judge to let Drumgold go home.
With the St. Clair Commission’s explosive findings, 1992 was off to a terrible start for the Boston Police Department. But there was more trouble to come. That same January a trial began in Boston that served as a kind of appendix to the panel’s findings—a case of police brutality dramatically illustrating in real life the failings the panel had outlined clinically and statistically.
The case was the May 1988 beating of the coke-snorting John L. Smith, who, after running a red light, had led police on a fifteen-
minute chase through various city neighborhoods until his Cadillac broke down on Borland Street in Brookline. Smith’s arrest woke up the residents, mostly professionals living on the usually quiet street not far from nearby Boston University. One woman told authorities she looked out her bedroom window and heard a “wailing sound” from Smith, who was lying facedown with his hands behind his back, apparently handcuffed. “It was a very eerie sound. It sounded like the sound coming from an injured animal. It was quite loud,” she said. She watched officers casually walk over to stomp on Smith’s back and then walk away. The woman’s husband, a lawyer, was standing by her side at the window. He said he could hear Smith “whimpering and saying, ‘No, no.’ It was very loud, very clear and was obviously the voice of someone being hurt.” To make matters worse for the police, another Borland Street resident happened to be a state prosecutor. Not just any state prosecutor either—Stephen L. Oleskey was supervisor of the Public Protection Bureau, which investigated complaints involving consumer protection and civil rights. When Oleskey looked out his window he first thought officers huddled around a man on the ground were trying to help someone injured in a car crash. When he stepped outside and police walked past him with Smith, he realized his initial assessment was likely wrong. “When I saw the civilian go by, with the battered face and handcuffed, I revised.” Oleskey began thinking Smith might have been beaten. “But I wasn’t sure.”
Oleskey then talked to his neighbors. Before long the state attorney general’s office opened an investigation. The next year it filed a civil rights lawsuit in state court against the police department, the city, and the “Brighton 13.” Thirteen officers were accused of beating Smith or standing by and doing nothing to stop it. The January 1989 lawsuit was filed as a last resort—after state prosecutors had urged Boston police officials to discipline the officers but nothing was done. “When I became convinced that nothing was going to be done internally by the Boston police, I felt it was necessary to go to court,” Massachusetts Attorney General James M. Shannon had told reporters.
It was a historic moment—state prosecutors asking the judge to issue a court order against the thirteen Boston officers barring them from using excessive force and demanding they report police brutality. Never before had such an injunction been sought against police—either in Massachusetts or, as far as anyone could tell, in the country.
The attorney general continued to try to negotiate with the officers, their union, and police officials, but they would have none of it. The thirteen officers denied wrongdoing, saying any force that was used was necessary to subdue a “coke-crazed madman.” The police union attacked state prosecutors for meddling and second-guessing officers whose split-second decisions may mean the difference between life and death. Union lawyers called the court action outrageous. One argued, “If you start thinking twice about usingforce or your gun because of an injunction, your life is in danger.” The police department’s Internal Affairs probe, meanwhile, never got past “go.” The case was simply on file, with no action.
“The office felt no choice but to go forward,” one state prosecutor explained
With the St. Clair Commission’s explosive findings, 1992 was off to a terrible start for the Boston Police Department. But there was more trouble to come. That same January a trial began in Boston that served as a kind of appendix to the panel’s findings—a case of police brutality dramatically illustrating in real life the failings the panel had outlined clinically and statistically.
The case was the May 1988 beating of the coke-snorting John L. Smith, who, after running a red light, had led police on a fifteen-
minute chase through various city neighborhoods until his Cadillac broke down on Borland Street in Brookline. Smith’s arrest woke up the residents, mostly professionals living on the usually quiet street not far from nearby Boston University. One woman told authorities she looked out her bedroom window and heard a “wailing sound” from Smith, who was lying facedown with his hands behind his back, apparently handcuffed. “It was a very eerie sound. It sounded like the sound coming from an injured animal. It was quite loud,” she said. She watched officers casually walk over to stomp on Smith’s back and then walk away. The woman’s husband, a lawyer, was standing by her side at the window. He said he could hear Smith “whimpering and saying, ‘No, no.’ It was very loud, very clear and was obviously the voice of someone being hurt.” To make matters worse for the police, another Borland Street resident happened to be a state prosecutor. Not just any state prosecutor either—Stephen L. Oleskey was supervisor of the Public Protection Bureau, which investigated complaints involving consumer protection and civil rights. When Oleskey looked out his window he first thought officers huddled around a man on the ground were trying to help someone injured in a car crash. When he stepped outside and police walked past him with Smith, he realized his initial assessment was likely wrong. “When I saw the civilian go by, with the battered face and handcuffed, I revised.” Oleskey began thinking Smith might have been beaten. “But I wasn’t sure.”
Oleskey then talked to his neighbors. Before long the state attorney general’s office opened an investigation. The next year it filed a civil rights lawsuit in state court against the police department, the city, and the “Brighton 13.” Thirteen officers were accused of beating Smith or standing by and doing nothing to stop it. The January 1989 lawsuit was filed as a last resort—after state prosecutors had urged Boston police officials to discipline the officers but nothing was done. “When I became convinced that nothing was going to be done internally by the Boston police, I felt it was necessary to go to court,” Massachusetts Attorney General James M. Shannon had told reporters.
It was a historic moment—state prosecutors asking the judge to issue a court order against the thirteen Boston officers barring them from using excessive force and demanding they report police brutality. Never before had such an injunction been sought against police—either in Massachusetts or, as far as anyone could tell, in the country.
The attorney general continued to try to negotiate with the officers, their union, and police officials, but they would have none of it. The thirteen officers denied wrongdoing, saying any force that was used was necessary to subdue a “coke-crazed madman.” The police union attacked state prosecutors for meddling and second-guessing officers whose split-second decisions may mean the difference between life and death. Union lawyers called the court action outrageous. One argued, “If you start thinking twice about usingforce or your gun because of an injunction, your life is in danger.” The police department’s Internal Affairs probe, meanwhile, never got past “go.” The case was simply on file, with no action.
“The office felt no choice but to go forward,” one state prosecutor explained
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