Still, city councilors promised yesterday to push Beacon Hill for legislation giving concurrent jurisdiction to state and city police, allowing officers and troopers from both agencies to enforce laws in the area.
Boston “is the only backward hamlet that doesn’t allow police to enforce their own city,’’ said City Council President Stephen Murphy. Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis said Boston is the only US city with such an arrangement.
About 30 onlookers, mostly police officers and police union leaders, listened as about a dozen witnesses testified that city police have the experience, training, and rapport with residents to serve as or more effectively than State Police. Joint jurisdiction for city and State Police simply makes sense, they said.
Without formal jurisdiction over an area such as the Seaport District, Davis told councilors, city police cannot use force or call for assistance while there. If they do, they leave themselves vulnerable to lawsuits from those they arrest, he said.
“When I came here, I was shocked to find that my officers couldn’t exercise jurisdiction in parts of their own city,’’ Davis said.
The jurisdictional system — which allows Boston emergency medical services and firefighters, but not Boston police, to respond to 911 calls in Massport properties — is largely the result of 1996 state legislation that put Massport’s transportation-related properties and infrastructure under State Police jurisdiction.
Now that Massport properties include residential and business districts, as well as airports and seaports, the jurisdiction law needs to be revised, said Maureen Feeney, chairwoman of the City Council committee on government operations, who presided over the 90-minute hearing.
City police are not just better equipped than state troopers to respond to crimes in residential and business areas, Councilor Bill Linehan of South Boston said. They also possess one important ability State Police do not: the authority to enforce liquor and other business licenses issued by the City of Boston.
