"Leeway in policy to punish Boston police; Commissioner rejects talk of an unfair process" by Maria Cramer | Globe Staff, February 11, 2013
When a Boston police officer called an African-American professor a “banana-eating jungle monkey” in an e-mail to the Globe, he was fired. But when a detective told two Hispanic men “you guys didn’t make it over the border,” he was quietly given a reprimand.
Oh, that's nice. You have a racist police force over there.
When an officer looked up an arrest record as a favor to a friend, he was suspended for 30 days. But when a patrolman asked a fellow officer to release his goddaughter and her friend from custody, he was suspended for one day.
The cases, all from the past six years, reflect the Boston Police Department’s latitude in meting out punishments.
The department has few set disciplinary guidelines, leading to wide-ranging punishments and tension in the rank and file, where many believe that officers popular with the administration will be insulated from the most severe consequences.
“Commissioner [Edward F.] Davis’s punishment model is not what you did, but rather who you know,” said Jack Kervin, president of the Boston Police Superior Officers Federation....
--more--"
