Cops kill student after Red Sox win
By Stephanie Nichols
Boston
Early on the morning of Oct. 21, an estimated 80,000 Boston
Red Sox fans gathered in Kenmore Square around Fenway Park to
celebrate the local team's victory over the New York Yankees in
a game for the American League baseball championship. Hundreds
of police officers in riot gear lined the streets around the
ballpark.
Equipped with specially designed pepper-pellet guns,
purchased for the Democratic National Convention but not
previously used except for training, the cops fired into the
crowd of celebrating baseball fans, injuring at least 15 people
and arresting eight. One of the injured, 21-year-old Emerson
College student Victoria Snel grove, died a few hours later. A
pellet had collided with and burst into Snelgrove's left
eye.
The Boston Globe reported that "The pepper guns,
manufactured by FN Herstal, use a compressed-air system similar
to paint-ball guns, to fire powder-filled plastic pellets that
combust upon contact, hitting the target with an extract of
pepper plants that causes severe, burning pain, as well as
wheezing and gagging."
The officers are trained to fire the so-called "pepper
balls" into a person's chest so a cloud of pepper powder will
rise into the target's face. One Boston police officer excused
Snelgrove's death by saying the pepper-pellets are sometimes
inaccurate, curving in flight.
Several injured celebrators were taken to Brigham and
Women's Hospital. Paul Gately, 24, had been shot in the face
while climbing the stadium's Green Monster Wall. "I just looked
and held my face, and there was blood all over my hands," he
said. "I had it ... all over my face and all over my shirt," he
told the Globe.
Gately said he descended from near the top of the wall and
approached an officer for help, his hands covered in blood.
"Before I knew it, the officer turned around and opened fire on
me," he said. He then endured several more shots to the stomach
and chest.
Unlike Victoria Snelgrove, Gately survived the attack.
Snelgrove's funeral was on Oct. 26. An aspiring broadcast
reporter and journalism major at Emerson College, she would
have celebrated her 22nd birthday the week after she was
killed, on Oct. 29.
A few of the celebrating fans who were intoxicated had set
some small fires. A few people out of 80,000 do not require
hundreds of Boston Police in riot gear to fire dangerous
weapons at innocent fans.
Vigils have been mourning Victoria Snelgrove's death. About
40 people were in Kenmore Square on Oct. 24 to protest the use
of pepper-pellet guns for "crowd control." They marched across
the bridge from the Kenmore Square train and bus station to
Lansdowne Street where the ballpark is located. "No amount of
burning cars or breaking windows can account for killing
somebody," one protester said. "It's not OK to shoot and kill
somebody over property."
Police Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole is investigating the
weapons used and replacing them with lower-velocity ones.
Officials and the media have not blamed the police for this
incident, only the fans and the weapons.
The new Boston Police Command Center was first used during
the Demo cratic National Convention this year in July. From
inside this center, police reportedly watch 50 cameras set up
around the city. Some of these cameras are installed on top of
the Fenway ballpark.
These events in Boston and the mass arrests in New York City
during the Republican National Con vention reveal the growing
use of police-state tactics. Unfor tunately, many innocent
young people have had to pay for this development.
The writer is an organizer of the youth group FIST--Fight
Imperialism, Stand Together.
Reprinted from the Nov. 4, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
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