As a husband and new father, I think about the safety of my family every day. As your City Councillor, I am committed to doing everything that I can to make Boston a safe and livable City where you can feel good about living and raising a family in any one of our neighborhoods. I do this because I am committed to One Boston where people from all walks of life work together for a livable City with great schools, safe streets, a strong local economy, and healthy, sustainable neighborhoods. Crime and violence in our City are serious problems that can only be solved if we work together as one community. Successfully doing this requires:
A Collective Will to Stop Crime: As One Boston, we all must share the commitment to making Boston safe, and we must work together to stop crime and violence. Any real solution to crime requires that we understand that when a person is victimized in our streets, it is not merely one neighborhood’s issue—all of Boston suffers. And, when it comes to gun violence in particular, real solutions require that we see the loss of any person’s life as Boston’s loss. Stopping crime in any corner of this City requires stopping crime in every corner of this City. We are all linked together as One Boston and we must work together to make the whole City safe.
A Cultural Commitment to Ending Violence: We must make conflict resolution an important part of our school curriculum. Conflict resolution education helps students develop collaborative and constructive ways of managing conflicts. Core conflict resolution strategies must be integrated into the City’s public school curriculum and we must commit to giving our schools the resources and training to sustain this effort. I will continue to invite law enforcement, community leaders, educational non-profits, and parents into our schools so that each child learns essential conflict resolution concepts and skills in a community-supported learning environment.
Ending violence also means recognizing that we must put an end to the “stop snitchin” culture that pervades too many of our streets. Certainly it’s easier to turn away when you’ve witnessed a crime than to report it, but our lives and the lives of our young men and women literally depend upon these decisions. We must enact policies that ensure people will stand up for themselves and their communities by reporting crimes to the police. In order to do this, we must give those witnesses who are considering withholding important information from the police out of fear or intimidation the courage to come forward. In 2006, Massachusetts took an important first step when it passed An Act Reducing Gang Violence, which allocated funds to the District Attorney’s Office to offer emergency shelter and basic living expenses to those victims and witnesses who cooperate and are in legitimate fear for their safety. If we are to prevent losing our streets to violence, we must ensure that funding for this bill is increased so that we continue to reassure witnesses, victims, and their families that it’s safe to come forward and that we’re serious about protecting them.
Early Intervention as the Cornerstone of any Public Safety Strategy: I will always prioritize working to keep our kids in school and off the streets as the foundation of any public safety strategy. It is imperative that we identify and reach out to at-risk or potentially at-risk children from the earliest ages. We must engage families so that every child grows up in a supportive environment, and work to keep children on paths of opportunity and away from paths that lead to crime and violence. As a former school teacher of at-risk middle school children, I have seen first-hand how kids can be drawn into gangs, drug abuse, and crime at a very early age. To address one part of this challenge, I filed legislation this past year pushing for Boston to adopt a new, ground-breaking approach to truancy focused on early intervention, parental accountability, and family engagement.
Additionally, we must prioritize the funding and development of after-school and youth employment programs for our high school-aged youth in all of our neighborhoods. We must also use teacher training as an opportunity to fight against future crime. Many children who are at risk for violent behavior can be identified before the third grade. We must work with our school teachers, administrators, and educational non-profits to ensure that teacher training for new and veteran teachers includes training to recognize early warning signs for future violent behavior so that the school system and the child’s parents can address the problem early on.
Keeping our Police on the Job: One of the most effective ways to prevent crime is to maintain a committed, mobile police force, with the necessary resources to keep a constant presence in all of the City’s neighborhoods. While I am mindful of the City’s budgetary limitations, as City Councillor, I have made it a priority to preserve funding for police officers.
A Commitment to Real Community Policing: We need a strategic commitment to real community policing. This means having ethnically, racially, and culturally diverse officers walking and biking the beat with long-term assignments to specific neighborhoods so that they can become an integral part of the communities that they police. It also means helping our police officers by giving them the resources and the direction to form community partnerships with our neighborhood watch groups, civic organizations, community-based organizations, and youth workers in order to prevent crime and strengthen the quality of life in our neighborhoods.
