Boston shootout figured in Russia-supplied ads
The Russian effort to sow discord among American voters last fall included a Facebook ad that tried to slam Hillary Clinton and boost Donald Trump with the story of the 2016 East Boston shootout that left police officers Richard Cintolo and Matthew Morris critically injured.
Representatives from Facebook, Google and Twitter faced criticism on Capitol Hill about why they hadn’t done more to combat Russian interference on their sites.
The few dozen ads publicly released yesterday were a small sampling of the roughly 3,000 Russian-connected ones that Facebook has identified and turned over to Congress.
The ads are said to underscore how foreign agents sought to disrupt the American political process and whip up tensions around sensitive social issues such as Islam, race and gun control.
One advertisement cited the October 2016 news story — about a gunman’s battle with Boston police officers — using the story to attack Democrat Hillary Clinton as “the main hardliner against cops” and promote Trump as the candidate who can “defend the police from terrorists.”
That ad only received 761 clicks.
A domestic dispute brought police to the Gladstone Street home in East Boston at 10:51 p.m. on Oct. 12, 2016. There cops encountered a heavily armed and armored Kirk Figueroa. The call quickly became a life-and-death struggle, with witnesses reporting as many as 50 gunshots.
Officers Morris and Cintolo were both critically wounded in the gunfight and underwent surgery after their fellow officers braved gunfire to pull them to safety while stanching their bleeding.
Figueroa, 33, a registered Suffolk County constable who prowled the East Boston neighborhood in a vehicle made up to look like a police car, was killed in the gun battle.
Though officials at Facebook and other social media giants were initially reluctant to acknowledge Russian success on their sites in swaying popular opinion, company leaders have struck a different tone in recent weeks and this week disclosed steps to Congress intended to prevent future meddling in American politics by foreign agents. In preparation for hearings this week, Facebook disclosed that content generated by a Russian group, the Internet Research Agency, potentially reached as many as 126 million users.