Officers Won't Face Charges For Brutally Murdering Innocent Bystander Victoria Snelgrove

Boston Globe
Sep. 13, 2005

Officers won't face charges in Snelgrove death

By Donovan Slack, Globe Staff | September 13, 2005

None of the Boston police officers involved in the fatal shooting last fall of 21-year-old Victoria Snelgrove will face criminal charges, prosecutors announced yesterday.

While he described their actions as careless and negligent, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said the officers who fired pepper pellets into crowds celebrating the Red Sox's pennant victory did not intend to hurt anyone but were trying to protect the public and themselves.

Family sues gun manufacturer. B4.

Snelgrove, who was struck in the eye by a pepper pellet, died because of a series of bad decisions by the Police Department, including inadequate training, planning failures, and inappropriate use of force, but not because of ''wanton recklessness" by any officers, the legal standard for manslaughter charges, Conley said.

''Let me be very clear: Victoria Snelgrove's death was avoidable," Conley said during a press conference announcing the results of his office's five-month investigation. ''Poor judgment, however, is not the standard for criminal charges."

Conley's announcement closes a chapter in the case of the Emerson College student, whose death has shadowed the Boston Police Department and its commissioner for nearly a year.

Still to come are developments in a lawsuit filed yesterday by Snelgrove's family against the manufacturer of the pepper-pellet gun, possible administrative discipline against the officers involved, and the public disclosure in the coming weeks of documents and videos used in Conley's investigation.

The district attorney said the officers had no reason to believe that the ''so-called less-than-lethal" pepper-pellet guns would cause penetrating injuries, but he warned the Police Department that the dangers of such weapons are now apparent.

''Future inappropriate use of this or similar weapons could provide the basis for a prosecution of the commander on scene and the officers using the weapons," Conley wrote in a letter yesterday to Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole.

O'Toole said the department has permanently shelved the FN303 pepper-pellet weapons that killed Snelgrove and injured two others in the face. She also said that officers are getting more weapons training and that a department committee is developing better crowd-control policies.

''Out of all bad, we learn lessons," she said during the press conference.

The commissioner said she plans to announce in the next few days what departmental discipline, if any, officers involved that night will face.

Internal Affairs investigators have recommended administrative punishment for at least five officers: Superintendent James M. Claiborne, who was in charge of planning and citywide police operations that night; former deputy superintendent Robert E. O'Toole, who supervised police outside Fenway Park; Officer Samil Silta, who fired a dozen pepper pellets at Cambridge resident Paul Gately; Officer Rochefort Milien, who fired the shot that struck Snelgrove; and Officer Thomas Gallagher, who failed to secure the weapons after the shootings.

Robert O'Toole (who is not related to the commissioner) retired in June after 37 years on the force, avoiding departmental discipline.

Internal Affairs Superintendent Al Goslin has said his office determined that two other unnamed officers lied to investigators looking into Snelgrove's death, though he would not say what they lied about.

The district attorney's findings largely agreed with those of an independent panel headed by former US attorney Donald K. Stern, which concluded in May that a series of failures by the department, as well as ''serious errors in judgment" by individual officers, led to Snelgrove's death.

Boston is paying the Snelgrove family $5 million, the largest wrongful death settlement in city history. The family's lawyer said the Snelgroves would have no comment on Conley's decision.

In the early hours of Oct. 21, after the Red Sox beat the Yankees to clinch the American League championship, revelers clogged the streets around Fenway Park. Police, hindered by inadequate planning, became outflanked, both Stern and Conley said.

Robert O'Toole, the on-scene commander, handed pepper-pellet guns to officers he knew were not certified to use them and fired one himself, even though he wasn't certified, Conley concluded. Snelgrove, Gately, and Kapila Bhamidipati, a Boston College student, were struck in the face by pepper pellets.

''Each incident was part of a tragic chain of events that began with poor planning from department commanders, was followed by poor decisions and improper directives by the officer in charge on the scene, and finally, the individual officers who found themselves in these circumstances and as a result made a series of good-faith but flawed decisions," Conley said.

Prosecutors reviewed more than 3,000 pages of documents during their investigation, including statements from 34 civilians and 30 police officers, Conley's office said. They also reviewed more than 600 photographs and 37 video clips, including those recorded by Red Sox surveillance cameras.

Lawyers for some of the officers involved in Snelgrove's death said that they are pleased the criminal investigation is over, with no charges against their clients.

''I have always maintained since this tragic incident occurred that none of my clients acted with any criminal intent and they were confronted with a 'riotous, volatile situation,' to use the words in this report," said Thomas Drechsler, who represents Silta, Milien, and Gallagher.

Timothy M. Burke, who represents Robert O'Toole, concurred.

''No one went there with the intention of harming Torie Snelgrove or anyone else," Burke said. ''It's a tragedy for the Snelgroves. It's a tragedy for my client and for the other officers on the street that night."

Neither Claiborne nor his lawyer returned calls for comment. In February, Commissioner O'Toole reassigned Claiborne from overall command of all uniformed officers to a post overseeing the Boston Police Academy.

Howard Friedman, a Boston civil rights lawyer, said that he was not surprised by Conley's decision not to charge the officers.

''The ones who were shooting were doing what they were told," Friedman said. ''The question was whether the supervisor would be charged."

In the leading state case on involuntary manslaughter -- the prosecution of the Cocoanut Grove nightclub owner for the fire that killed almost 500 patrons in 1942 -- ''wanton and reckless" conduct is defined as ''intentional conduct which involves a high degree of likelihood that substantial harm will result to another."

''It's being so grossly negligent that your negligence becomes criminal conduct," Friedman said. ''It's a difficult standard."