There is a potential miscarriage of justice brewing in Boston, after an officer-involved shooting. As the city moves to jail a police officer, city leaders are not inspiring confidence in the process.
Boston police responded to a call of a woman being carjacked. The alleged carjacker, Stephenson King, allegedly punched the woman and forced her out of the car. Officers found the car running with King still in the driver’s seat. King refused to comply with officer demands, appeared to be unarmed (he showed his hands at one point when ordered to, but otherwise did not comply), and attempted to flee by ramming into the unoccupied police vehicles that were being used to box him in.
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That culminated in Officer Nicholas O’Malley shooting and killing King, after providing him sufficient warning. O’Malley was arrested and charged with manslaughter, the first time a Boston police officer was arrested and charged in a shooting in 30 years.
The central contention at the heart of the prosecution is that neither Officer O’Malley nor his partner was in danger from being hit by the car being driven by King; therefore, the use of lethal force was not authorized. O’Malley claimed he was worried for his partner’s safety, while prosecutors argue that “Video established that the second officer was not in harm’s way, he was off to the side of the car.”
This could all be sorted very easily based on the bodycam footage of the officers involved, but Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden is refusing to do so. Instead, everyone is just left to assume that a Democratic politician (Hayden) in an election year is running a good-faith prosecution and that the judgement of him and his office about how King was trying to escape did not pose a threat to either officer.
Just to reiterate what it is we are talking about, O’Malley and his partner were trying to arrest a man accused of violently carjacking a woman. They boxed him in, but he refused to comply with demands and rammed their vehicles to try and escape. O’Malley made a split-second decision to protect his partner, whom he claims he thought was in danger from King’s reckless, violent escape attempt. (And yes, cars are dangerous weapons).
It is also not enough to assume that neither officer was in danger just because they were “off to the side of the car.” As the Renee Good shooting showed us, an officer “off to the side of the car” can quickly find themselves in danger from a fleeing suspect, especially when that suspect is a violent criminal with a record like King’s.
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It is entirely possible that O’Malley was not justified in opening fire on King, and that this prosecution is warranted. But, given how Democratic politicians treat police officers (Mayor Michelle Wu is “grateful” for the prosecution, even though she presumably hasn’t seen the body cam footage either), it is hard to put any trust in this process. Releasing the body cam footage would dispel that distrust; instead, Hayden is fueling it by trying to keep it under wraps while the prosecution moves forward.
Given that we have seen Democratic prosecutors back down from prosecutions after video evidence shows their cases to be a sham, transparency should be the top priority here. Boston must release the body cam footage for full transparency. Anything less is insufficient.
