Eoin Higgins // Boston Police Protected Far-Right Rally-Goers, Clashed with Black Counterprotesters

30.8.17

Boston Police Protected Far-Right Rally-Goers, Clashed with Black Counterprotesters: // theintercept.com // As the far-right rally came to a close, however, the attendees needed to exit the city’s downtown area, which was swamped with antiracist demonstrators. The result was a tense face-off between some mostly peaceful counter-demonstrators and Boston Police Department officers in full riot gear on Boylston Street, where sporadic scuffles broke out. Set against the backdrop of racial tensions in Boston between law enforcement and people of color, some of the counterprotesters wondered whose side the police were on.

The BPD has a long-held reputation as a racially intolerant public institution. The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts found, in a study first published in October 2014, that the department stops black citizens disproportionately. The commonwealth’s Supreme Judicial Court cited that report when it ruled in September 2016 that black men running from Boston police have a right to do so and that the action of flight is not suspicious.