Police Brutality / Civil Rights

We have won some of the biggest and most significant Police cases in the history of the City of Boston. Read about it in “The Fence by Dick Lehr”(Harper Collins, 2009).

Learn More

Our Cases Create Change

No one should suffer abuse at the hands of law enforcement agents. Anyone could suffer abuse at the hands of law enforcement. Our experience has taught us that these abuses are inflicted disproportionality upon persons of color and other minorities. There are many forms of abuse: physical violence, false arrest, illegal strip search, wrongful prosecution, inhumane treatment, sexual abuse, and more. We fight to ensure that the perpetrators are held accountable; and, where possible, push for change in the system.

Notable Wins

Arrow Icon
Cops gang up and beat a plain clothes officer

Outcome: PLAINTIFF’S AWARD $1,200,000

After a shooting that left a young man bleeding to death on the floor of a local pizza parlor, the Boston Police Department engaged in a high speed chase that ended at a dead end parking lot. In the chaos that followed a plain clothes police officer was mistaken for one of the suspects. He was viciously beaten by his fellow officers and then abandoned. No officer was criminally charged. The only justice the victim received was through a civil lawsuit in Federal Court. This case became the factual basis for the book “The Fence” by Dick Lehr.

Arrow Icon
Shot by Police | PLAINTIFF AWARD $475,000

After a brief car chase a 30 yr old man lost control of his vehicle slamming into a telephone pole. While disoriented, possessing no weapons and moving away from the police; the man was shot by an officer in the back shattering his kidney and severing his aorta. He barely survived, having to undergo months of hospitalization and therapy.

Arrow Icon
Man with no criminal record loses two fingers

Outcome: PLAINTIFF’S AWARD

Our client was arrested for operating under the influence of alcohol. While incarcerated police slammed his hand in the cell door severing the tips of two fingers.

Arrow Icon
False Arrest Burke v. Walpole, 405 F.3d 66 (1st Cir.2005)

Outcome: $518,882

In July 2009, the First Circuit Court of Appeals wrote the final chapter in a ten year battle for justice on behalf of a victim of a wrongful arrest; upholding a judgment against a Massachusetts State Police Trooper.