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Boston police: Officers’ communication impacted by radio issues only for a few seconds during violent night

The radio breakdown occurred during a series of violent incidents after 1 a.m. Monday, including a stabbing and four shootings in Dorchester.

Boston Police Headquarters in Boston, MA on June 9, 2021. Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe

By Sana Muneer

2 minutes to read

Boston police defended its communication protocols Tuesday after two city councilors said the department’s primary radio channel failed for 30 minutes on the same night that the city saw four separate shootings in Dorchester. 

Councilors Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy said the radio’s main channel failed for 30 minutes, a malfunction that required officers to respond to shootings “without reliable communication tools.”

According to Mariellen Burns, Boston Police Department’s chief of internal & external communications, the “radio system itself was not offline, one channel was impacted.” 

When the channel was fixed, officers resumed using it, according to Burns. 

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“We have an existing protocol/operational backup that if one channel has an issue officers are notified to switch to another channel right away, and that is what occurred in this case,” Burns wrote in an email to Boston.com. 

“That lapse that you’re referring to was very, very short,” Superintendent-in-Chief Phillip Owens told reporters Tuesday. “Immediately switched over the channel to another channel, and it was quickly resolved.”

Owens said communication was compromised for a matter of seconds.

“I wasn’t there that night, but I was told that, per our protocol, we immediately went over to another channel,” Owens said. 

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The radio hiccup occurred the same night a a series of violent incidents, including a stabbing and four shootings in Dorchester and a pedestrian crash in downtown Boston. The stabbings and shooting happened around midnight or later; the department did not respond to questions about when exactly the radio malfunction occurred.

Flynn and Murphy called for a detailed investigation into the radio mishap and its effects, requesting the investigation’s findings to be released publicly. 

The Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association slammed the Boston Police Department’s Communications Division in a Monday post on X, calling the radio malfunction an “inexplicable failure.”

The Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society, a union for police detectives, expressed gratitude toward Flynn and Murphy for writing the letter in a Monday post on X, thanking them for their support and their willingness to “ask the right questions.”

Dominican Festival was peaceful, organizers say

Just hours before the stabbing and shootings and a short distance away from three of the shooting locations, the annual Dominican Festival was held in Franklin Park.

Violent incidents occurred outside of the Dominican Festival last year, when five people were shot, and in 2012, when three women were fatally shot. 

Casa de la Cultura Dominicana en Boston, the festival’s organizing group, said last year’s safety issues stemmed from people crowding outside the festival on Circuit Drive, “causing mayhem.” 

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This year, the group collaborated with multiple city departments to prepare for the festival, namely planning to maximize police force and close Circuit Drive, according to Luis Matos, the group’s coordinator general. 

“There were no issues at the festival this year that we are aware of. The community peacefully broke away with little effort,” Matos wrote in an email to Boston.com.

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