By Chief Correspondent Joe
Shortsleeve
BOSTON (CBS) — Every big city
police department walks a fine line when it comes to the use of force, but an
I-Team investigation found Boston police may be crossing that line too often.
“It
came to the point where I basically accepted that I was going to die.” said
Michael O’Brien as he relived a night in 2009 when he allegedly received a
beating by a Boston cop that left him brain damaged.
“He wrapped his arm around my
neck and it squeezed my trachea, throat area, so much that I had no exchange of
air,” O’Brien said. The altercation left him with bleeding in his brain, he
said.
O’Brien sued the police and the
city and received a $1.4 million out-of-court settlement.
But that’s just one of more
than two dozen police misconduct cases settled by the city over the last four
years, at a cost of $5.6 million to taxpayers.
The I-Team’s investigation
found that figure for Boston tops a list of settlement money paid by other
cities with equal or larger populations: Seattle, Washington; Columbus, Ohio;
Denver, Colorado; San Francisco, California; and El Paso, Texas.
Boston’s settlement numbers do
not include a $3 million payout to the family of David Woodman, a college
student who died in Boston police custody in 2008 on the night the Celtics
clinched the NBA championship.
“He was attacked from behind
and beaten up and slammed down and handcuffed,” said the student’s mother,
Cathy Woodman.
The city paid big money before
the case even went to court.
“I know why they offered it to
us,” Woodman said. “Because they wanted to shut us up. People don’t know the
truth. The truth is they’re responsible for David’s death. They took his life.”
Was it police brutality?
“Absolutely,” she said.
Boston Police Superintendent
Frank Mancini is in charge of professional standards. Despite the settlement
numbers, he told the I-Team he doesn’t think the department has a police
misconduct problem.
“No, I don’t. Absolutely not,”
Mancini said.
Mancini declined to discuss the
details of the cases settled by the city, saying those decisions are made at
City Hall, not by the police.
“We’re dealing with human
beings and we’re dealing with very stressful situations out on the street,”
Mancini said. “Any organization can improve and the important thing is we are
seeking to improve all the time and to try to get better at what we do.”
We asked former Boston Police
Lieutenant Tom Nolan, who served on the force for 25 years, if he thought
Boston’s settlement numbers are too high.
“They’re certainly higher than
other similarly situated cities,” Nolan said. “Should that be a cause for
concern? I think absolutely. I was around for the bad old days, and I know when
I was a brand new police officer in 1978 that business was conducted at the end
of a night stick and a fist.”
“We’re not there anymore, but
it is still is a culture that privileges power and authority and force and we
are seeing a slow sea change,” he said.
It’s a sea change too slow for
David Woodman’s mother.
“Our son is dead. And that
doesn’t ever, that doesn’t go away,” she said.