The bullet hole in the windshield of the Boston parking enforcement officer’s van.
Credit: AFSCME Council 93
A pair of Boston parking enforcement officers are lucky to be alive a bullet whizzed past them, shattering the windshield of their van this week while out enforcing overnight street cleaning restrictions in Dorchester.
“We believe this was a direct attempt on the lives of the officers in that van,” said Jim Durkin, a spokesman for AFSCME Council 93, the union that represents nearly 200 of the city’s parking officers.
The incident occurred at about 1 a.m. Tuesday on Washington Street as the parking officers were sitting inside their van. The driver heard a pop. At the same time, a bullet entered the van through the open driver’s side window, narrowly missing his head. It shot through the van’s windshield on the passenger side, sending glass flying to the eye of the female passenger.
The 22-year parking enforcement veteran was taken to Boston Medical Center where she was treated for glass in her eye and later released, Durkin said.
“Clearly things could have been a lot worse,” said Durkin.
Durkin said the parking officers had no interaction or confrontation with a person immediately before the shooting.
He said it was only the recent example of the approximately 135 reported physical attacks on parking enforcement officers in the last eight years.
A Boston police spokeswoman said police are investigating the incident, but had no updates as of Wednesday afternoon.
“We have adopted within this local council a zero-tolerance policy for any assaults on parking enforcement officers,” Durkin said. “We are going to insist on prosecution to the fullest extent of the law for any individual who attempts to hurt our members.”
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