Bodycam Videos Shows “Mob Mentality” of Boston Police Lawyer Says

“It’s this mob mentality,” Williams said of the police behavior.

Photo: Twitter

As demonstrations against police brutality and the abuse of Black Americans spread across Boston on the night of May 31 and early morning of June 1, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, the city’s police department was out in force.

Many officers wore body cameras. During the unrest, the cameras recorded hours of footage that the department subsequently stored.

That footage was given to attorney Carl Williams, who is representing some protesters arrested that night, as part of a discovery file encompassing 44 videos and over 66 hours of footage. Williams assembled a team of volunteer lawyers and law students to pore over the videos to find exculpatory evidence for his clients.

What they found, however, was something more.

The hours of video, given exclusively to The Appeal media oraganization by Williams, show police officers bragging about attacking protesters, targeting nonviolent demonstrators for violence and possible arrest, discussing arrest quotas and the use of cars as weapons, and multiple instances of excessive force and liberal use of pepper spray.

“It’s this mob mentality,” Williams said of the police behavior. “And I use ‘mob’ as a sort of a double entendre—mob like the mafia and mob like a group of a pack of wild people roaming the streets looking to attack people.”

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