Boston PD bags another student to celebrate historic sports victory.

[fallout man]

Link

A 22-year-old man who stopped breathing while in police custody after his arrest during the June 18 Boston Celtics NBA championship celebration died yesterday, prompting an investigation by Boston police and the Suffolk County District Attorney's office into his death.

The parents of David Woodman, a former Emmanuel College student who was living in Brookline, said their son did not receive prompt medical attention while lying unconscious, face down on Brookline Avenue with his hands cuffed behind his back. They also accused police of failing to give them a full account of what happened.

Boston police say they immediately administered cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, flagged an ambulance after noticing Woodman was in distress, and did everything they could to help him before he was taken to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. But Jeffrey and Cathy Woodman of Southwick say their son must have been deprived of oxygen for at least four minutes because he suffered significant brain damage.

Initially, Driscoll [BPD spokeswoman] said Boston police called for an ambulance at 12:47 a.m., reporting an extremely drunken man on the ground, and immediately began CPR. Later she corrected that information, saying that officers didn't begin CPR at that time and initially just put out a low-priority call for an ambulance to tend to a drunken man. Then sometime in the next six minutes, she said, officers discovered Woodman wasn't breathing, began CPR, and at 12:53 a.m. put out a second call for an ambulance, warning "please push."

The police report says one of the officers flagged down a private Cataldo Ambulance, before a Boston Emergency Medical Services ambulance arrived.

Cataldo Ambulance workers arrived at 12:58 a.m., treated Woodman at the scene, and delivered him to the hospital at 1:11 a.m, said Ron Quaranto, chief operating officer of Cataldo Ambulance.

David Woodman, who was charged with drinking in public and resisting arrest, remained hospitalized after the incident and awoke June 23 from a medically induced coma. His parents said he recognized them but had difficulty communicating and whispered, "What happened?"

He smiled at a Globe reporter during a brief visit Thursday, spoke softly to his parents, and appeared confused. A large scrape was visible near his right eye. On Saturday, he was asking to go home, according to his parents, who believed he would survive and face lengthy rehabilitation.

At 2:30 a.m. yesterday he died at the hospital. The family is awaiting autopsy results.

"Based upon what we know thus far we do not believe that any excessive force was used and we do believe officers responded reasonably," Driscoll said in an interview Friday.

Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis declined to be interviewed, according to Driscoll, who said the commissioner tried to meet with Woodman's family June 18 but was turned away at the hospital by staff who said the family didn't wish to see him.

David Woodman, who had been a history major at Emmanuel College and planned to return in the fall after taking a semester off, was walking from a bar with friends after the game when they passed about 10 or 12 uniformed officers at the corner of the Fenway and Brookline Avenue, according to two friends who spoke on the condition they not be named.

According to one of the friends, as Woodman passed the officers, he said, "Wow, it seems like there's a lot of crime on this corner."

Officers grabbed Woodman, who was carrying a plastic cup of beer, and as they struggled to handcuff him pushed him face down onto the ground, according to Woodman's friend.

"He wasn't being a punk or anything like that," said the friend. "I don't understand why the officers used such brute force to arrest him."

Woodman's friends said an officer yelled at them to leave, saying they would be arrested if they didn't.

One of the friends said he returned a few minutes later but was ordered to leave or face arrest. "They were all just around him and he was on the ground and not moving," the friend said. "I didn't see them giving him CPR."

Beautiful. BPD does it yet again, violently manifesting their insipid townie hatred for students and anyone who may be in the same age bracket. It's not like Boston is a college town or anything. Keep in mind, folks. This story is riding on the coat-tails of another BPD fuckup in crowd control back in 2004, which cost the city a $5-6m settlement at our tax expense:

Link

Student's death raises questions about Boston police use of force
By Denise Lavoie, The Associated Press
BOSTON ? The death of an Emerson College student who was hit in the face with a pepper spray-filled projectile has sparked anger and questions about whether police used too much force to break up a crowd of Red Sox revelers outside Fenway Park.

Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole said police are considering discontinuing the use of the type of weaponry that killed Victoria Snelgrove, a 21-year-old journalism major from East Bridgewater.

Snelgrove, 21, died Thursday, hours after being hit in the eye with a plastic ball filled with pepper spray during an early morning celebration in the streets after the Red Sox won the American League pennant over the rival New York Yankees.

Snelgrove was hit as police fired the projectiles into the crowd after some revelers set small fires and threw bottles at police, and vandalized property in the Fenway Park neighborhood.

O'Toole said officers had used "great restraint," but were forced to use the weapons when a small number within the crowd of an estimated 80,000 began lighting fires and throwing bottles, endangering others.

Witnesses say officers overreacted to the situation.

Several people who were near the area where Snelgrove was shot said the crowd seemed under control when at least one officer began firing the pepper-spray balls into the crowd.

