James Bowden, 1975. Elijah Pate, 1983. Accelyne Williams, 1994. Eveline Barros-Cepeda, 2002. Each name and date from past decades conjures memories of prominent police shootings of Black Bostonians that critics called homicides and defenders called justified. In every instance, no cop was ever held accountable.
According to records kept by Blackstonian.org, some 20 African Americans have died at the muzzles of Boston police firearms since 1972. In a number of those cases, police cited fear for their lives from the threat of motor vehicles driven by suspects. Until last week, the last time a Boston police officer faced charges for fatally shooting a civilian was in 1991, after Officer James E. Hall killed Christopher Rogers, 16, during a foot chase. Hall faced second-degree murder charges but was ultimately convicted of involuntary manslaughter after testifying that his handgun went off accidentally during his pursuit of the unarmed Dorchester teenager.
Given the long history of what many have described as police impunity, the swift arraignment last week of Boston Police Officer Nicholas O’Malley, 33, on manslaughter charges in the shooting death of Stephenson King came as a surprise. According to police, King, 39, was killed on March 11 while fleeing a traffic stop after an unarmed carjacking in Roxbury. Eight days later, O’Malley stood in a Roxbury courtroom. Prosecutors under Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden rejected O’Malley’s account that the shooting was justified because he thought a fellow officer was in danger of being run over. It is now up to grand jury whether to indict O’Malley, who, supported by the presence of fellow Boston cops crowded in the courtroom, pleaded not guilty and was released on his own recognizance.
Assistant District Attorney Polumbaum said O’Malley’s account didn’t square with bodycam footage viewed by investigators and with eyewitness testimony. His fellow officer, according to Polumbaum, “was in greater danger of being struck by those bullets than he ever was by the car.” Under 2020 changes in Massachusetts law, it is illegal for police to fire on a fleeing vehicle unless there is an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm.
The use of bodycam footage has inaugurated a welcome change in police investigations. “The pictures don’t lie,” said City Councilor Miniard Culpepper, who has urged Police Commissioner Michael Cox to allow elected officials and oversight authorities to view the footage. That practice, he said, was established as a precedent under former commissioner William Gross. The Roxbury councilor is filing a hearing order this week to empower the City Council to consider policies related to viewing bodycam evidence.
To Culpepper, it’s rightly a question of public trust and accountability.
“We have oversight of the Boston Police Department,” he said. “We should be able to see the bodycam footage because we’re the bridge to the residents of our neighborhoods.”
Video evidence of lethal behavior by law enforcement was highlighted most recently in the case of Department of Homeland Security shootings of civilians in Minneapolis.
Transparent sharing of evidence can only increase public trust in police. Past shootings by police usually resulted in more questions raised than answered. In the case of James Bowden, a Boston cabdriver killed by undercover cops on Mission Hill in 1975, no charges were ever brought against police. A federal civil suit resulted in a judgment against the city that went unpaid until 1983, when newly sworn-in Mayor Ray Flynn, in a 1983 gesture considered a milestone of racial healing, personally delivered a check to the family as one of his first official acts.
The police shooting of Elijah Pate, 19, on a side street in the Fenway, occurred after the fleeing suspect drove his car into the stoop of an apartment building. Police never interviewed a group of Senegalese men who were sitting on the steps and directly witnessed the event.
Accelyne Williams, a 75-year-old retired Methodist minister, was shot to death by a SWAT team bursting into his Codman Square apartment after a bad tip by a drug informant.
Eveline Barros-Cepeda, a 25-year-old immigrant mother, was shot to death by police after the car she was riding in ran a red light and an officer opened fire. Police claimed the car hit an officer and sent him over the roof of the vehicle but that testimony was disputed. In the wake of that incident, then-Police Commissioner Paul Evans proposed a policy of forbidding officers to shoot at vehicles unless returning fire from them.
Yawu Miller, a former Bay State Banner reporter, editor and current contributor who has covered police shootings and criminal justice reform for over three decades, sees bodycam footage as a game-changer in holding police accountable for the use of deadly force. “The era of impunity may be drawing to an end. It’s not over, but it feels like it may soon be,” he said.
Equally important is the election of prosecutors like Hayden, the third African American to lead the Suffolk County office, whose first instinct is not to close ranks with the police department and simply become another brick in the Blue Wall. Prosecutors like the late Newman Flanagan could regularly be counted on to swiftly dismiss allegations of police misconduct. Miller called Hayden’s decision to charge O’Malley less than two weeks after the shooting unprecedented.
“We’ve seen since the 1980s instances where charges haven’t been brought even when eyewitness testimony has strained credulity and DAs have been openly reluctant to pursue cases against police officers,” he said.
As the latest case moves through the courts, it’s important to remember that Officer O’Malley is innocent until proven guilty. But we count it as progress that the case was brought at all. We hope that more extensive deployment and public review of bodycam footage and the election of public officials who aren’t knee-jerk defenders of police will increase our community’s trust of law enforcement — and make us all safer.
Ronald Mitchell
Editor and Publisher, Bay State Banner
