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Mayor Wu fires Boston employee who tased state trooper, says city knew he had criminal record

Gayla Cawley, Boston Herald on

Published in News & Features

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said the city will fire an employee who tased a state trooper, but defended the screening process that led to his hire and denied seeing the alleged prior violence on his rap sheet as it was described by a city councilor.

Wu said the city vetted Nasiru Ibrahim, a 25-year-old property management employee, but said the allegations a city councilor made this week about his prior criminal record — when Ed Flynn said Ibrahim was jailed for five years on an alleged assault to murder conviction — do not match the documents she’s seen.

“There was a screening process, and as I understand it, there’s some clear discrepancies between what some are saying on that record in the media, and what it actually says, and the documents that I have seen,” Wu told reporters Thursday at an unrelated event.

Wu acknowledged the city was aware that Ibrahim, who was arrested after a violent encounter with a State Police trooper last month during a routine traffic stop in South Boston, had a criminal record when he was hired.

But the mayor said her administration, which provides ex-convicts with a pathway to get hired by City Hall through its reentry services, “believes in second chances, where appropriate, with the right supports, with the right record, and history of being able to step into positions.”

Nevertheless, Wu said Ibrahim will be fired, citing the illegal firearm that the state police trooper recovered from the employee’s vehicle after he was arrested.

“This individual is in the process of being terminated,” Wu said. “Having an illegal weapon as a city employee or as any member of society is not OK and that certainly disqualifies anyone from being a part of our City of Boston workforce.”

The gun was allegedly loaded and included a Glock switch that converts a semiautomatic weapon into a fully automatic machine gun. It was found wrapped in a sweatshirt that Ibrahim had allegedly been sitting on during the traffic stop. Ibrahim does not have a license to carry in Massachusetts, the police report states.

The city employee’s violent encounter with a State Police trooper was captured on the trooper’s body cam and cruiser dash cam, and came to light last Friday when it hit the media.

Ibrahim is alleged to have tased the state trooper, who had been forced to drop his weapon after diving head-first into the city employee’s vehicle to prevent him from driving off to flee the traffic stop. Ibrahim had been repeatedly trying to put the vehicle in drive with the trooper’s body halfway into the vehicle, while the trooper was trying to put it into park, the police report states.

 

While Ibrahim copped to having been previously arrested on a firearms offense during the traffic stop, per the police report and video, Wu disputed allegations that his criminal record was as serious as it was described this week by Councilor Flynn, when asked whether the employee was worthy of being a reentry hire.

“Some of the allegations that I’ve seen describing that in the media so far from others, for example on the city council, do not match the facts,” Wu said.

Flynn had described Ibrahim as allegedly having a “seven-page criminal record, including convictions for assault to murder, charges that led to a five-year prison sentence,” at Wednesday’s City Council meeting.

He was among a trio of councilors who introduced a hearing order this week to push for reforms to the Wu administration’s hiring practices, in light of a slew of city employee arrests on violence-related charges.

Flynn spoke of what he sees as inadequate background checks that have led to questionable second-chance hires, including a Level 3 sex offender in the family-friendly parks department — which he said are reflective of a “systemwide breakdown” in the city’s hiring processes.

The councilor said he stands by his description of Ibrahim’s criminal record, in response to the mayor’s comments refuting his remarks.

“It’s clear to me this city employee has a violent criminal history,” Flynn said Thursday in a statement to the Herald. “When he was arrested, he assaulted a police officer and was allegedly carrying a firearm. We should not downplay the seriousness of this arrest. The (Massachusetts) State Police trooper and Boston Police officer responded professionally and heroically.”

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