Few dispute that the BPD greatly improved its oversight in the early 1990s, following the scathing St. Clair Commission report, which blasted the internal-investigations process. But a Boston Globe review last year highlighted a pattern of very light discipline since 2002. “What I think you’re seeing now is slippage,” says civil-litigation attorney Howard Friedman.
Even so, civil suits seem to have affected change in Boston — at least in some cases.
Friedman believes that lawsuits have changed the unconstitutional practice of routine strip-searching — not just within the sheriff’s department, but also within the BPD. Until 1998, when a woman won a lawsuit against the police, the BPD had no written policy on strip searches, says Friedman, who helped bring that case. Without guidance, officers mistakenly believed that a full-body search didn’t count as a “strip” if clothing was opened but not actually removed. Even after the BPD instituted a policy in 1999, “the word didn’t seem to get around to all the districts,” Friedman says. Further lawsuits — costing the city another $89,000 — led to full adoption of the formal policy.
Similarly, a series of lawsuits forced police to differentiate between people trying to re-sell Red Sox tickets at or below face value — which is legal — and those scalping for profit, says Boston attorney Robert Mendillo, who brought cases challenging the practice. A successful wrongful-arrest lawsuit changed that policy, but it took three more lawsuits and another $90,000 to convince the cops to stop making unnecessary arrests.
Likewise, lawsuits have forced the police and fire departments to rework their clumsily executed diversity policies.
For every mistake that gets fixed, however, it seems that another pops up. And not just in the police department, by any means.
One case, resolved in January 2005, involved inspectional-services employees, a team of whom showed up one day at the home of an immigrant family in Dorchester, with no warrant and nobody who could speak the family’s language in order to get informed consent for a search. The city workers nevertheless entered the home and videotaped supposed evidence that the family was running an illegal “boarding house.” With the help of Greater Boston Legal Services, the family sued and received $139,000.
The quiet resolution of many of these cases often leaves the public — the taxpayers — unaware of the problems that cost them so much money, and thus unable to press for solutions
