The disdain for law enforcement officers displayed in The Daily Free Press article “Cops force away Faithful after win” (Oct. 22, p. 1) provided yet another example of how unbalanced Free Press reporting can be. The article rushed to the defense of the rowdy, drunk hooligans who wanted to “celebrate” the Red Sox American League Championship Series victory with obnoxious, dangerous behavior in Kenmore Square. Yet how can you justifiably refer to the police force as “aggressive” and “potentially dangerous” when it was the crowd that was lighting things on fire, throwing glass bottles and acting belligerent?
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the use of the Boston Police Department riot officers was not excessive. I was in Kenmore around midnight, and the reckless, belligerent attitudes of some of the students there were shameful (since when are rioting and vandalism legitimate forms of celebration?). The police were simply doing their jobs; they contained the situation and prevented harm from being done to people and property. No one was hurt by their actions. Why should they be condemned for protecting the city from irresponsible and dangerous behavior?
Furthermore, why do out-of-town kids who don’t even care about Red Sox baseball have to jam Boston’s streets with their moronic antics every time the Sox win big? More than a few members of the crowd were simply out looking for trouble; baseball had little to do with it. The Free Press should have considered all this before victimizing the unruly crowd at the BPD’s expense. The BPD is far from perfect, but last night it did its job as well as can be expected under such intense circumstances.
Jeff Estano
COM ’09
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
