Boston Councilors Seek Probe After 30-Minute Police Radio Failure

Boston City Councilors Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy have asked Police Commissioner Michael Cox to open an internal investigation after the Boston Police Department’s primary radio channel reportedly failed for roughly 30 minutes while officers were responding to several shootings in the early hours of Monday, 18 August. The breakdown occurred shortly after crowds dispersed from Sunday’s annual Dominican Festival, according to a letter the councilors sent to Cox. During the outage, officers handled at least four separate shootings in the Dorchester neighborhood that left five people wounded; police said the injuries were not life-threatening. Flynn and Murphy said the communications lapse forced officers to confront an active-shooter situation without reliable coordination, calling it “dangerous and unacceptable.” The councilors want the department to determine what caused the failure, assess its impact on the emergency response and outline steps to prevent a recurrence. The incident comes less than two weeks after the department migrated from an analog system to encrypted digital radios on 9 August, a change Flynn has previously criticized as part of broader underinvestment in public-safety infrastructure. The Boston Police Department has not yet commented on the request.