BOSTON (AP) – Boston police leaders, expecting a quiet night and possibly worried about tight budgets, failed to deploy enough street officers to contend with raucous celebrations following the New England Patriots’ Super Bowl victory, according to an internal police review released Thursday.

Police Commissioner Kathleen O’Toole, who was named as the city’s first female police commissioner a week after the Super Bowl, said managers “failed the police officers who were out in the street that night.”

She also apologized to the city and said the department would incorporate lessons from the incident as it prepares for July’s Democratic National Convention.

O’Toole also reassigned Superintendent Bobbie Johnson, the head of the bureau’s uniformed officers.

Johnson, along with then-Acting Commissioner James Hussey, was not at police headquarters on an evening when fans overturned cars and lit fires on city streets near Northeastern University and Boston University after the Patriots beat the Carolina Panthers on Feb. 1.

Superintendent James Claiborne, Johnson’s replacement as chief of bureau field services, said Thursday that “at least double” the number officers should have been deployed.

Nearly 140 officers scheduled to work that night were off, the report found, most of them on sick leave or personal days. But more than 50 officers were simply granted the night off by commanders.

A driver who was allegedly drunk drove his sports utility vehicle through a crowd after the game, hitting James Grabowski, who later died from his injuries.

“My message to the community is the Boston Police Department failed in this instance, and I’m very sorry for that,” O’Toole said. “While it’s no comfort to the Grabowski families or the to the families of the others injured that evening, we have learned from this event.”

But, O’Toole added, local universities share responsibility for controlling students.

O’Toole said the inquiry had not resulted in any formal disciplinary proceedings, but had produced reassignments, including the replacement of Johnson by Claiborne, who held the same post from 1993 to 2000.

“In an event of this nature, at the very least the superintendent of field services should be absolutely here,” O’Toole said, saying other changes could be forthcoming.

According to the 14-page report, Boston police began planning for the event two weeks before, and assigned more officers than they did following New England’s last Super Bowl win two years ago.

But planners focused much of their attention on planning for a victory parade two days after the game. For Sunday, they held back tactical teams rather than pre-deploy them at potential trouble spots.

Accusations that Boston police were caught off guard during the baseball divisional playoffs last year “produced an enhanced operational plan for the Yankees series that should have been the model for this year’s Super Bowl night,” the report said.

But the planners didn’t expect the football fans to be as raucous, and failed to take steps such as deploying a mounted unit – in that case, partly for fear of potential litigation.

Many officers expressed deep “frustration and anger” that planners were more concerned with saving overtime than public safety, the report found.

“There’s been pressure on people to tighten the belt lately and be cautious when spending money on overtime, but in this instance perhaps that caution went a bit too far,” O’Toole said.

Planners, she said, were primarily thinking in terms of “crowd control,” and deploying units more forcefully might have set a different tone in the streets.

“Perhaps in this instance there should have been greater emphasis on riot control.”

AP-ES-03-11-04 1831EST