Armed officers on a rooftop were not snipers, commissioner says, and were there to protect
An image of an Oct. 30 demonstration outside the offices of Elbit in Cambridge from the Instagram account of a user called ignorerocknrollheroes. Click to see the original post.
A call for Cambridge police reforms such as “eliminating the department’s military weapons arsenal” came before the City Council by coincidence shortly after protesters learned armed officers had been stationed on a rooftop overhead before an expected rally.
During the Monday meeting’s public comment period, the activists referred to police “pointing snipers at citizens in Central Square peacefully exercising their right to protest a weapons manufacturer.” A two-part response was given to councillors by department commissioner Christine Elow that argued that the officers were not snipers and were there for the protection of protesters, not to threaten them.
Police also get a bird’s-eye view of crowded events as peaceful as the annual summertime Dance Party in front of City Hall, Elow said, and planned to have an overhead view Thursday of another in a series of actions at Elbit, an Israeli company that has been the target of protests for several months in Cambridge. “Intelligence” suggested it could be as violent as one Oct. 30 that resulted in nine arrests and that “there was some concerns about counter protesters,” Elow said.
Elow acknowledged to councillors that the expected protest “never actually materialized.”
A photo from Thursday shown to Cambridge Day and referred to during the Monday meeting shows two officers on a Prospect Street rooftop overlooking the Elbit offices. Two guns lean on a structure several feet away.
Two days later, there was a “Block Elbit Block Party” that was peaceful and drew no counter protest.
“The protests that they had over the weekend, we didn’t have that same response. We knew who was going to be there. We knew that it was going to be peaceful,” Elow said, and so apparently did not have officers on the roof Saturday. “We didn’t have the same intelligence for the Elbit protest on that Thursday.”
Officers, not snipers
The officers are not snipers, Elow told councillors.
“It may sound like I was splitting hairs. We don’t have snipers like that’s what they do – we have officers that are trained in a number of different disciplines. We had officers from our Special Response Team that were up on that roof,” Elow said. “We had a number of different tools up there. And one of those tools was a patrol rifle.”
The distinction was perplexing to some, but independent journalist John Hawkinson tweeted that Elow told him Monday at City Hall that “the officers on the roof had a rifle but it was not set up or deployed … which is why they were not snipers.”
Stationed as a defense
Departing councillor Quinton Zondervan, whose final order was to introduce the call for police reforms, said he understood “being prepared and positioning people so you can oversee the crowd and communicate that information down below.”
“But then the notion that we would anticipate a need for rifles on that roof and think there’s some situation where it would make sense to discharge those weapons, that just blows my mind,” Zondervan said.
Elow raised again the potential for counter protesters and violence from outside the group protesting Elbit. “We have seen incidents where people with shotguns, with rifles, have attacked innocent people in a crowd,” Elow said, describing the department’s thinking: “Okay, we have this big event, this is very tense, the emotions are running high … for us, it’s just preparedness. We want to make sure if somebody has any ill intent to do anybody harm, we’re ready to respond to that. That was really the intent of having all of the tools that we had available for that particular day.”
Armored vehicle, not tank
The department’s 18,000-pound, 10-person armored BearCat search-and-rescue vehicle was brought up by councillor Marc McGovern for similar reasons – to correct a reference to it by public commenters as an armored tank “to use against our community” that had once been deployed at a Black Lives Matter protest in Cambridge: “Cambridge Police took out that very tank to scare protesters to keep us in line. That is not search and rescue,” resident Corinne Espinoza said. “That tank has to go.”
The BearCat does not fit the dictionary definition of a tank, McGovern said, and its appearance around a Cambridge rally in July 2016 followed the death of five police officers in an attack a few days earlier in Dallas during another Black Lives Matter gathering. (The officers were killed at the hands of a lone man on a mission to kill, wholly unrelated to the BLM group.) “God forbid something had happened at any of these events – the Dance Party, even a protest – and people died and we weren’t prepared,” McGovern said. “People would be saying the police failed.”
