Boston – A police photographer who released photos of the arrest of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in reaction to a magazine cover that he said glorified the suspect has been placed on desk duty pending an internal investigation, state police said on Tuesday.
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Sergeant Sean Murphy was placed on administrative leave, stripped of his badge and gun, and transferred to a different unit within the state police following a disciplinary hearing, the Massachusetts State Police said in a statement.
Murphy last week released photos to Boston Magazine that showed the surrender of a bruised Tsarnaev, who was found hiding in a boat in a backyard outside Boston after a day-long manhunt that locked down most of the metropolitan area.
He said the release was in response to a Rolling Stone magazine cover that featured a photo of a younger, relaxed Tsarnaev with the headline, “The bomber: How a popular, promising student was failed by his family, fell into radical Islam and became a monster.”
Murphy will remain on leave while an investigation determines whether he violated department rules, police spokesman Dave Procopio said, adding that the probe “is expected to take several weeks to complete at a minimum.”
Murphy is unlikely to lose his job, Colonel Timothy Allen told reporters.
Massachusetts officials including Boston Mayor Thomas Menino had reacted with outrage to the Rolling Stone cover, which they said appeared to glorify the bomber, largely because the magazine is known for featuring music legends on its front page.
Tsarnaev, 20, is accused of killing three people and injuring more than 260 with a pair of homemade pressure-cooker bombs set off at the finish line of the marathon on April 15. After three days in hiding, Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, attempted to flee the city on the night of April 18 after the FBI released photos of the pair near the scene of the bombing.
According to prosecutors, the two brothers killed a fourth person, a university police officer whose gun they attempted to steal, and then engaged in a gun battle with police in the suburb of Watertown, which ended when the younger Tsarnaev ran over his brother in the car he was driving, contributing to his death, and briefly escaped police.
Tsarnaev faces the possibility of execution if convicted on charges related to the worst mass-casualty attack carried out on U.S. soil since 9/11.
What? This man should be on the cover of ROlling Stone for showing the world what a monster that Muslim was!
Why didn’t he fly to Hong Kong??
this man should be promoted
the whole world should see what the filthy dirty animal looked liked when he got caught
We live in an upside down world.
What’s right is punished, what’s wrong is glorified. Falsehoods are the new truths, peace is capitulation to terrorism, moral family life is considered prejudice, true prejudice is ignored, and of course, the only thing we need today is to understand the ‘root causes’ of every ill.
We live in an upside down world.
I believe he should be promoted, and eventually will be.
He should be moved to the police PR dept as well as become the dept spokesperson. He won’t need his badge or gun in that role plus he will be in a safe police job for his entire remaining career.
Yeah, like Sgt. Sean Murphy is gulity as [ similar ] Jonathan Pollard. Yeah like something like Twenty-Six years in Prison ?! I agree with # 3 Yay not Sgt. Murphy but Lt. Murphy WOW !
Gosh, I hope he did not provide a recruiting tool for the Bad Guys. But on the plus side, he made himself happy. That was the main thing.
This man should get a medal. It’s like we’re living in the old Bizzarro world from the Superman comics.
welcome to the US where a terrorist has more rights than a member of law enforcement