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Boston cop forced to break up 150-person dirtbike mob by HIMSELF, pelted with trash and booze as critics say city's police is heavily understaffed

Tuesday, June 30, 2026•
8 min read
MDN Staff
•
Boston cop forced to break up 150-person dirtbike mob by HIMSELF, pelted with trash and booze as critics say city's police is heavily understaffed

BPPA President Larry Calderone says officers were 'lucky to be alive' and warns the City Council 'before a cop gets killed' — Councilors Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy have publicly answered.

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DORCHESTER — Just before 9:30 p.m. Sunday, a lone Boston Police officer rolled up to the intersection of Old Road and Ellington Street on what dispatch had logged as a noise complaint. He found 100 to 150 people occupying the intersection, traffic gridlocked, dirt bikes, mopeds, lowriders, and cars blocking the road, loud music thumping, the crowd drinking alcohol — a full street takeover in his face, alone.
He activated lights and sirens, parked at the corner, and started trying to clear the crowd. As he worked, he spotted a dirt bike with no rear license plate. He walked over, put his hands on the handlebars, and instructed the rider to dismount for a registration check. The rider refused.
When the officer suspected the man was preparing to "make good on his escape," he tried to hold the bike. The rider gunned it. The bike toppled. The officer went down with it. His body camera came off in the fall.
From there, as Boston.com reported, the officer and the suspect struggled, fell, struggled again. The crowd that had been standing around watching turned hostile. Members hurled alcoholic beverages and other items at the officer. The projectiles created the opening the suspect needed to escape. By the time additional Boston officers arrived to clear the intersection, the suspect was gone.
A cellphone clip of the attack — first surfaced on TikTok by @noticiaboston and amplified on X by Mass Daily News on Monday evening — went viral:

The union's first answer

Within hours of MDN's video going viral, the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association quote-tweeted the post directly and called the scene "Boston at its worst." The union also framed the officer as "lucky to be alive" and tied the failure to make the arrest to chronic understaffing — specifically, the city's pattern of sending officers from "one understaffed station to another" with no backup. "Being outnumbered on the streets," the union wrote, "is bad for everybody."
By Tuesday afternoon, BPPA President Larry Calderone had escalated to a named callout of the Boston City Council itself:

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Calderone's framing — "before a cop gets killed" — and the Chicago comparison were the sharpest moves the union has made publicly on a single incident in months. He named the City Council directly, demanded every elected councilor publicly condemn the attack, and called the council's silence "a slap in the face to every hardworking cop in the city."

The councilors who answered

Two Boston city councilors have publicly answered.
Councilor At-Large Erin J. Murphy issued a formal press statement Tuesday titled "Is Boston Really the Safest City?" — directly challenging the Wu administration's signature public-safety framing and naming the mayor by office.
Press statement from Boston City Councilor At-Large Erin J. Murphy responding to the Dorchester attack on a Boston police officer.
Boston City Councilor At-Large Erin J. Murphy's Tuesday press statement, titled "Is Boston Really the Safest City?" Photo: Office of Councilor Murphy.
"The recent attack on a Boston police officer must be condemned clearly and without hesitation by every elected official in our city," Murphy wrote. "We also need to stop hiding behind the claim that Boston is the safest city in the country. What does that title mean when residents in too many neighborhoods are witnessing violent crime and telling us they do not feel safe? Safety is not a slogan or a ranking."
Murphy called the department "understaffed for too long," cited forced overtime and recruitment-and-retention failures, and closed her statement with a direct demand: "I am calling on the Mayor and every member of the City Council to condemn attacks on police, support all first responders, and make recruiting, hiring, and retaining more Boston police officers an urgent priority."
The second councilor publicly siding with the union is District 2 Councilor Ed Flynn, who as MDN reported has spent the past week publicly contesting the Wu administration's "safest city" framing and the city's chronic understaffing. Flynn's Tuesday-morning posts named city leaders directly. "We can no longer ignore crime in Boston," he wrote. "Boston Police Officers know they are not supported (or respected) by city leaders!" The through-line across his posts this week is consistent: Boston is "significantly understaffed," and officers and their families are "not supported (or respected) by city leaders."
Later Tuesday morning, Flynn visited the scene of Monday night's separate Tremont Street triple shooting and called for "a new public safety summer plan":

What's missing

As of Tuesday afternoon, no other Boston city councilors had publicly responded to Calderone's "before a cop gets killed" callout. Mayor Michelle Wu's office had not issued a statement on the incident. The Boston Police Department had not publicly identified the responding officer, the suspect, or whether the suspect was eventually re-apprehended.

The endorsement question

The BPPA formally endorsed Mayor Michelle Wu's re-election last year. The union now finds itself publicly disagreeing with the conditions of policing under that administration. The union's Tuesday statement, posted under Calderone's name, named the Boston City Council as its target — not the mayor by office or by name.
A union endorsing a politician and later disagreeing with the conditions on the ground is a normal feature of political life. The underlying problem — a department that, by every metric in this story, does not have enough people on the street — is real, regardless of the politics.

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Boston cop forced to break up 150-person dirtbike mob by HIMSELF, pelted with trash and booze as critics say city's police is heavily understaffed - Mass Daily News