In 2020, news of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin swept the nation. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which had been formed seven years earlier in response to the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, saw a massive re-emergence. Protests were held across the country, including in conservative and rural areas. Governments were faced with calls to “defund the police,” re-evaluate policing strategies, and hold police officers and departments accountable.
That year, the Boston Police Department (BPD) saw $12 million of its funding reallocated to community programs and police reforms. This of course was a drop in the bucket of the department’s $404 million (now over $430 million) in overall funding at the time. In addition, Boston officials created the Office of Police Accountability and Transparency, which was supposed to receive and investigate reports of police misconduct. But this project has seen little success. WBUR has reported that recommendations made by the committee have been repeatedly shot down by BPD commissioner Michael Cox.
As a result, multiple cases of police misconduct and brutality have gone undisciplined or have not seen legal consequences. But that changed a month ago, when a Black man named Stephenson King Jr., 39, was killed by white police officer Nicholas O’Malley in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. Despite the similarities between this case and George Floyd’s killing, however, few people outside of Boston have likely heard much about it.
On March 11, O’Malley and another officer named Todd Ho responded to a call around 10 p.m. that said King had allegedly assaulted a woman and stolen her car. Police reports say that during the confrontation, in which both officers had their guns drawn, King appeared unwilling to listen to their commands. However, he apparently did show his hands and partially rolled down the driver’s-side window. Reports noted that O’Malley said, “Bro I’m gonna fucking shoot you,” and then King attempted to drive away from the scene. As the car moved away, O’Malley shot King three times through the car’s window. The car crashed into a stone wall, and King was found unresponsive.
He was taken to the hospital by EMS and pronounced dead at 10:24 p.m. No weapons were found on King’s body.
O’Malley claimed in the aftermath that he had fired his gun because he believed Ho was going to be hit by the car. According to the report, O’Malley’s belief was “unreasonable” and “neither officer was in danger of being struck by the vehicle” when King was shot. This conclusion was made using body camera footage and interviews with witnesses.
The footage has yet to be released to the public.
A week after the incident, O’Malley was charged with manslaughter by Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden. He was then released on his own recognizance. O’Malley has reportedly obtained legal counsel from David Yannetti, the lawyer who defended Karen Read, a woman who was accused of killing her boyfriend, who was a police officer. Read was found not guilty.
A GoFundMe set up to support the O’Malley family “in their time of need” is nearing its goal of $550,000. As of now, King’s relatives do not have an online fundraising campaign.
Ben Crump, a prominent civil rights attorney who has represented the families of other Black victims of police violence such as Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, is doing the same for King’s family. According to King’s family and Crump, King had struggled for years with mental illness. His family has said that King had spent years in and out of psychiatric facilities and jails, creating a lack of consistent treatment. On the day he was killed, King’s father had called 911, because he believed his son was in a paranoid state. For unknown reasons, King was released from the hospital shortly thereafter and then went to another facility, which he left. “That day I put my son in an ambulance, I wasn’t expecting him to be dead the same night,” said Stephenson King Sr.
In a press conference last week, Crump called for the Suffolk County district attorney’s office to release any body camera footage of the incident. Hayden’s office has said that doing so would “clearly compromise and imperil the ongoing investigation and the future prosecution of this most serious matter.”
Boston doesn’t have any rules mandating the release of video footage of police killings, unlike other cities and jurisdictions. BPD is also not required to abide by the decisions of the district attorney, and technically has the ability to share the body camera footage. Members of the Boston City Council and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) have echoed calls for better transparency in King’s case.
King’s death has parallels to other high-profile cases of police brutality and violence, but has not yet received substantial national attention. However, if the past is any indication of what’s to come, King’s story has the potential to provoke conversation, organizing, and calls for change.
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