New Hampshire man sues Boston Police because they named him for an attempted Faneuil Hall kidnapping committed by his brother

A New Hampshire man initially charged for trying to wrest a 13-year-old girl from her parents near Faneuil Hall in 2018 is suing Boston Police because they were, he says, too slow to correct the record to show he had nothing to do with a crime allegedly committed by his younger brother.

In a suit filed in Suffolk Superior Court this week, Alfred E. Patterson says the publicity from the case has caused him untold harm, including the loss of several million dollars in business for his paving company. He alleges wrongful imprisonment, negligence, defamation and libel on the part of the city, BPD and two police officers.

On Sept. 9, 2018, Boston Police reported a man with $11,000 in cash on him approached a couple near Faneuil Hall and offered to buy their daughter from them. When they refused, he then tried to drag the girl away, police say.

One of the two initial police incident reports on the case - and BPDNews.com post - identified the suspect as Alfred E. Patterson, 20, of Raymond, NH. In fact, Patterson says in his suit, it was his brother, Max Roads Patterson, who committed the alleged act.

BPD eventually corrected its official records, as well as the BPDNews post, but not until after Alfred Patterson had to fight in court for several months to have his name expunged - and after he spent several hours in a Revere Police lockup based on police there identifying him as the "weirdo" responsible for the Faneuil Hall incident.

Patterson reports that at his brother's arraignment the day after the incident, at which Alfred Patterson was called to rise to face the judge, his brother spoke up and gave his correct name and said that Alfred was his brother.

But despite that, Boston Police publicly identified Alfred Patterson and his hometown the day after the arraignment in a BPDNews post that was widely disseminated in the press across the country (Ed. note: Including Universal Hub.). Four days later, Alfred Patterson says, his lawyer moved to have records naming him expunged, followed a few days later by a request from Max Roads Patterson's attorney to change the listed name to his client's.

But, Patterson continues in his complaint, the judge in the case took no action, telling Boston Police to straighten it out - a request Patterson says they ignored for two and a half months. Finally, in November, a judge ordered all records naming Alfred E. Patterson expunged - and then it took until March, 2019 for that to be done, the complaint charges.

Meanwhile, in December, 2018, Revere Police handcuffed Alfred Peterson and then tossed him into a "cold" jail cell for six to eight hours after checking his name in a criminal database and found the Boston charges that still named him for the Faneuil Hall incident, the suit alleges, adding that between then and now, Patterson has been handcuffed by "multiple police departments and the FBI" before he could clear things up.

A search of the internet as of the present day still shows Alfred E. Patterson to be a criminal defendant for this horrific and embarrassing crime.

The result?

[L]oss of reputations, loss of business income, emotional distress, embarrassment, humiliation, out of pocket expenditures, legal fees and wrongful imprisonment.

Alfred Patterson is seeking damages in an amount to be determined at trial, plus attorney's fees and court costs.