By Joe Dwinell
Boston Herald
BOSTON — Police who put their lives on the line are seldom praised for their restraint — especially by a gun-toting suspect in a bullet-proof vest tackled into a fence.
That’s what occurred in the early morning hours Saturday in Dorchester while Boston Police and a state trooper were on patrol.
“Thank you for not shooting me, you had every right to. Now I can see my son again because of you,” Winston Cottrell, 31, of Nantucket, said as he was being booked.
That’s according to the police report that chronicles a tense foot chase with a suspect the officers were convinced was carrying a concealed weapon in a neighborhood with one too many 911 calls.
“Officers were on random patrol in the area of Quincy St. and Ceylon St. This area has experienced an uptick in firearm and violent activity in the recent months,” the police report states.
That included the city’s ShotSpotter gunshot detection system, loud parties and other “disturbances,” the report adds.
Cottrell is charged with possession of a loaded firearm and carrying extra ammunition — two magazine clips — without a license along with wearing body armor “used in commission of a felony.”
The weapon police confiscated turned out to be a Smith and Wesson M&P .40 caliber — the M&P stands for “Military & Police” line of weapon that is now available for commercial use.
At about 1:30 a.m. police spotted two men walking down the street, with one exhibiting the telltale signs of someone packing, police said.
“The Officer’s attention was drawn to two individuals walking on Quincy Street towards Ceylon Street, specifically a male wearing a gray and black hooded windbreaker style jacket,” the report states. “The reason why the Officer’s attention was drawn to this particular male was because they observed that the right side of his hooded jacket appeared to be weighted down by a heavy object.”
Members of the BPD Youth Violence Strike Force with a Massachusetts state trooper are credited with the arrest and taking another weapon off the streets of the city.
The officers confronted Cottrell and another man, prompting the suspect to take off running right into the trooper who tackled him into a fence. No shots were fired and the other man was not busted.
But Cottrell, who is expected to be arraigned Monday, was seen putting on a mask and checking his gun repeatedly as he “began running at a full sprint” away from police and into the trooper waiting down the street.
Just a few days before, a man wearing a camouflage-style ballistic vest was arrested on Harrison Avenue, accused of carrying a Hi-Point 9 mm weapon without a license.
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