The order that passed Monday was not exactly Zondervan’s, because an amendment by Patty Nolan voted through 8-1, with Zondervan opposed, softened the language. Instead of calling on the police to “fundamentally change how it responds to situations that could lead to violence and death,” it calls for the department to “review and consider” such things as limiting or eliminating when officers go to calls lethally armed; reducing how many officers carry firearms; and avoiding foot pursuits. The final 5-4 vote for the amended order had Zondervan, Nolan, Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui and councillors Burhan Azeem and Dennis Carlone (like Zondervan in his final meeting as councillor) in the majority. Opposed were vice mayor Alanna Mallon (also in her final meeting) and councillors McGovern, E. Denise Simmons and Paul Toner.
Department adopts reforms
The department’s Special Response Team had been formed under former commissioner Robert Haas to keep other police forces out and ensure that actions were taken the Cambridge way, “very intentionally using the least amount of force that we have to,” Elow said. Under her predecessor, Branville G. Bard Jr., military-style camouflage uniforms were banned and 20 percent of the department’s heaviest-duty inventory of weapons were destroyed, she noted.
While crediting the department for being open to reforms – including some still underway since the fatal police shooting of Arif Sayed Faisal on Jan. 4 – Zondervan said his order was “asking the question, well, can we reduce weapons by 30 percent? Fifty percent? Eighty percent? How low can we go?”
Not enough councillors were convinced, though, and they welcomed Elow’s explanations and reforms. “You’re not entitled to your own facts, and we’ve seen that demonstrated right here as my colleagues query ‘Did we have snipers?’ and police commission Elow says, ‘No, we did not.’ And it’s unfortunate, because when people say those things they’re picked up as truth. That’s very, very problematic,” Simmons said.
“On the whole, the facts tell us that the Cambridge Police Department is not like Minneapolis or Los Angeles or Chicago or even Baltimore,” Simmons said. “It’s really unfortunate that we have folks that want to paint the Cambridge Police Department with the same broad brush as those police departments that are corrupt and brutal and oppressive.”
The new council cannot get sworn in fast enough.
I understand the police have to act based on their available intelligence at events. And deployment of the armored search and rescue vehicle nearby and observers on the rooftop, though intimidating by some standards may have been necessary based on what they feared might happen. Violent outsiders remain a risk at such events.
Did they have an ambulance also on duty at the event in case of injuries as well? It would seem that would be a precaution that no one at the event would have misinterpreted in the situation that may even have eased some of their fears.
The Cambridge police are excellent. I am grateful for their protection, and I am very concerned about the endless amateur second-guessing and criticism that aims to erode that protection.
I want to clarify what happened at the BLM event a few years ago. As the article said, the Cambridge event took place right after a similar event in Dallas led to the death of many people. The CPD DID NOT use the Bearcat to “scare” protesters. In fact, the vehicle was not at the protest. It was parked two blocks away behind a building. A person on their way to the rally, saw it, took a picture and said the police were using it to intimidate people. People at the event had no idea the vehicle was even there.
These conversations are challenging enough without misinformation.
The testimony from many of these young people was emotional and concerning. They truly believe that Cambridge Police intend to harm them and that the city has some nefarious intentions.
There are adults who are purposely misleading these young people who need to be called out. Zondervan, who thankfully is leaving, Totten who hopefully follows along and Spinoza who should be denied any contract with the city until she demonstrates some maturity.
So Councilor McGovern, your contention is that the Bearcat was coincidentally two blocks away and had nothing to do with the protest?
Here’s an idea: Do like Philadelphia and have a mounted police unit– i.e. police on horseback. Transform the Cambridge golf course into pasture land for the horses to graze and train. Police on horseback patrol during events and protests and have a calming effect. The officer gets a great eye view, too. Plus, police on horseback can be great for community relations. There’s a good description of all the benefits here: https://www.phillypolice.com/units/mounted-patrol/
There were long bike paths where I grew up, from one part of the city to another, and sometimes officers on horseback patrolled alongside them so people felt safe.