Doug Conroy, 33, of Portland, Maine, said he and several other people had climbed the rafters of Fenway's famed Green Monster when police began to order them back down. He said he saw an officer in riot gear shoot something into the crowd below him.

He said he heard a woman scream, then heard sobbing. "A lot of people then looked over and saw her lying awkwardly on the sidewalk and blood coming out of her nose. She wasn't moving and we were just hoping she was just unconscious," Conroy told The Associated Press.

Besides Snelgrove, at least two other people were injured by the projectiles, O'Toole said.

"I definitely felt it was an egregious overreaction," Conroy said of the police action that night. "I didn't see any violence around me. People were up on signs ... but there was nothing violent going on. It was all celebration."

Giovanni De Francisci, a 30-year-old Emerson student, said he was about 10 feet behind police officers as shots were fired in Snelgrove's direction.

Although some celebrants had climbed the back side of the Green Monster, he said nobody was climbing anything in Snelgrove's immediate area or causing property damage around the time she was shot.

"It was not at all necessary to disperse that crowd. If you want to disperse a crowd, why not disperse the crowd that is overturning cars?" he said.

But Fallout Man, you surely jest! Boston police work hard, and get paid scraps for their hard work. Why the disrespect?

Boston police are probably the best paid city police force in the country..

Nineteen Boston police officers made more than $200,000 in 2004, earning amounts far beyond their base salaries by working overtime or private-detail shifts, according to city payroll records and city officials.

The records, obtained by the Globe through state open-records laws, show that 143 officers made more than $160,000, exceeding the $136,615 salary Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole collected during the same period. Mayor Thomas M. Menino made $152,885.

If you're not sure what "private-detail shifts" are: Mass. has a law stating that the must be a cop present at every construction site. Nine out of ten times, the "shift" consists of standing around and chatting with contruction guys, while leaning on your Volvo. They're not making big bucks because they're out there, being all scrappy and catching murderers.

In fact, they are explicitly not catching murderers.

Link

The worst homicide squad in the country
The Boston Police Department doesn?t catch killers, so the killing keeps getting worse
BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

For years, Boston has been one of the least successful cities in the US at catching and prosecuting murderers, and it?s only getting worse. Even in the "Boston Miracle" days of the early-and-mid 1990s, when Operation Ceasefire cut down on gang violence, the Boston Police Department (BPD) made arrests in just 50 percent of murders, well below the national average of 65 percent. Now the figure has nose-dived further, to less than a third of homicides solved since the start of 2004.

But even these "solved" cases don?t stand up to scrutiny. Nationally, just six percent of murder defendants in urban-county trials win acquittals; in Boston, an astonishing 27 percent have been acquitted over the past eight years. Since the start of 2004, juries have found just 16 of 30 Boston murder defendants guilty. (Seven were acquitted of all charges, three were found guilty of only assault and battery, and four received mistrials.) Boston also has an unusually high number of convictions reversed on appeal or vacated as wrongful. San Francisco, for instance, has released two people wrongfully convicted of murder in the past 15 years; Boston released that many last year alone.

Simply put, the BPD?s homicide unit has the worst track record of any big-city police department in the country.

At the same time, Boston?s homicide rate continues to rise, in sharp contrast with the trend in other US cities. Nationally, the murder rate is at its lowest in decades and still dropping. But Boston is on track for its highest murder tally since the early 1990s ? even though its population has shrunk. Boston had an official total of 225 homicides between 2001 and 2004 ? an increase of more than 50 percent from the previous four years. No other US city experienced anything similar.

I think time well spent is time catching people who are shooting kids in the back in Roxbury, and not snuffing out students in the Fenway. Here comes another expensive settlement for the city which the residents will have to pay for. One bad apple can spoil a whole bunch, but when you keep getting bad apples from the same shop--it's time to switch.

In conclusion and in summary:

Dear Scum-of-the-Earth,

Please visit Boston. It's a historic city where almost everyone gets away with murder.

Cheers,
FM

 

[NaughtyGeek]

Man, this really doesn't come as all that shocking. I've lived in more states than most people ever visit and I've never seen anything different. The PD hangs around where there's affluent people's kids so they can write hefty tickets to fill the city coffers. Meanwhile, if you go across town you can find dope peddlers on the corner. It will never change. The PD has just become another entity trying to bilk you of every dollar they can and there's seldom much money to be made in high crime areas. Plus, arresting actual criminals is dangerous work and these bullies will have none of that. Suburban white kids are much more their speed. Boston may have worse stats than other areas, but I assure you they are hardly different. The populace is probably just smarter than the PD there. /diatribe

 

[fallout man]

Originally posted by: NaughtyGeek
Man, this really doesn't come as all that shocking. I've lived in more states than most people ever visit and I've never seen anything different. The PD hangs around where there's affluent people's kids so they can write hefty tickets to fill the city coffers. Meanwhile, if you go across town you can find dope peddlers on the corner. It will never change. The PD has just become another entity trying to bilk you of every dollar they can and there's seldom much money to be made in high crime areas. Plus, arresting actual criminals is dangerous work and these bullies will have none of that. Suburban white kids are much more their speed. Boston may have worse stats than other areas, but I assure you they are hardly different. The populace is probably just smarter than the PD there. /diatribe

Personally, I've never had a very negative experience with Boston cops. At the least, not on this scale.

