Former small-town cop charged with pointing his gun at another patron in a Seaport club

A man busy barging his way through a crowd at Scorpion Bar on Seaport Boulevard in the Seaport one December night pulled a gun from his waistband, pointed it at a man who objected to getting shoved and warned him "I could kill you right now if I wanted to," police and bar managers told the Boston Licensing Board today.

The man, suspended from his job as a cop in the 495 hamlet of Bolton last year, was arrested by Boston officers who caught up with him at the nearby Empire - where bouncers, alerted by their colleagues at Scorpion, denied him entry. Gurpreet Singh, 35, now faces a charge of assault with a dangerous weapon in South Boston Municipal Court, court records show.

BPD Det. Mark McKeown said that around 12:15 a.m. on Dec. 17, Singh was trying to get through a knot of people in the bar when he bumped into one, but instead of apologizing, got into an argument and pulled out a gun from the right side of his waistband and threatened the man.

Bar security, alerted by a bar back who saw and heard the interaction and began flashing a light, rushed over, McKeown and bar security director Charles Kane said. McKeown said he told them "I am on the job being a police officer" and handed them what turned out to be an expired Bolton police ID.

The man left Scorpion - trailed by a pair of bar security managers - and tried to go into the nearby Empire, like Scorpion, owned by Big Night Entertainment Group, only to be refused entry. He was then arrested by Boston officers, who confiscated his Sig Sauer handgun, for which he did have a valid license, McKeown said.

McKeown said that Singh told the officers at Empire that he didn't tell anyone he was a cop. Bar attorney Kristen Scanlon said that Scorpion surveillance video, which the bar handed to the board, shows the man plowing into a group of people and then, just 11 seconds later, "he pulls a gun from his waistband and does point it at another patron," she said.

Kane acknowledged Singh should not have gotten into Scorpion Bar with the gun. He said the bar was the first in Boston to install a sophisticated, AI-driven monitoring system but that it was on the fritz that night and so doormen resorted to older style metal-detecting wands, which are not as reliable, especially compact guns made with polymers, like the Sig Sauer.

The board decides at a meeting tomorrow whether the bar could have foreseen or prevented the incident and, if so, whether any sanction is warranted.

Singh, who became a Bolton officer in 2017 after time with the Somerville Police Department, has yet to have a trial date set, according to court records.

The Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training lists Singh as having been suspended from his Bolton job on Jan. 2, 2023.

Last October, the Middlesex County District Attorney's office put him on a list of police officers facing investigations, in his case, for possibly falsifying time sheets. It's unclear from the document whether the allegation relates to his time in Bolton or Somerville - although Bolton is in Worcester Country, while Somerville is in Middlesex.

Innocent, etc.