Riot commander is weapons expert

Boston Herald | Oct 28 2004

The Boston police superintendent in charge at last week's deadly Red Sox riot led efforts to put the ``less-lethal'' guns that killed an Emerson College student on city streets and is among the city's most experienced weapons experts, sources said.

Superintendent Robert O'Toole, who heads the department's special operations unit, was a key member of a team of Boston police brass that opted to buy several of the FN 303 compressed air projectile launchers. The firearms were chosen over other ``less-lethal'' crowd control weapons, including guns that shoot bean bags and rubber bullets. O'Toole attended several product demonstrations, read reports and had extensive training on use of the FN 303, according to a law enforcement source.

``He's probably more familiar with it and more trained than anyone else in the department,'' the source said of O'Toole.

Another source close to the probe confirmed O'Toole was one of four officers who fired projectiles filled with pepper spray upon a rioting crowd that was lighting fires, smashing windows and hurling bottles following last week's Sox win over the Yankees.

Victoria Snelgrove, a 21-year-old Emerson College student, was killed when she was shot in the eye with one of the projectiles. Several others were injured.

The source said O'Toole has ``a tremendous amount of expertise with all types of firearms and weapons'' and that a focus of the probe is whether the guns malfunctioned or were more powerful than advertised.

``They're designed not to penetrate skin. It's designed to explode on impact without penetration. That's the representation of the company,'' said the source.

FN Herstal, which makes the guns, has not returned calls.

The law enforcement source said the order to use the weapons would have come from O'Toole as the authorized commander of the special operations team. The unit, deployed to quell hostile crowds, boldly proclaims to be ``the people they call when the cops can't handle it,'' the source said.