What upsets me is they refuse to correct their bullshit behavior in "safe parts of town" while the rest of the city is going up in flames. Furthermore, as I mentioned, there is this sick undercurrent mentality that "all students are troublemakers." Without the student population, this town would sink like the Titanic.

Our bars close at 2am, while our public transit closes at 12:30am. At the same time, we have some of the best schools in the world. College students and the rest of us need to get out and have fun. Apparently, you risk your life doing that much.

This shit personally upsets me, since I've lived here for years after getting out of school, and I'm personally contibuting tax money to these egregious fuck-ups. If they really want to make students unwelcome here, they will see the local economy hit rock-bottom as fast as I can say "Bahston beat-down."

It's fucking inexcusable, and real fucking disgusting.

 

[dmcowen674]

Man I feel so much safer with that Basketball fan taken care of by the police.

 

[jpeyton]

The Woodman family is about to become millionaires.

 

[fallout man]

A 7-year old kid got shot in the back yesterday in Roxbury. Maybe they should send out 10-12 cops to man streetcorners there for a change.

The update on the story is that this dead guy basically loudly said to his friends "Boy, there seems to be a lot of crime here on this corner..." as they passed the cops.

They kept walking [that's how the cops got the evading/resisting arrest joke charge], and all of a sudden heard "Hey you! Hey you!" Next thing is the kid getting tackled.

They told his friends that they need to leave or they'll get arrested, and well... someone's dead.

Autopsy report is due soon.

 

[fallout man]

Originally posted by: fallout man

Autopsy report is due soon.

Surprize!

January 30, 2009

Police held blameless in man's death
Student celebrating win had a heart condition

By Shelley Murphy and Stephanie Ebbert, Globe Staff | January 30, 2009

Boston police officers did not use excessive force and were not to blame for the death of David Woodman, a 22-year-old Emmanuel College student who stopped breathing after police arrested him during the Celtics championship celebration last June and died later, prosecutors said.

On the seven-month anniversary of Woodman's death, Daniel F. Conley, the Suffolk district attorney, announced yesterday that Woodman, after being arrested for public drinking, suffered an arrhythmia as a result of a preexisting heart condition.

His parents, Jeffrey and Cathy Woodman of Southwick, reacted angrily after a meeting with Conley yesterday, saying they cannot believe that police are blameless in their son's death. They said their son, who had heart surgery as an infant, led an active lifestyle and never suffered an arrhythmia before.

"I think it's a little unrealistic to ask us to believe that the police did everything right," said Cathy Woodman, a secretary, wiping away tears as she sat beside her husband during a press conference at their lawyers' office in Boston.

She said that the family had to wait months for the results of Conley's investigation and still does not have copies of the medical examiner's report or other documents that support his findings.

"We just wanted information," she said. "Now we have it, and it just sounds like a lie."

Conley said that after reviewing the medical examiner's report, findings of a cardiac specialist, and interviewing police and other witnesses, he concluded that Woodman's heart condition caused his death.

"No police officer caused Mr. Woodman's death, and no police officer used excessive force in arresting Mr. Woodman," Conley said during a press conference at his Boston office. He said no criminal charges were warranted against the nine officers present during Woodman's arrest. Conley said he will immediately release the entire investigative file to the Woodmans.

After watching the Celtics' championship victory at a bar, Woodman, who lived in Brookline, was walking home June 18 with four friends and carrying a cup of beer when they passed the officers at Fenway and Brookline Avenue. One of Woodman's friends, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Woodman said, "Wow, it seems like there's a lot of crime on this corner."

The friend said officers slammed Woodman to the ground and then ordered his friends to leave the area or face arrest.

But Conley concluded that Woodman would not stop for police and resisted arrest by grabbing a wrought-iron fence, requiring several officers to bring him to the ground. He was charged with public drinking and resisting arrest.

"They used a level and type of force appropriate to the resistance they encountered, and they complied with the Boston Police Department's rules and procedures in doing so," Conley said.

After Woodman was handcuffed behind his back, Conley said, the officers tried to get Woodman to his feet, but he could not stand. Believing he was drunk and unaware of his medical condition, police returned him to the ground, positioning him on his side, in case he vomited, Conley said.

