‘Spiraling out of control’: Boston fire lieutenant held on multiple gun, drug charges

QUINCY — Boston Fire Lieutenant Joshua Thompson met the police officers at his front door, accepting the restraining order filed by his wife but insisting that he had no guns he had to turn over.

Thompson has many of the trappings of someone with heft: he’s a decorated first responder, a military vet who was deployed in a war zone, a father, and has ties to locally politically connected families. But the terms of the restraining order required him to give up his weapons. Given his wife’s allegations and a recent revocation of his license to carry, officers had come with a search warrant in hand and worried that he was escalating toward a crisis.

After they entered, they found gun safes empty of firearms. But soon they began finding guns stashed away, accessible in many of the building’s