I just need an opinion on this letter. 250 words.
President Robert A. Brown
Boston University
1 Silber A. Way, 8thFloor
Boston, MA 02215
RE:A 25-year overdue “exit interview”
Dear President Brown;
I am writing you this letter almost 25 years since I resigned from the Boston University Police Department. I was employed from September of 1990 to August of 1991. I wish I could say it was a pleasurable experience. It was not. My exit from the BUPD fell under the awful experience of having a nervous breakdown on Father’s Day of 1991. Even not being a father, I had consumed about 4 beers that day before calling in sick.
As I’m sure you hate hearing an employee call in sick because of drinking before work, I’d imagine you could guess it wasn’t not only due to alcoholism (now 24 years sober), but because of the unadulterated hell it was working with many of the BU Officers. For example, my (first 3PM – 11PM) shift roll call under then Lt. Tony Diorio (now Captain), first order of business was to “find him a menu.” Here I was an idealistic young man who started working for his father, Boston Universities’ own Professor Emeritus Louis F. DiGiovanni, at twelve years old sweeping floors for $1/hour, now a police officer, being told to find a rather portly LT a menu making $18/hour. That was only the beginning, or actually at that point, it was about 3 months into my service on the department.
I experienced what I now tell my Criminal Justice students at Massasoit Community College, where I am an Assistant Professor, the essence of many police officers and their work ethic:fat, dumb, lazy, racist, and corrupt. Let me lay that out for you in order.
By “fat” I mean gluttonous. Cops who are mad at you for staying the entire SFA play detail when you could have left after all the money was collected and secure.Dumb, as an officer who does not make an arrest on a clear Domestic Assault & Battery DW, to wit a shod foot, but rather leaves it to the dormitory RA to handle it. As tolazy, being asked why I called in a stolen car at 6AM, “because we don’t work at 6AM,” mind you it was an 11-7AM shift.Racistis an easy one. On my first day as a sworn officer, post academy, I rode with a middle aged Italian cop from Revere who asked me, after we had gotten a cup of coffee, while parked at the corner of Cummington and Comm Ave, “What do you think of that nigger.”
Corruptionneeds its own paragraph. Doctor Brown, I was subjected to physical threats with weapons (a service pistol, a K-Bar knife, and a cattle prod) by 3 officers, one of which is a ranking officer on your department right now. Furthermore, one of these officers had 15, if he had one, “throw away guns” in his lockers that were cleaner than a recruit Marine Corps Barracks.
This may seem hard, uncomfortable, or unfathomable, to believe for you but these events are not “hearsay” for they happened to me. I assure you I have no reason to lie, I have a great life, and the statute of limitations is far from over to pursue them any further. Additionally, I will not contend I was the best cop on the force but I was far from the worst. It is time though we start questioning cops or the latest incident in Baton Rouge, LA will keep happening in this great profession.
Thank you for your time. I know you are a busy man because I worked under the great President John Silber, even dispatching him to the airport a time of two. I am available, dare I say more than willing, to meet with you face to face to discuss, and in my case give one final purge to what was an atrocious experience as a police officer from the college that is my Alma Mater.
Sincerely,