The new Rolling Stone cover with Boston marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has brought outrage throughout Boston. One police sergeant was so angry that he decided to release graphic photos of Tsarnaev just before he was arrested after shootout.
Sgt. Sean Murphy, who takes photographs for Massachusetts State Police, released the photos to Boston Magazine, which has published them online. The photos show the tense moments on April 19, when Gov. Deval Patrick and officials locked down the city of Boston, searching for Tsarnaev. Three images show a bloodied Tsarnaev being taken out of the boat he spent time hiding in and another shows him being arrested. Boston Magazine promised to release more photos in its September issue.
Murphy gave the magazine a lengthy statement, calling the Rolling Stone cover “an insult to any person who has every worn a uniform of any color or any police organization or military branch, and the family members who have ever lost a loved one serving in the line of duty.”
He added, “The truth is that glamorizing the face of terror is not just insulting to the family members of those killed in the line of duty, it also could be an incentive to those who may be unstable to do something to get their face on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.”
Later, he added, “I hope that the people who see these images will know that this was real. It was as real as it gets.”
“Photography is very simple, it’s very basic,” he concluded. “It brings us back to the cave. An image like this on the cover of Rolling Stone, we see it instantly as being wrong. What Rolling Stone did was wrong. This guy is evil. This is the real Boston bomber. Not someone fluffed and buffed for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.”
Rolling Stone unveiled the cover late Tuesday and it was immediately met with negative responses around the country, but especially in Boston, where some retailers have refused to carry it. The editors did defend the cover, but haven’t responded to Murphy’s photos.
Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty to 30 charges. The bombings, allegedly planned with his older brother Tamerlan, resulted in the deaths of three people and injured hundreds.
image: Rolling Stone