Getting Tough on Gangs, Drug Outfits, and Gun Violence: We must ensure that we give the police and prosecutors the tools they need to make our streets safe. As gangs become more organized and sophisticated, we need to develop new tactics to combat them. We must ensure that police officers have the resources to enforce laws that are already on the books—such as anti-loitering ordinances—that can quash gang activity. I also support new, innovative law enforcement strategies, such as Ceasefire strategies for curbing violence and drug sales, which target gang violence. These Ceasefire programs, where police officers compel gang members to attend a meeting, demand that the shootings end, and promise severe punishment directed at the entire gang if they do not end the violence, are an effective and efficient way of showing gangs we’re serious about making Boston a safe and livable City. The Boston Police Department’s Youth Violence Strike Force, which is based on a Ceasefire strategy, has made laudable progress towards stemming youth violence in our City.
To get tough on gangs, we’ll also need to pass legislation permitting gang injunctions. Gang injunctions, which have been used successfully in major cities like Los Angeles, are court issued restraining orders against gangs declaring their public behavior a nuisance and asking for special rules directed toward that gang’s activity. Once the restraining order is issued, members of a gang would be prevented from meeting, communicating, and fraternizing, and gang members could be arrested and punished for violations.
Ending Recidivism: In Massachusetts, more than fifty percent of released offenders are rearrested or returned to prison or jail within three years of release. Currently, offenders face serious hurdles to successful re-entry into the community. Leaving offenders without the means to succeed is a recipe for disaster.
If we are to battle recidivism, we must also reform our Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) system. While the original intent of the CORI system was noble—to share information among criminal justice agencies—the system has been dramatically expanded and abused over the years, and the current process of accessing CORI records is rife with problems. CORI information is often used by third-parties when evaluating, among other things, applications for employment, housing, loans, insurance, college admissions, and becoming a guardian or foster parent. CORI reports are difficult to read and often contain inaccurate or incorrect information. These flaws often prevent individuals from obtaining a loan, a job, or a home, thus making it even more difficult for an offender to become a productive member of society. I will continue to work hard to fix flaws in the CORI system and I support pending statehouse legislation which would reduce the amount of time an applicant’s criminal record remains accessible to employers and mandate post release supervision and assistance for released offenders.
Addressing the Link Between Drugs, Violence and Crime: Drug-related crime and violence is an epidemic in our City and we must be committed to tackling every aspect of this problem. We must strengthen our laws punishing drug dealers so that no one sells drugs in Boston without worrying that they might get locked up for a very, very long time. But, we must also reduce the demand for illegal drugs by expanding drug treatment and recovery facilities throughout Boston. Detox centers are not enough—we must offer long-term, comprehensive recovery services to help people with addictions find sobriety and achieve a stable lifestyle. This is not only a health issue; it is also a public safety issue. If we do not reduce the number of drug addicts, we will never rid our streets of drug-related violence.
Addressing Links Between Violence and Mental Health Issues: Undiagnosed and untreated emotional and mental health problems often lie at the root of violent behavior. For many perpetrators, social service intervention could act as a greater deterrent than law enforcement. Accordingly, we must redirect resources to address the link between violent behavior and mental health issues, while ensuring that the City’s crime resources are being used efficiently, to the greatest benefit of our neighborhoods. I have filed an order for a hearing to examine emergency response polices and procedures when there is an individual experiencing a mental health crisis. This hearing will be an opportunity to bring experts from the National Alliance of Mental Health together with the Boston Police Department, Boston Fire Department, and Boston Emergency Medical Services to help educate those on the front lines how to better react to those with mental illnesses. I will continue to work with the police, first responders, non-profits, and our communities to ensure improved services for individuals experiencing a mental health crisis and a safer work environment for first responders.
Focusing on the Rise in Female Adolescent Crime: Historically, law enforcement has dedicated the bulk of its resources to preventing crimes committed by men. While it is true that men commit the vast majority of crimes in Boston, and thus should be a main target of our crime fighting resources and commitments, women are becoming increasingly involved in violent crime in Boston, with girls the fastest growing segment of the juvenile justice system.
