Did police in Boston smash their own vehicle Sunday night with the intention of blaming it on protesters? No, that's not true: A YouTube video published Sunday night made this claim, as police circled and climbed on a damaged vehicle, but another video shot earlier -- and with much better lighting -- clearly shows protesters were to blame for the destruction and the police were merely trying to remove the damaged front window so they could restore enough visibility for the driver to safely move the vehicle.
The claim originated in a video (archived here) published on YouTube on May 31, 2020 which was titled "Boston Police Smash Their Own Police Cruiser. #2020Protests." The post included this language on top of the video at the start:
SCANDAL! Boston Police Smash OWN Cruiser
Another Blatant Example of Fabricating Evidence"
And the text on the YouTube page, belonging to "Tim Truth," reads:
Boston Police Smash Their Own Police Cruiser. WTF?
For exclusive content, censored videos and to help me make this channel even better: Join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/timtruth Collaborative Video Discovery Website: https://GroupDiscover.com Best Music Storage Website: https://MyMusi.cc"Click below to watch the video on YouTube:
The video begins with the video shooter walking through a crowd, his finger pointing ahead toward the street, and includes these words:
The police are fucking beating up their own car right now. They're gonna probably blame it on the protesters. They're beating up their own car as we speak right now."
The video, shot at nighttime and not very clear, then reveals cops surrounding an SUV belonging to Boston Police that has been severely damaged. One officer climbs onto the hood, where the windshield is already smashed, and appears to use a baton to break out the busted glass -- as protesters stand by and scream.
But another video, with much better lighting, was shot at the same intersection, involving the same vehicle with the same buildings in the background. It tells a different story. A crowd of protesters can be seen smashing the windows of the police vehicle and jumping on the roof and hood. That video was shared on Twitter on June 1, 2020, and is introduced with these words:
Here's the real video of what happened to that police car. There's videos out there showing that the cops staged the damaged to their own car.
Here's how that post appears on social media:
Here's the real video of what happened to that police car. There's videos out there showing that the cops staged the damaged to their own car. #bostonprotest @Diggle_B_Mason @nucleotoad pic.twitter.com/mvV7m54wh6
-- Nelson Barros (@Nelsonbarros_12) June 1, 2020
If you watch that video you'll see that the front window of the police cruiser is broken up and lined with cracks after the protesters are done with it, making it impossible to see through. It appears the police in the other video are merely breaking out what remains of the window so they can safely drive the car to the side of the road, which you can see happening in the last seconds of the video.
