Girl dies from less than lethal weapon.

[LudavicoSoldier]

Though the BPD did accept the blame for the death, it obviously not entirely their fault. There are several excellent columns in The Globe today that place blame on the areas large number of colleges. I would assume that most of the assinine behavior was carried out by college students who DONT EVEN FOLLOW the Red Sox! Here is an excerpt from Brain McGrory's column:

"The common theme in the deaths is the minority of morons from Northeastern and Boston University and wherever else who believe a sporting event is a grand reason for destruction. Most of them, I'd be willing to bet, come from somewhere other than here. They have nothing invested in this city or its sports teams. They can't name five guys in the Red Sox lineup. They're fueled by booze purchased on Daddy's credit card. They care not a whit about presidential politics or foreign wars they're in no danger of fighting"

Find who these idiots are, and expel them back to wherever they came from!

[rkjunior303]

zero tolerance.. just lock them up and let the court figure it out.

[LudavicoSoldier]

I purpose that people with out of state licenses be barred from all bars in the Fenway area. Let them drink in their dorm rooms, and have the campus police/administration deal with the aftermath. After all, local Red Sox fans (IMHO) are the ones who deserve to be treated right, and not be lumped in with the moronic college student majority.

The only reason I say this is because Mayor Menino is considering banning the serving of alcohol in ALL Fenway area bars for EVERYONE!

[rkjunior303]

spleef -- the only problem with that is that even if they drink in dorms, they will still filter out into the streets.

[LudavicoSoldier]

Yeah...I guess its a "we win, we lose" type of situation.

[Kaiser Bob]

Definitely something that was bound to happen given the concentration of college students there... although I really dont think that alcohol was a requirement for those involved to behave the way they did. Mention of Northeastern goons gets me all nostalgic of Boston

[Repoman-gene]

The thing I find to be stupid is any agency that trains to hit "Center mass" with pepper ball.

you don't need to do that at all...

When Pepper Ball was opperating out of the ATS building Weltman and I went up to visit Gumby(General manager ATS) and he was showing us the Pepper ball test fire area...we fired some of the test rounds that were full of scented talc..



If you shot them at the feet of a target you could smell the talc clear back to the firing area..and we could see the cloud of talc form all around the target. Those rounds only need to hit the ground and they will do the job...I think some agencies are tring to get more bang for the buck and want to use the pepper ball as a impact device at the same time.

[LudavicoSoldier]

The Herald has some pictures of officers with FN303s. Unfortunatly they also printed some rather gruesome pictures of the girl that got killed. Not pleasent at all.

[rkjunior303]

yeah, I just looked at the paper.. On the inside section, they ahve a closeup of the victim layed out on the ground -- either unconscious or dead.... It was defintely a FN303 that fired the pepperball -- on the facing page, they show a police officer aiming at another riot participant.. Sad Sad story. The pictures are pretty gruesome, I can't believe they had them printed..

[Temo Vryce]

...its really does suck that the officer didnt take better aim when he was supressing the crowd.

**WARNING Rant in progress**

I find it hard to believe that someone who has played paintball and knows just how inaccurate paintballs can be would say something like this. Now I don't know exactly what type of projectile was used in the incident nor does it really matter. When you're dealing with the heat of the momment and a crowd that is in constant motion with people pushing and shoving it becomes imposible to hit the exact target that you aim for. I wasn't there so I don't know what happened but I can understand that the officer may have aim for the center of mass when he fired. Now the flight path of the projectile may have changed before it reached it's target, The crowd may have shifted removing the orginal target or the young lady may have tripped. There are many possible reasons for what happened, but to just blame the officer for not taking better aim is in poor taste. Yes a terrible thing happened and I hope that it never happens again, but unless you were there to see exactly what happened don't judge the officers actions or ability as a marksman.

[Eagle]

In the field you one has 2 seconds to make a desicion while you have 2 months to pick it apart after.

[LudavicoSoldier]

**WARNING Rant in progress**

I find it hard to believe that someone who has played paintball and knows just how inaccurate paintballs can be would say something like this. Now I don't know exactly what type of projectile was used in the incident nor does it really matter. When you're dealing with the heat of the momment and a crowd that is in constant motion with people pushing and shoving it becomes imposible to hit the exact target that you aim for. I wasn't there so I don't know what happened but I can understand that the officer may have aim for the center of mass when he fired. Now the flight path of the projectile may have changed before it reached it's target, The crowd may have shifted removing the orginal target or the young lady may have tripped. There are many possible reasons for what happened, but to just blame the officer for not taking better aim is in poor taste. Yes a terrible thing happened and I hope that it never happens again, but unless you were there to see exactly what happened don't judge the officers actions or ability as a marksman.

It had nothing to do with accuracy, from eyewitness accounts. The officer had his back to the target(s), and whipped around with his weapon up and immediatly fired a couple shots. I seriously doubt he actually aimed at anyone, rather, it sounds like he fired indiscriminatly into a crowd of people.

[ghideon]

Which, if it's true, kinda helps to negate the "less than lethal" effect of LTL weapons. Just because it's a less than lethal weapon doesn't mean you can use it indiscriminatly. It doesn't matter what kind of weapon is used when you're already dead.

It had nothing to do with accuracy, from eyewitness accounts. The officer had his back to the target(s), and whipped around with his weapon up and immediatly fired a couple shots. I seriously doubt he actually aimed at anyone, rather, it sounds like he fired indiscriminatly into a crowd of people.

[justjoshin590]

i think the real problem here is that police are being trained with these weapons improperly, they beleive that these weapons are completely safe, they think just because they dont usually kill that they can be used without danger, but pepper balls and such should ONLY be used when absolutley necesary as in, just short of when they would need to use a real gun, there was NO reason that the cop should of fired, it was a stupid and pointless waste of life, caused be some trigger happy cop, yell at me all you want but there was no reason for this to happen

and this wasnt a paintball death, have you ever played paintball with no mask while shooting pepperballs?

[LudavicoSoldier]

True enough. As I previously mentioned, BPD had never used the FN303 aside from in training, since there was no need during the DNC.