In her most expansive public comments to date on the criminal charges brought against a Boston Police officer for the shooting death of a Dorchester man earlier this month, Mayor Michelle Wu stood behind the decision of District Attorney Kevin Hayden to withhold body-worn camera footage of the incident— for now.
Wu was asked specifically about the case involving Officer Nicholas O’Malley in this week’s episode of DotLife, the hyper-local podcast that is sponsored by the Dorchester Reporter. Some elected officials have called for the footage to be released now— or, at least, to be shown to family members of Stephenson King, the man who was killed. King was the suspect in an assault and carjacking in Roxbury on the night he was shot and killed by police.
“In Massachusetts, body camera footage is public record, with certain exceptions,” said Mayor Wu. “The city has a longstanding process where the family is brought in first out of respect, and then the footage is released to the public.
“However, all of that depends on timing. When the district attorney says material cannot be released yet because of an ongoing investigation, that has to be the priority. This is not an either-or question—whether to release it or not. It will be released. It’s a matter of when it is appropriate within the legal process.”
In further comments on DotLife, Wu expressed support for Boston Police.
“This situation is a strain on community trust,” she acknowledged. “I fully support our Boston Police Department, and I’m thinking of the officer and his family, as well as the family grieving a loved one. We have to follow the process through and continue the work of keeping people at the table together.”
“We are a city that is as safe as we are because people trust that they can work together with our police officers and public safety agencies. We are also safe because we rely on a legal system that carries forward justice impartially and follows the law.
The system, she said, “is based on independent agencies—in this case, the district attorney’s office—who review all the evidence and determine when the threshold for probable cause has been reached. We have to let that process play out without prematurely releasing information that could undermine it, and make sure that all laws and rules are followed at every step.”
Earlier in the interview, Wu was asked to comment on the fact that crime rates in Boston continued to decline in the first three months of 2026, according to statistics provided by the BPD.
“I’m very proud of how much hard work goes into public safety—community coordination and violence prevention,” Wu said. “It’s hard to judge year by year because our numbers are so small compared to other cities that even small changes can look skewed. So we really go by the five-year average, and even that has been coming down. We are well below not just last year, but also the five-year average in many ways.
“That’s because we’re a community where everyone knows we are all involved in each other’s safety. It’s not just the job of police officers, or the DA, or neighborhood groups—it’s everyone working together.
“Boston was the birthplace of community policing. That concept was invented here—that it’s not about just locking people up to make improvements. Accountability is absolutely important, but community trust is what drives safety. That’s what helps solve crimes and ensures that every community member feels safe calling 911 and working with police to prevent harm in the first place.”
Asked if she was concerned that federal immigration enforcement tactics might impact Boston’s anti-crime strategies, Wu said: “Every mayor right now has to be ready given the federal situation. We’ve seen the horrors of what that can mean in other cities. At the same time, we’ve also seen communities come together to protect what safety really means—sticking up for neighbors and supporting each other.”
“We’ve built partnerships with philanthropic organizations and community providers so there’s funding for legal defense and needed services. And I signed an executive order with neighboring communities to make clear what people’s rights are and that our public spaces are for the public—they are not for carrying out federal immigration enforcement.”
