its recent open letter to Mayor Menino and the Boston Police Patrolmens Association Pax Centurion newsletter.

It starts at 8 p.m. at the Global Ministries Church, 670 Washington St. in Dorchester.

OK, it's a letter from Pax Centurion editor James Carnell, who can't understand why people would object to the content in the newsletter he edits, except that they must be tofu-eating "cyber terrorists" and "thugs" and that people who object to "jokes" about Egyptian men having sex with the corpses of their dead wives are no better than the people who accused women of being witches in colonial Salem. Really, you need to read the whole thing.

Carnell also calls the people behind the Phoenix "the penultimate hypocrites," which, of course, makes you wonder who the ultimate hypocrites are.