The family of Usaamah Rahim is still digesting the Suffolk County District Attorney’s report into a Boston Police detective and a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent fatally shooting the 26-year-old in June 2015, but the family attorney declined to rule out a civil suit.
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Conley said his investigation revealed that on June 2, 2015, the Joint Terrorism Task Force was surveilling Rahim was part of an investigation into his ties to ISIS, specifically plans to commit crimes of terror in the United States, targeting a person in New York City for a beheading at the instruction of an ISIS militant.
Conley touched on key findings of the investigation, such as task force intelligence that Rahim was originally plotting to behead Pamela Geller, a New York-based activist and conservative blogger, before redirecting his radicalized plans toward Boston police officers.
Dan Conley announced Wednesday that his investigation found law enforcement officers were acting in self-defense when they shot 26-year-old Usaamah Rahim in a Roslindale parking lot. “Their use of deadly force was a lawful exercise of self-defense or defense of others and did not constitute a crime under MA law”, Conley said. But investigators said he and co-conspirators chose instead to plot an attack on police officers.
Two other men, Nicholas Rovinski of Warwick, Rhode Island, and David Wright of Everett, were indicted in an alleged conspiracy to help ISIS and Rahim.
Conley said he apologized to the family for the report taking a “little bit too long”, and added that prosecutors in his office have been working on other cases at the same time as handling the Rahim case.
Just after 7 a.m., Rahim left his Roslindale apartment and walked to a bus stop.
When confronted by officers and ordered to drop the knife, Rahim allegedly said “you drop yours” and “why don’t you shoot me”. Rahim got within several feet of the officers, Conley said.
Conley did not identify members of the task forces, as that could put them at risk.
Ronald Sullivan, an attorney for the Rahim family, said he questions whether police could have disarmed Rahim without using lethal force.
Rahim’s family said they were grateful to the DA’s office for being so open during the investigation, but were not happy with the “narrow scope” of the investigation.
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“The FBI deals with the decision every day between transparency and protecting an ongoing investigation”, ACLU staff attorney Carl Williams said. They abandoned that plot in favor of one where they attacked police officers.
