Police Briefs 03-22-2017

Hero cops to be honored at Freedoms Foundation Award Ceremony in Eastie

By John Lynds

The two Boston Police officers who saved the lives of East Boston Officers Richard Cintolo and Matt Morris during a shootout last year in October on Gladstone Street will be honored by the Bay State Chapter of Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge.

The Bay State Chapter of Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge will present Hero Awards to Sergeant Norberto Perez and SWAT Team Officer Clifton Singletary during a ceremony in East Boston next month.

The awards will be presented at the Bay State Chapter’s 38th Annual Awards Luncheon on Saturday, April 29, 2017, at 1 p.m., in Spinelli’s Banquet Facility, Day Square in East Boston.

Freedoms Foundation honors Americans who go above and beyond in their efforts to educate their communities about the values of good citizenship. The foundation has recognized several thousand dedicated individuals and organizations in its 65-year existence. Freedoms Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching all citizens the principles upon which our nation was founded. The organization seeks to convey the close link between the rights and the responsibilities of citizens in a free society.

Officers Richard Cintolo and Matt Morris responded to a domestic call of a fight between two roommates at 136 Gladstone St. on October 12, 2016.  When the officers arrived they were told by one of the roommate’s that the suspect, later identified as Kirk Figueroa, was threatening him with a knife. Figueroa and the other roommate had argued over a thermostat.

Cintolo and Morris were met by Figueroa who was wearing body armor and appeared to be dressed as a law enforcement official. Officers performed a ‘pat frisk’ on Figueroa as the suspect kept telling officers he was ‘one of them’. When Cintolo found he was armed, Figueroa pushed Cintolo, shot him three times in the neck, chest and arm and then shot Morris in the groin–severing his femoral artery.

Despite a hail of bullets all around them, Sgt. Perez and Officer Singletary were able to pull their colleagues out of harm’s way.

Singletary, who had responded to the call of officer down that fateful night, reached into Morris’s wound and used his fingers to pinch his artery as District A-7 Sergeant Perez applied the tourniquet that ultimately saved Morris’s life. Just a few days before the shooting, Perez received training on how to apply a tourniquet.

Commissioner William Evans credits Singeltary and Perez’s quick action in saving Morris’s life that night.

Tickets are $50, and can be purchased from Vice President for Awards Dottie D’Onofrio at (617) 539-3092 or [email protected] or from Chapter Secretary Marisa Di Pietro at (617) 650-3442 or [email protected].

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