"Within one or two minutes, they noticed that he was not breathing and had no pulse, and they immediately took action," Conley said.

One officer began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, another performed chest compressions, a third called for an ambulance, and three more ran for an ambulance, Conley said.

The Woodmans accused police of using excessive force and neglecting their son, pointing out that by the time he arrived at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, he had significant brain damage from a lack of oxygen. He regained consciousness, but days later, on June 29, he suffered another arrhythmia and died.

Conley said that Dr. James R. Stone, chief of cardiovascular pathology service at Massachusetts General Hospital and a consultant to the medical examiner in the case, found that both arrhythmias resulted from Woodman's heart abnormalities and that the second arrhythmia would have killed him, even if the first had never occurred.

Commissioner Edward F. Davis, who was at Conley's press conference, said later that he believed police acted appropriately.

However, police policies might change as a result of the episode, he said. For instance, he said, the nine officers who were present at Woodman's arrest immediately went to the hospital for stress treatment, leaving a superior who did not witness the event to write the report.

Thomas Drechsler, a Boston lawyer who represents eight of the officers, said it was a very stressful situation for the officers who arrested Woodman and then tried to revive him. "They felt awful about it," Drechsler said. "They did their best."

The Woodmans' lawyer, Howard Friedman, said the family will review the investigative file and consult an independent medical specialist before deciding whether to file a lawsuit against the Police Department.

Former US Attorney Donald K. Stern, tapped by Davis to conduct an independent review, said he will focus on police practices the night of the arrest.

The FBI and US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan will review the case to determine whether a civil rights investigation by the Justice Department is warranted.

Cathy Woodman said she and her husband, an elevator mechanic, will keep fighting for their son "because it's not right that there were nine officers and one David, and all of his friends were shooed away."

Text

Clearing a path for truth

By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Columnist | December 10, 2008

The state medical examiner signed David Woodman's long-awaited death certificate Monday, six months after Woodman stopped breathing in police custody following the Celtics' championship win.

The autopsy found that Woodman's death was "natural," the result of a congenital heart defect. His enlarged heart lurched into an irregular rhythm and eventually stopped.

But the last conscious moments of David Woodman's life were anything but natural. One minute Woodman was walking near Fenway Park, carrying a cup of beer and making a smart-alecky comment to police. The next he was lying handcuffed and face-down on Brookline Avenue, in cardiac arrest.

Howard Friedman, the Woodman family's attorney, said that because the medical examiner has not found them at fault, it is now unlikely that the Boston police officers who restrained Woodman on June 18 will face criminal charges.

That will be an immense relief to those nine officers. But the autopsy results will do little to assuage the family's immense and completely justified frustration.

We now know how Woodman died. We still have no idea why. In the aftermath of the 22-year-old Emmanuel College student's death, a legion of investigators from several agencies was deployed to determine what happened that night.

The Police Department was investigating the officers who stopped Woodman after he joked about the big police presence in the area. "Wow, it seems like there's a lot of crime on this corner," he said, according to one of his friends.

Donald K. Stern, a former US attorney, has been looking into whether the procedures police followed that night were appropriate.

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley has been studying whether the officers should be charged with Woodman's death.

US Attorney Michael Sullivan also promised to look into whether officers violated Woodman's civil rights.

The initial flurry of public outrage - fanned by Commissioner Ed Davis's premature assertion that his officers did not use excessive force - has yielded to months of silence as authorities waited for the medical examiner's conclusions.

And all along, the Woodmans have been in the dark, gripped by grief and questions.

Why did the nine police officers involved in Woodman's arrest send his friends away from the scene that night, threatening to detain them, too? Did the four officers who restrained him slam him to the ground, as Woodman's friends said? How did his face get so scraped up?

When did Woodman stop breathing? Was it as he stood before police, as the officers initially told the EMTs who arrived on the scene? Or was it after he was already on the ground and cuffed, as Davis has said? Why did all nine officers present at Woodman's arrest go to the hospital for stress treatment immediately after, leaving a superior officer who didn't witness the events to write the report?

Did the force of his arrest shut down David Woodman's flawed heart?

The autopsy results answer none of these questions. But the fact that the examiner's work is done means all of the other investigations can finally proceed.

A spokesman for Conley would not comment on the likelihood of criminal charges, but said the district attorney's inquiry will probably be complete "within weeks." That will, in turn, allow the Police Department and Stern to conclude their investigations.

Regardless, there is no outcome that will be good news for the Woodmans. Their son is dead. What they need - deserve - is the truth, at long last.

The kid has been buried for 7 months now... These reports sure take a long time...

 

[her209]

The BPD clears itself of any wrongdoing. Whodathunkit?

 

[GTKeeper]

They will take the PD to civil court and win handily.

 

[DarrelSPowers]

all fucking BPD ever does is bust up parties on mission hill.