From the video.
A video that has widely circulated over the past day has been presented as evidence cops in Boston were getting ready to leave bricks around to tempt protesters to throw them.
In fact, Northeastern Police say today, it shows two Northeastern officers doing something far more innocuous - unloading bricks at the campus police station for storage after they'd removed them from a loosened and unsafe sidewalk a couple blocks away.
In a series of tweets, the department says:
The video circulating on social media of two Northeastern police officers unloading bricks from their vehicle behind our headquarters is from the series of events described here. Our priority is always the safety of our campus and community.
On Monday, June 1, while on a routine patrol of campus, two of our officers came across a damaged brick sidewalk at the corner of Tremont and Coventry streets that posed a safety hazard for pedestrians due to loose, upturned and broken bricks.
To prevent injuries to pedestrians, the officers collected the bricks and returned them to NUPD headquarters, where they immediately notified the City of Boston of a need for repair to the sidewalk and to request that the city collect the broken and damaged bricks.
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Comments
Why does a college police department need a blacked-out pickup?
By rb
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 3:35pm
Would be curious to see other photos of this vehicle.
It has ghost graphics, so it
By brianjdamico
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 3:51pm
It has ghost graphics, so it is fully marked as a police vehicle if you really need to know who it belongs to.
Why do they need a pickup truck? There's a list of reasons. One of them is they own a box trailer to move equipment around (they do have a full bicycle unit). Pickup trucks are pretty useful.
And they used it to move donated PPE to hospitals in late March: https://www.facebook.com/northeasternpd/photos/a.2...
"ghost graphics", smh
By Old Groucho
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 7:40am
And the "Punisher-ization" of the cops continue.
Our police already act like they're playing Call Of Duty and with these menacing big boy toughguy blacked out cars every week a different cop gets to play with the "Street Battle Booster Pack" and drive around with delusions of grandeur.
You get what you give.
So when they dress like Judge Dredd, expect us to act like this is Mega-City One and we see them as an out of control enemy.
DE-MILITARIZE THE POLICE NOW!
NUPD truck
By JosephG
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 3:54pm
They have one Ford F150 and the rest of the fleet is SUVs and bikes. They've posted on their instagram about it, its not blacked out and if you read the comments they wrote a length reply to the comment from eorde6 about what they use it for: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-931eil6C7/ https://www.instagram.com/p/B-931eil6C7/
Oh, cool
By Will LaTulippe
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 4:00pm
Cops do masonry now? Is this kindergarten again where we all pretend to have different jobs? "I'm an astronaut!"
Are you seriously spinning this into something nefarious?
By CopleyScott17
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 4:14pm
Sometimes a conscientious professional is really a conscientious professional.
And sometimes
By Will LaTulippe
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 4:36pm
You can simply put up caution tape and wait for the brick pro to show.
And listen to complaints
By BostonDog
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 5:05pm
About cops not doing anything to solve an easy problem.
There's no way these guys can win. You're apparently predisposed to think anything they do is the opposite of what they should have done.
I do understand why people feel that way about cops, BTW. But it's hard to ask for police to do the right thing if everything they do, by definition, is the wrong thing.
That's why I see a need to judge each police action individually. Call them out when they are wrong, compliment them when they do well. (Just like every other profession.)
I am predisposed to hate
By Will LaTulippe
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 5:20pm
But not because it's cops, because it's Northeastern University.
Hard to ask the police to do
By Joseph Yenkosky
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 8:00pm
Hard to ask the police to do the right thing? Really?
Not killing people would be a start; and we've been asking a LONG time.
I don’t think it’s a good time to have bricks
By Pete Nice
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 5:33pm
Laying around. I’m assuming that’s why they picked them up
A "normal" safety hazard and
By brianjdamico
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 6:44pm
A "normal" safety hazard and a situational safety hazard. Seems like an all around responsible thing to do. Neighborly even.
But Will has his perspective on anything NU and no one is going to change his mind.
