BOSTON – When Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Police Lt. Richard Sullivan told members of the local media he wasn’t going to stand idly by as people flagrantly had their cocks sucked on MBTA train platforms, he must have had a feeling his investigators were hot on the denim-shorts-covered tail of one of Boston’s most notorious criminals.
“We’re not going to tolerate this,” Sullivan said at the time. “In my 20 years on the job, I’ve very rarely encountered something as brazen as this.”
Just one week after an alarmed commuter posted a photo of the alleged public cocksucking incident to the MBTA’s Facebook page, transit police announced the arrest of Philip Urban, an admitted Red Sox fan police also suspect of being on the receiving end of the oral transaction.
While some had expected Sullivan to be takin’ his time, possibly just movin’ along, the investigation progressed very quickly. Following hours of painstaking review of images captured by MBTA surveillance cameras, his officers were able to locate a suspect to whom they could say “let me take you home tonight.”
“We put a lot of time into reviewing images from our public safety cameras, and we were able to track him to Malden,” Sullivan said, humbly suggesting the investigation was quickly successful as a result of his officers takin’ it day by day.
Although nothing can completely undo the shock of knowing someone received a blowjob while standing in the same State Street station he walks across nearly every day, MBTA commuter Brad Scholz said there’s “no more time to criticize” and the arrest of Urban has left him “feelin’ satisfied.”
“I’m used to bad news, and I’m also one who always says ‘don’t look back,’ so it’s easy for me to get past this,” Scholz said. “Plus, when I see a train coming, I’m gonna hitch a ride. It’s just as simple as that.”
Asked whether other reported MBTA crimes concern him (like the roughly twice-weekly aggravated assaults or half-dozen annual rapes) Scholz said for him, putting up with risks like those are all just part of what it is “to be a man.”
“To me, it’s no big thing to risk being mugged or having my pocket picked when I’m trying to get home from work,” Scholz said. “But if I want to watch some guy getting his cock sucked, I’ll log on to the Internet — or if I’m feeling adventurous, head down to the abandoned buildings in Roxbury where my cousin Micky scores his crack. Down there, it’s a party and nobody cares.”
Fellow commuter Ricki Easton, however, said so far as MBTA travel is concerned, she’s going to “leave it all behind” and “never change my mind.”
“Everyone is saying ‘don’t be afraid,’ but all I want is to have my peace of mind,” Easton said. “There are other ways to get to my destination. Lately, I’ve been using Uber, and I think I like it.”
While he can’t imagine why anyone would swear off using the MBTA entirely, Scholz said he wasn’t surprised by those who are reticent to revisit the scene of Urban’s crime.
“I understand about indecision,” Scholz said, “but to those people I say, ‘take a look ahead.’ If they’re nervous about it now, maybe they just need to cool the engines and make a decision later on. After a while, if they just can’t bring themselves to take the train again, they can always just walk on (some more).”
Transit police, meanwhile, haven’t said whether they have any leads on the identity of Urban’s partner in crime, despite several witnesses claiming to have seen someone named “Marianne” walking away.
