19-year-old Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, bloody and disheveled with the red dot of a sniper’s rifle laser sight on his head, emerges from a boat at the time of his capture by law enforcement authorities in Watertown, Mass. (AP)
Rolling Stone cover featuring Boston Marathon bombing suspect seen on shelves in Los Angeles, (Deano / Splash News)
MESS: A cop was suspended for releasing surrender pics of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, which the officer says offsets Rolling Stone’s glamour treatment. (AP)
Massachusetts State Police officials have taken away the gun and badge of the gutsy veteran officer who released arrest photographs of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a move that has his fellow hero cops fearful that he may lose his job.
Sgt. Sean Murphy was relieved of duty within hours of releasing the photos, which show a bloody Tsarnaev crawling out from his hiding spot under the tarp of a boat in a Boston-area back yard.
The gritty shots offer a necessary rebuttal to the matinee-idol image of Tsarnaev on the current cover of Rolling Stone, Murphy had explained.
“That cover shocked us, too, to tell you the truth,” said Sgt. John MacLellan, one of the Watertown police officers who had joined in subduing Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, during an April 19 bomb and bullet firefight.
“[Murphy] released pictures that are much more indicative of who he was — all bloodied up with that laser-pointer sight on his head,” MacLellan told The Post last night.
“We saw it, too,” MacLellan said of the accused terrorist’s appearance.
“He looked a lot more gaunt” than in the Rolling Stone glamour shot, MacLellan said. “He was a skinny little kid to me,” the police sergeant added.
“That’s what I remember, how skinny and gaunt he was.”
“You have to follow protocols,” he added. “But a lot of us are shocked by that cover and totally understand what Sgt. Murphy did. We do hope he gets his job back.”
Murphy faces a disciplinary hearing next week to determine his duty status, a Massachusetts State Police spokesman said.
A tactical photographer for the State Police, Murphy was not authorized to release the more than 100 images he forwarded to Boston magazine, which also broke the news of his suspension.
But the Rolling Stone cover photo is “an insult to any person who has ever 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,” Murphy had said.
A Facebook page titled “Save Sgt. Sean Murphy” received more than 5,000 “likes” within hours of going live yesterday.
Murphy has been barred from speaking to reporters or releasing any more information about the Tsarnaev arrest.
But the sergeant had been outspoken in releasing the photos.
“I hope that the people who see these images will know this was real,” he said of the released photos.
“It was as real as it gets,” the sergeant had said in his statement.
“This may have played out as a television show, but this was not a television show,” he said.