Earlier this month, a Boston police officer went massively viral for taking a tumultuous tumble down a playground slide at Authorities Middle—in full uniform, in broad daylight, together with his gun nonetheless strapped to his belt. The slide has since develop into a sensation for visiting adults, which additionally led to its temporary arrest. Sure, the slide.
Now, 404media—a brand new journalism outlet based by former Vice Motherboard staffers—has used FOIA to uncover and publish the official police report pertaining to the notorious incident on the slide.
The incident report, which redacts the sufferer’s identify and age, notes that the police officer “was assigned to work a particular occasion at Metropolis Corridor Plaza when he struck his head and proper arm.”
The report doesn’t clarify what the officer was doing on the time, nor does it use the phrase “slide,” although it does be aware the “OFFENSE LOCATION” as a “Park/Playground.” The report additionally claims a “suspect” whose first and final identify are “UNKNOWN, UNKNOWN.” It’s unclear whether or not this refers back to the slide itself, to an unknown fugitive, or is merely a required subject on the report. The Boston Police Division didn’t reply to a request for remark.
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The incident report goes on to notice that there was no “suspected drug use” or “suspected alcohol consumption,” and that the incident was not a “suspected hate crime.”
You possibly can click on by for the full report. Whereas it is not wildly scandalous or revelatory by itself, it’s a good instance of how the bureaucratic language of policing is intentionally designed to make use of the phantasm of objectivity to be able to obfuscate energy and duty. To the credit score of the reporting officer, Stephen Canto, I’m frankly impressed that he acknowledged that the officer “struck his head and proper arm,” slightly than the standard passive-voiced “his head and proper arm had been struck.” In fact, on this case, the latter would have ceded an entire lot of energy to the slide. In fact, that reporting officer has additionally been the topic of a number of sustained Inner Affairs investigations and brings house $150,000 a 12 months whereas residing within the city of Weymouth, slightly than town of Boston, as required.