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So the trooper who may or may not have shot that ATV guy on the Expressway is kind of a raging racist online
By adamg on Thu, 03/01/2018 - 2:40pm
The Globe reports the trooper who arrested that Randolph guy the other night - and yes, of course, there's now a question as to whether he was shot or got injured some other way - has a long history of spewing racial and other epithets on a police-oriented online forum. The Globe gives a taste of the comments by "Big Irish," many of which they don't quote verbatim because the Globe is still a family newspaper, but one of which he concludes:
Fuck the people of Mission Hill and Roxbury!! They don't give a rats ass about us!!
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Comments
to protect and serve...
...whites only
YIKES!
This guy shouldn't have access to guns, much less a police uniform! How can the MSP allow this type of individual to remain in their ranks?
Because this is who they are.
Because this is who they are. This is who they hire and the environment they maintain. I highly doubt this guy is much of an exception.
I'm sure his supervisors were happy with him
After all, he seems like the type who would follow orders when a judge's daughter got hauled in on OUI and all that.
Sure, sure
But how does he feel about the people of Randolph?
Uh...great work, Lou
Just because he finally shot a guy?
I mean, the posts were there well before this past weekend. The website is called "MassCops". There's enough info to have identified him from the racist/ranting posts. Was IAB too busy to crawl the forums there, find assholes like this, and cross-reference them to active duty members and write them up for being racist douchebags without having to wait for them to shoot someone?
Makes you wonder....
... if there aren’t so many more like this one that they can’t keep up with the workload of overseeing them.
There is one small myth about the thin blue line....
It is that the police will always lie to protect each other. The opposite is usually true, and you are seeing this in the State Police a lot recently. I would bet a years salary that another trooper tipped off the globe and two other cops confirmed this guys ID with the globe.
That trooper who got the job as a dispatcher after selling drugs and laundering money with her ex? I bet a few dozen troopers tipped off turtleboy about that one. Same goes for the judges daughter and the OT scandal there.
So I guess my point is that you would really have to do some proactive researching for internet posts if you wanted to ID this guy.
Why now? What changed?
Based on time it appears that all of the situations were accepted as the status quo. Other state police may have disliked the situations but the issues were accepted and ignored. What has changed now that inappropriate, even potential criminal behavior, is revealed? What happened that has turned what appeared to be secrets within the state police to now be publicly known issues?
Not always accepted and ignored....
A lot of times you don't hear about them. In fact, 99% of the times you aren't going to hear about them. I've always been surprised as to what makes the papers and what doesn't. Many of these are HR problems that aren't going to be sent out as media packets. Part of that is because of legal privacy issues, the other is that they simply don't want to look bad.
I've also always wondered how many "tips" the media gets in general. Forget about the police, I'm going to guess the spotlight team at the Globe gets hundreds of emails a year about people wanting them to do this story or that story. How many "tips" on corruption or bad public employees does the media get that they just don't follow up on?
Who's years salary are you
Who's years salary are you betting? Vastly overpaid cops like this racist asshole or underpaid teachers? Because there is about a $150,000 difference unfortunately.
Mine.....
I actually did teach in the Boston Public School for 3 years and yea, there is a big difference. But you also have a much higher applicant pool for teachers. Cops you are often getting the bottom of the barrel......
Are you sure about that? I
Are you sure about that? I don't think it's a short list of people applying to be state or city police. They're making a choice to hire these type of people.
Maybe I could bet your salary?
What do you do and what do people think of you? It could get interesting....
Aaargh ...
Just when the d-bag (non-local and mostly non-kid) stunters were getting properly humiliated and dragged all over the internet for their childish antics shutting down a major road we had to have a bigoted keyboard commando with poor weapon handling skills step up to the plate and make me feel the smallest amount of sympathy for the riders.
These adult men were ALL over
These adult men were ALL over the age of 21 and therefore are not kids. They are grown men who were driving motor vehicles endangering innocent lives.
Frankly, if I was about to be run down
by an irresponsible clown on an ATV who was deliberately aming for me, and I had a loaded gun, I'd probably shoot at the guy too.
IF
Big IF.
Because everything this racist is claiming is now in serious question. Do you really believe tht he shot at the guy for this reason, since it is abundantly clear that he was looking for an excuse to shoot a black person?
I'm betting that he was looking for an excuse, and "riding an ATV near me" is close enough to "riding his ATV at me" for his purposes.
Good for you
I on the other wish he hit his target more soundly ie shattered his foot or damaged his leg. These immature, attention whores are a serious issue and hopefully will now(FINALLY)garner more attention. Its a shame that this Statie has taken attention away from them by uttering common thoughts about non white Boston.
