Captain John Danilecki, threatening protesters on the ground with further pepper spray.

In numerous videos of the march held in Boston yesterday, there was one figure who stood out. A Captain in the Boston Police Department — and the only BPD officer wearing a black vest covering his badge — this officer seemed to be routinely on the front lines in several violent altercations with protesters. He was seen routinely pushing protesters, leading the charge in scrums, and was even seen using pepper spray aggressively after crowds were already actively backing away. Based on several eyewitness confirmations — including matching the number on his helmet to Boston Police Department records — that person is Boston Police Captain John “Jack” Danilecki¹.

Danilecki is the Captain of the Boston Police Department Bike Unit; he has been with the Boston Police Department for more than 25 years, and based on observations, was in command of the bike unit at Saturday’s protest event. Throughout the event, in almost every circumstance where there was violence against protesters, Captain Danilecki was on hand, and often directly leading the charge.

Before the Parade

Long before the parade began — reportedly at close to 10am — the first clash between police and protesters arrived. Reportedly on the order of Captain Danilecki, officers were ordered to remove masks from protesters at the event: “All of them covering their faces, get those masks off.” Not only is this his direction to officers, he participated personally, roughly tearing the hoodie down off of a protester (0:14).

Danilecki is shown tearing the hood off of a counter-protester, despite issuing no instructions or statements.

During this altercation, you can see Captain Danilecki standing by as the crowd chants “Off his head” at 0:30 — asking the officers to take their knees off the head of the protester that had been brought to the ground.

Closer to noon, shortly before the Parade began, the bike unit decided to move through the location of the gathered protesters, rather than using the established and barricaded parade route: That is, Boston police decided to ride their bikes through the *crowd* side of the barricades for no clear reason. Since the crowd had already gathered on the street behind the barricade, this led to a altercation with the crowd (0:35) where multiple initial arrests occurred. Captain Danilecki was not visibly directly involved in the front line of this push, but was seen supervising the arrests (1:17 and others) as several protesters were placed into the back of a police wagon after being pulled from the crowd during it.

About 10 minutes later — but still before the start of the parade — there was an event where cops pushed through the barricades into the crowd in order to make unprovoked arrests. This charge was directly led by Captain Danilecki: he was the first through the crowd, and pepper sprayed and then knocked down a protester (0:04). This is not part of a mixed crowd led by other officers: Danilecki is the first officer to take action here.

Captain Danilecki spraying a protester, still from the video linked above.

After this, the officers rush forward in a scrum, seemingly arresting two participants for no clear reason. This is the first reported incident of pepper spray use during the event. A photo was taken showing him holding up pepper spray in a large crowd, immediately before spraying that spray indiscriminately into the crowd again, which is largely just reacting to being assaulted by police with truncheons (0:12, another angle shows an entire crowd moving away from pepper spray (0:06)), followed by video of him holding pepper spray directly in the faces of protesters (0:39). His use of pepper spray was reportedly “without any specific aim and unprovoked”, though another attendee described it as an intentional way to attack a person carrying a medic bag.

Clearing Congress Street

The other major incident happened at around 4pm, as the police attempted to clear Congress Street; when protesters refused to move for motorcycles/clear the street, they used bikes as barricades to push back the crowd (without clearly communicating what was being requested). This second incident appears to have been one one of the most violent portions of the protest, with the cops having a clear agenda that was at no point clearly communicated to protesters, and with significant use of physical force to move otherwise peaceful protesters.

The police formed a line using bikes, which was pushed right into protesters. From here, there were a number of scuffles, including a State Trooper shoving a medic then violently tackling him.

However, the main cause of the overall scuffle in the 4pm melee was simple: after wielding his pepper spray in the face of a protester, the Captain drops his canister of pepper spray. In order to retrieve it, he rapidly pushes back the protester in front of him, and the person to his right punches the protester in the jaw in order to make more space for the Captain to retrieve his pepper spray. In parallel, a second officer uses his pepper spray to break up the fight — and 4 seconds later, after the Captain retreives his pepper spray, he pops back up and sprays the entire crowd again.