Sorry, Cops aren't clean up
By maggie
Mon, 06/08/2020 - 7:20pm
Sorry, Cops aren't clean up crews. These are the assholes placing them around for protesters.
No but removing bricks that
By anon
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 4:15pm
No but removing bricks that could possibly be thrown by those causing trouble is probably a wise idea.
Or less nefariously, that somebody could trip on
By adamg
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 4:31pm
Brick sidewalks are really cool for a few years and then they start coming loose and getting out of alignment and become a real safety hazard even for people who don't wear high heels (for whom they're always a problem).
In this case, the bricks weren't the main sidewalk, more accents along the curb, but even still, you don't want loose bricks like that.
And brick sidewalks are never cool for those with disabilities
By mg
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 7:18pm
They get slick in the rain and icy in the winter. Not good for anyone using crutches or walkers or with balance problems, including the elderly.
And...
By lbb
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 9:09am
...you never see anyone, especially cops, picking them up. Funny timing...
Funny that authorities would
By cden4
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 12:47pm
Funny that authorities would only pick them up right before there was a fear of violent people coming to attack police? Seems like a very appropriate time to pick them up and remove them.
Plus fixing brick is hard. It
By Anon 2
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 9:23am
Plus fixing brick is hard. It looks like you could just pop one in but ask anyone who has ever wanted to change the block of a lego in the middle of a lego wall if its possible to just pop one out lol. You have to literally take up several bricks around it and put them all back in place for it to really take hold. That is why sometimes when a town or small city gets desperate you will see brick sidewalks with black asphalt blobs all over the place. They just did not have the time to fix all the bricks so they filled in gaps with asphalt.
Good timing...
By Doug1001
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 4:13pm
Especially with multiple stacks of bricks popping up near riot sites with no construction going on.
Sounds dangerous. Glad they took care of this. Someone could’ve gotten hurt.
That's 2/2 for false claims
By cden4
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 4:34pm
That's 2/2 for false claims against police in Boston on the Internet this week. It's not clear if this one was created nefariously or not, but the first one, that Boston Police were vandalizing their own vehicle, was clearly a purposeful lie spread by someone looking to smear the police.
3/3
By slowman4130
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 4:45pm
the "police SUV" that "drove into the crowd" was claimed by Channel 7 News as one of their vehicles.
If that's true, has Channel 7 issued any explanation
By Ron Newman
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 6:16pm
of why they would drive one of their vehicles into a crowd?
I saw a reporter on air get
By Anon 2
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 8:23pm
I saw a reporter on air get pelted by water bottles. Some of the looters don't respect the media. They may have spooked the van driver by going after the van. Then innocent people who didn't see that see the van come at them.
not sure
By slowman4130
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 9:55am
I saw that they claimed it as theirs. I didn't see an explanation, but can only assume people thought they were cops due to the vehicle type, maybe started throwing stuff,etc, and the driver panicked?
to be honest, I don't know what to believe anymore unless there's concrete evidence. twitter feeds claiming chaos and attacks, while local, generally reputable twitter users reporting peace and calm. People still posting the NEU cops with bricks and BPD breaking their windshield after both have been explained ad naseam. Going by historical events, it seems the rioting and looting will only drown out the real protest's message, and result in more militarized police and authority to keep order in the future.
Now do the amount of times that cops have lied
By Anon
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 5:27pm
We'll wait.
The protest was completely peaceful until cops herded people out of the park, shut down access to public transit, and then started setting off tear gas.
They could have just let people disburse, but they were all jacked up on aggression and needed to show off their new toys.
Not so fast
By tachometer
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 7:39am
I mean, getting the bricks out of the area for safety certainly seems reasonable, but they still haven't explained why they sprinkled crack cocaine on them.
/s
Worldstarrrrr!!!!!!
By Republican
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 5:29pm
This was posted on WorldStarHipHop website where it stated cops were planting bricks for protestors to throw. There is even a commentator from the person filming, so grab your popcorn. Glad Adam was able to bust that myth. People will still believe cops were planting for protestors to throw. The video does not show what happens before or after the moving of the bricks, of course. Interesting way to use the video out of context in order to fuel the flames of a rioting America.