Kick this bad apple to the curb
"In a 2016 post, he slammed residents of two predominantly minority communities in Boston.
“[Expletive] the people of Mission Hill and Roxbury!! They don’t give a rats ass about us!!”
What a nice guy! He was partially right--we certainly don't give a rats ass about him!
amen from Delle.
amen from Delle.
Maybe...
that's because the MSP don't give a rat's ass about the people of Mission Hill and Roxbury.
Cops like this guy are so
Cops like this guy are so annoying and entitled. They want to get paid $200K AND have everyone kiss their ass. Well screw them. Statistically their job isn't even that dangerous. Cab drivers have a more dangerous job. Time to start firing losers like Matthew Sheehan. We will be better off without them.
Speaking of which...
Big Irish said some really mean things about Uber drivers on Masscops.
I am going to have to recuse myself from troll duties on this matter.
FTFY
Going back the other way now
Sorry, but that's not an excuse. If you're freaking out, then I can't feel sorry for you if the cop thinks part of your attempt to escape includes coming at him at all. You know how you prevent the confusion...don't try to get out of the scene and come to a stop when officers box you in with flashing lights on. THEN comply with their order to lay down on the ground.
two things
You don't shoot people for trying to escape.
You don't shoot someone in the foot while placing them under arrest and then claim that you were being threatened.
Shot
If they're driving toward you than you might.
The cop and the driver are both to blame for different reasons. Both could have avoided the confrontation and didn't.
If they're driving toward you
Don't assume that he was driving toward the cop, when the cop likely isn't trustworthy given what these posts say.
Trust
I don't believe either of them.
Provenance
Hypothetical person #1: "See that cop? That cop likely is not trustworthy"
Hypothetical person #2: "How do you know that?"
Hypothetical person #1: "By what the posts say on the internet"
Hypothetical person #2: "You eat a lot of paint chips recently?"
In the foot?
In the foot? Tell me how that works.
Shooting at cars
Frankly cops have shot so many drivers for "heading right at me!" that most responsible police forces have polices against shooting people in moving cars unless there is a threat other then the moving car.
I've no idea if Boston is a responsible police force.
Non Sequitur
MSP, not BPD.
um.... actually
Like most reasonable police forces across the country the BPD policy is:
"Firearms shall not be discharged at a moving or fleeing vehicle unless the officer or another person is currently being threatened with deadly force by means other than the moving vehicle."
See rule 303
http://bpdnews.com/rules-and-procedures/
These policies exist due to the substantial loss of life caused by reckless unjustified police shootings. Every police office is trained, every multi million dollar settlement police make due to yet another unjustified killing includes "additional training" as a condition.
Slow your roll
This is about MSP not BPD
Don't you find it the least
Don't you find it the least bit suspicious that he wasn't actually charged with the thing he was supposedly shot over?
Not really
That's between the prosecutor and the cops. I don't have insight into what one or the other said/did to determine what the prosecutor thinks he can prove from the evidence he was given.
My guess is this cop was a bit trigger-happy anyways. My understanding of cops shooting things is "you shoot to kill not scare". It's the excuse they always give for why they shoot their entire clip into a guy who got dropped by the first shot.
And here we've got a cop who released a single round and barely nicked a foot? My guess is bad gun handling more than anything else...not even that he's a racist psycho try-hard in online forums full of other cops.
But we'll never really know at this point. What is known is that he's a douchebag online, he needs correction or expulsion, and the driver of the ATV is a moron.
Cops charge, not ADA. Nothing
Cops charge, not ADA. Nothing in the report and no charges warranting a lethal response.
Ok
So is he an incompetent marksman who aimed at this dude’s center of mass (like every LEO is trained to do when threatened with deadly force) and missed terribly? Or is he a worthless piece of shit who shot a fleeing man in whatever extremity was facing him?
Regardless, remind me why we’re defending him?
We're not defending him. We
We're not defending him. We're scrutinizing the tactics of our law enforcement professionals in an incident where one of them chose to discharge a firearm in area where a lot of innocent people were nearby. IMO *every* time this happens it puts innocent lives at risk and there should be an investigation to ensure a) that it was absolutely necessary and b) to consider other ways that similar situations might be resolved in the future without the use of the firearm.
So Law Enforcement Was Surveilling
the bikers social media posts, but apparently not their own officers social media. Should it really be left to the Globe to do this?
