Police News Roundup (Special Boston Edition).
Base10 is visiting Boston this weekend and is temporarily changing jurisdictions:

Two Boston PD members were placed on administrative leave pending the investigation into misconduct allegations involving the wrongful conviction of a man following the 1997 shooting of a police sergeant.

Boston Police are investigating the fatal stabbing of a high school student at East Boston HS yesterday. The assailant, Chris Manning, 19, stabbed Ann Marie Reyes, 17, after being spurned for a prom date. Manning then tried to slit his own throat before being captured.

Boston jurors acquitted Kyle Bryant at his trial for the brutal murder of a pregnant 14-year-old girl. The horrific crime involved the beating, stabbing and ultimately the burial alive of this victim. (That's really what it says!) This acquittal came in spite of the existence of a detailed confession to the act. Commentators believe this is evidence of growing skepticism about police interrogation techniques.

Unlike their brethren in NYC, members of the Boston Police department are among the highest paid police officers in the country, the Globe reports.

In spite of the large salaries, Boston Police members are threatening to demonstrate at the Democratic National Convention in Boston this summer unless the city agrees to their salary demands. The Globe reports that this is only the latest in the history of political statements made by Boston PD at critical times for the Democrats.

Boston PD may be looking for another chief of Police according to this article, Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske was contacted about the job.

In the final event of a controversial criminal case that occurred eighteen years ago, Gerald Amirault, 50, was released from prison yesterday after being granted paroled. Amirault has maintained his innocence all these years. He, along with two of his family members were convicted of child molestations charges involving eight children in 1986. (These family members--his mother and sister--were released after their convictions was overturned in 1995). The children were between the ages of three and four at the time, and many people, including the Wall Street Journal, are highly critical of the way the convictions were obtained citing overzealous prosecutors,inappropriate interview techniques, politically motivated elected officials, and a wave of fanciful and conspiratorial allegations of child molestation during the eighties. The Journal calls it a miscarriage of justice.

And finally, in the "I guess you can buy anything by the pound" department, Serbian authorities are investigating what happened to two tons of Tanzanian monkeys shipped to the Balkan state two years ago. Some 400 hundred of the simians were sold for medical research, but officials are skeptical that the other 600 were accounted for by individual pet sales. Simple arithmetic dictates that one thousand monkeys weigh two thousand pounds. How many barrels is that? Base10 suspects some money business is going on here.
- posted by Base10 @ 10:03 AM