Who thinks like that?
By Gary C
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 8:18pm
There are three groups who would propose the idea that cops were planting bricks to be thrown:
1.) Crazy people
2.) People who believe every conspiracy theory
3.) Russian or Chinese trolls
Right now I'm leaning towards #3. American social media is so vulnerable to outside influence right now that it's really pretty scary.
People who have reason to distrust police
By CT
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 8:44pm
I'm sorry. It is sad, especially for the great majority of the brave and compassionate women and men who make up the police forces in our country. But the few who have killed with no provocation or through carelessness or hate have done so with minimal consequences. The consequence is that black and brown people have reason to be afraid, and reason to be afraid that cops are willing to collect bricks to facilitate rioting--and blame it on peaceful protesters. It is sad for those who do serve and protect. It is sad for us all.
Seriously? If you don't
By RoseMai
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 11:26am
Seriously? If you don't distrust the people in power, then you have not been paying attention and are happily living "ignorance is bliss". The truth is much more uncomfortable to sit with, but we all need to get educated and face facts.
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
Methods used included "Illegal force: The FBI conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations.[69] The objective was to frighten or eliminate dissidents and disrupt their movements."
So yes, the idea that cops would plant bricks is not crazy, and I am not a conspiracy theorist or an international troll.
My keyboard is broken.....
By Pete Nice
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 11:30am
Can anyone tell me another way to make one of those eye roll emojis?
Okay, how about just the
By RoseMai
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 12:51pm
Okay, how about just the events from the past few days?
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/02/us/police-protests-...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/...
So the cops are planting
By Lmo
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 9:16pm
So the cops are planting bricks for people to throw at them? Makes sense
well
By berkleealum
Tue, 06/02/2020 - 11:15pm
some are suggesting that protesters are rioting to get tear gassed for clout on ig. a lot of people saying a lot of things.
I don't doubt the veracity...
By anon
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 6:57am
I don't doubt this is true, but I've got to ask: why wouldn't the Boston DPW or the Northeastern grounds crew do this work during the day in preparation for large crowds and a potential volatile situation? Why are we paying people $60/hr to do this?*
* wages, OT, training, benefits, pension, OPEBs, administration, etc. And no, I don't *know* that it's $60, but doubling the police officer's ~$30/hr of base pay is a pretty good bet.
Maybe ...
By adamg
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 8:30am
With the campus largely closed, cops have a bit more time on their hands during their patrols and stopped to do something about a hazard.
Are You Nuts?
By John Costello
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 9:06am
Don't ever say anything to sensible like that.
I spent about an hour linking this story to a few dozen people last night who were tinfoling about the actions of these Boston cops and trying to alert the FBI and I guess Sauron to what was happening.
Most appreciated the correction but there were some who were still like Nope, A Pig is A Pig. I really don't feel for them.
Excellent work on killing this rumor AG.
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself?
By J.R. Dobbs
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 10:01am
Why do so many people have such a deep distrust of Police?
And, no.
Soros is not an accepted answer.
Anonymous internet commenters
By brianjdamico
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 11:24am
Anonymous internet commenters asking why "we" are paying Northeastern police officers for the performance of their duties.
I paid their salaries for four years and have no regrets about it, how about you?
Did you?
By Will LaTulippe
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 12:57pm
It's my understanding that those officers are Suffolk County officers. Are they not paid for with state funds?
They are Usually both.
By Pete Nice
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 1:12pm
Paid for by Northeastern but “deputized” by Suffolk County Sherrifs.
They are employees of the
By brianjdamico
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 7:48pm
They are employees of the University.
They are sworn as state special police officers, which gives them police authority on the employer's properties, and are also appointed as Suffolk County deputy sheriffs, to grant them police powers on public property contiguous to the campus.
They are not paid by the State.
By Don't Panic
Wed, 06/03/2020 - 11:24pm
They're just trained and certified by them.
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