I guess my question is
How would the State Police have known that "Big Irish" was Sheehan, Mr. Worthy (if that is your real name)?
I mean, they didn't have to know any of the identities of the bikers, only the details. While what "Big Irish" wrote was in my mind repugnant (the quotes in the story are worse than what Adam shared,) without any clear identification, how could anyone get the blame for the posts before now.
Of course, as Pete notes above, this broke because a few fellow troopers who knew his online identity got pissed with him and passed the information on to the press, not because the Globe was hot on the case of state troopers who post racist things on internet boards.
He revealed identifying information
Since the ride-along was in 2011 and "Big Irish" wrote about that it seems like they should have known who he was for quite a while if they were monitoring the board.
Read what you quoted
And tell me how often your employer scans your computer at work to see what you do on it?
Nothing you quoted indicates the big brass knew Sheehan posted as Big Irish a week ago.
I don’t think the State Police monitors the board, except to get troopers who crossed one of their own. There are posters on this website, including a co-worker, who can identify me, but unless my employer really wanted to know who I was, they could just as well think I post here under the name “tachometer.”
I don't know
How would any of us know that, unless our employer told us -- which they are not likely to do? Not that it takes away from your point that the MSP evidently weren't monitoring the guy's computer use, but it doesn't support it either.
Trade secrets
So I'm not a cop but say that I was on a well known industry website or bulletin board and was posting confidential information about the company I work for. I would not be surprised to learn that they were monitoring that board or that there were automated searches for the company name that would bring this to light and that someone from the company would look into the posting history of "tachometer" to see if they could figure out how to match it to a specific employee.
In a similar manner IA or other oversight offices of the police should be looking for postings which show blatant bias or other evidence of an officer being derelict in his/her duties then attempt to match them to a specific officer. It's a big web out there so I certainly don't expect them to root out everything this way but there should be a watchdog looking for this type of behavior on the larger and more popular sites that cops use.
Not a good example
If you were on a website used by people in your line of work and you started venting about how the customers were complete d-bags, that would be the equivelent. You gave the example of, say, noting how you busted the daughter of a district court judge who is friendly with the colonel. In that case, they would be doing forensic analysis, because it is about the higher ups.
The public are not "customers" of the police
Your example is more of a false equivalence because those in commercial ventures are not given the powers over their customers that police have over the public. But nice try.
False equivalence, my fanny
Some departments have the motto “to protect and serve.” While the interactions are very different (as a key point, there is no monetary aspect involved) in the end the public at large are the “customers” of the police department.
If you don’t understand customer service and the basics of customer interaction, I hope your job has nothing to do with dealing with others.
Yeah, all those customer service jobs are just the same
When someone tries to use an expired coupon at the register they are routinely handcuffed and locked in an office until the corporate office can try and sentence them. It's standard operating procedure.
They are not all the same
But customer service is customer service. For example, providing an expired coupon is not a crime, but shoplifting is. If a customer at a store shoplifts, the staff might just lock them in a corporate office while they investigate it, which is a lot like law enforcement.
Not all jobs where people deal with the public are the same, but they all involve dealing with the public. Nurses deal with the public, as do automobile salesmen. Much like in this case, I would not expect the bosses of nurses or automobile salesmen to be monitoring websites frequented by said professions with an eye for tracking down commenters who say bad things about hospital patients or those buying cars, but to your earlier example, were they publicizing trade secrets, you better believe bosses would start smoking out who was, say, "waquiot."
Question:
Was the shooting justified?
I live in Brighton
I don't give a rat's ass about you either, Rambo.
Boston dodged a bullet
I f this Trooper shot and killed the dirt biker the DA would have ruled that the shooting was justified. The Globe reporters who did an excellent job would have exposed his racist and violent rants and all hell would have broken out and innocent cops and citizens would pay the price for his racist and sexist posts on a police website called masscops that failed to police the police.
Define "innocent"
Are the cops who read the racist comments and knew who wrote them innocent? Do they have a duty to dime the guy for it?
Well
If Pete is correct, other cops did dime this guy. They dimed him to an organization that would actually produce results, too - i.e. NOT the MSP.
It's a damn shame
Big Irish was just turning his policing career around.
/s
This story raises two
This story raises two interesting points. The first is does the MSP have a social media policy or other rules of behavior governing speech outside work?
The second is that while hate and racist speech is despicable, this is just another example of how one's social media/online actions taken while not on the job come back to affect one's job.
scauma's post calling all irish racists removed?
i came back to see if anyone agreed with him and it seems the post has been removed? something about the irish being racists and stones being wet?