A state agency has upheld the demotion of a Boston police officer for his handling of a 2012 case involving Edwin Alemany, the suspect later charged with the brutal murder of a 24-year-old South Boston woman, according to the Boston Police Department.
The state Department of Labor Relations on Friday upheld the demotion of Jerome Hall-Brewster from detective to patrol officer, in July 2013, the police department said.
A copy of the hearing officer’s ruling was not available Friday, and attempts to reach Hall-Brewster and his lawyer for comment were unsuccessful.
Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans praised the ruling in a statement, saying it reaffirmed his office’s authority “to make swift personnel changes that are in the best interest of the department and the city.”
Evans’s predecessor, Edward F. Davis, stripped Hall-Brewster of his detective’s badge after learning that he failed to arrest Alemany in September 2012 for an assault of a woman in Roxbury who lost consciousness when a man attacked her. Police have said that the woman woke up holding a wallet that contained Alemany’s ID card.
Alemany, now 30, allegedly went on to kidnap Amy Lord outside her South Boston apartment on the morning of July 23, 2013, and fatally stab her in the Stony Brook Reservation in Hyde Park. He has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and other charges and has a pre-trial hearing slated for Jan. 13 in Suffolk Superior Court.
On Friday, Davis commended the state ruling that upheld his demotion of Hall-Brewster, who currently works out of the Roxbury district station as a patrolman.
“I’m happy that the hearing officer recognized how serious this was, and I’m particularly happy for the Lord family, who did have to suffer through a terrible incident,” said Davis, who now provides security consulting for The Boston Globe.
Hall-Brewster has said through his lawyer that he did nothing wrong in the 2012 case and did not want to arrest Alemany until he had stronger evidence in the form of a DNA match from items recovered at the crime scene, including the wallet, a hat, and a plastic bottle with saliva traces.
Hall-Brewster responded to an e-mail from the crime lab in November 2012 asking if he believed the items belonged to the suspect, though he did not respond to two prior e-mails asking the same question, his lawyer has said.
The Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society, Hall-Brewster’s union before his demotion, could not be reached for comment Friday night. The president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, the union for patrol officers, did not return a call seeking comment.
Maria Cramer of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @TAGlobe.