Horse units could be an expense that most people would happily see in the budget. And a unit like that would attract a different kind of applicant to the force, creating more diversity in the ranks.
Resident of Cambridge, What I said was that the bearcat was not driven by the protesters to intimidate them as people are claiming. Of course it was there because of the protest. Which, as I said was days after a similar protest saw several people killed.
Councilor McGovern, I think we all know that the Bearcat was driven by the police, not the protesters. That said, do you see how having a large SWAT vehicle at a protest against police violence maybe sends the wrong message?
Commissioner Elow is not wrong to ask whether she is splitting hairs in insisting that a CPD officer not in official uniform, positioned on the roof of a building, in possession of a rifle capable of firing at long range, is not a sniper. Would that person be accurately identified as a sniper only if they shot and killed someone in the crowd?
The assertion that the not-quite-sniper is positioned on the roof above a protest site to protect protestors rather than to menace and intimidate them is just that, an assertion without evidence. So too is Councilor McGovern’s assertion that the not-quite-tank parked adjacent to a protest site is there to protect protestors and not to intimidate and terrorize them.
The unanimous public comment in support of Policy Order #215 suggests that the residents of the city perceive matters very differently from many city officials – and not because they have been indoctrinated by Councilor Zondervan.
To Joe’s point- if they are concerned about the safety of the protestors, shouldn’t there also be medical personnel on hand to help people, not just “non-snipers” to shoot at people??
Thank you Marc for adding clarity. I remember that incident well and the councilors capitalizing on what was essentially a propagandist attack on the CPD.
Resident, again, context is important. The Cambridge event was a couple days after a mass shooter killed several people at a similar event in Dallas. If, God forbid, something like that happened at the event in Cambridge and the police weren’t prepared, people would be criticizing them.
Look, I’m not convinced we need the bearcat. I think there are other types of vehicles that could do the same thing and not look so threatening, but for folks to say that the police drove a tank through the protest isn’t what happened. Let’s discuss whether we need it or not, but facts matter. The bearcat was a block or two away from the gathering. At the end of the day, that was several years ago, and I don’t think it has been used at such an event since.
I think the ambulance question is a good one. I don’t know if they had one on site or not.
Councilor McGovern, I am happy to discuss whether we need the Bearcat or not, but you seem to be dodging that question. So: do you think Cambridge needs a Bearcat and if so, why?
Yes, in a country awash in guns and with frequent dangerous mass shooting events, it is probably a good idea for the police to have an armored vehicle.
I am very much not an expert but I could foresee a situation where an active shooter is holed up in a building and you need a way to get police officers or a SWAT team close without exposing them to gunfire.
I think Marc is saying that he’d be open to evaluating the rationale. Doesn’t seem like a terrible stance to not just make a rash statement
I have no love for the bearcat. I do think having some vehicle that can evacuate people during a mass shooting is not the worst thing.
Here is a link someone shared with me that may be a fine alternative. https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/davis-approves-new-armored-police-rescue-vehicle/?intcid=CNM-00-10abd1h
On some level, though, I think this is a bit of a strawman. If people are feeling traumatized by the police, and I believe many are, getting rid of the bearcat isn’t going to make a difference. This is a much deeper conversation.
I have said many times that I feel we have one of the best police departments around, but we are not perfect. The Commissioner will tell you that. That is why they have brought in outside organizations to assess their practices. I don’t know too many police leaders who would do that willingly.
We are so fortunate to have the best Police Department. Those protesters were nasty and spray painted buildings with red paint. They destroyed other people’s property. Thank God QZ and his clone are gone! Do people remember the Boston bombing the 2 terrorist came thru and lived in Cambridge. Thank you to our police for there professionalism and excellent job. God Bless them and keep them safe