"Boston mayoral hopefuls lean hard on neighborhoods; Candidates in the city’s mayoral free-for-all work their enclaves in hopes of eking out a win" by Andrew Ryan | Globe Staff, July 28, 2013
Boston’s local power bases and history of tribal politics will be tested this September as 12 candidates compete in the first wide-open mayor’s race in a generation. Most campaigns believe the electorate may be so splintered that roughly 25,000 votes — the equivalent of the population of the Cape Cod town of Yarmouth — could be enough to win one of two spots in November’s final election.
The fight for so few votes can make the election feel small, like a tug-of-war over friends and neighbors instead of a citywide debate about big ideas. Some campaigns have pushed broader issues. Bill Walczak stood on a rainy beach last week to promote his environmental blueprint. City Councilor John R. Connolly has made his plan for schools the cornerstone of his campaign. Much of the focus has been not only on fund-raising and building armies of volunteers, but campaigning door-to-door in an effort by candidates to hold their geographic base.
That’s because the race is almost like a contest to be king of a village, not mayor of a big city. Boston remains a patchwork of neighborhoods stitched together after centuries of annexations....
What?
In this election, many of the candidates have long been kings — or queens — of their own villages, cultivating support in their neighborhoods. Voters have known some candidates as their local city councilors or state representatives. Other mayoral hopefuls have built lasting ties to residents by leading community nonprofits.
As Jack Beatty, author of the Mayor James Michael Curley biography “The Rascal King” and a forthcoming book with Mayor Thomas M. Menino, suggests, not all villages are equal when it comes to votes. For some candidates, geography offers an advantage: Their neighbors historically cast ballots at high numbers.
For example, City Councilor Rob Consalvo’s power base in Hyde Park is part of a City Council district that includes more than 6,100 super voters — so dubbed because they have cast ballots in the last three mayoral elections. Michael P. Ross and Charles C. Yancey, two other councilors running for mayor, represent districts with roughly as many residents — but with many fewer who vote in municipal elections....
Ross’s campaign advisers acknowledge they must energize people who vote in national and state races but skip city elections. They are also trying to push beyond geography to capture support from young professionals, empty nesters moving to the city, and other voters looking for someone different....
Boston has 390,000 registered voters, but many skip municipal elections. In the last half century, there have been four open races for mayor. Turnout in those hotly contested preliminary elections averaged just 50 percent.
In this race with a dozen candidates, even home neighborhoods could be splintered....
Of all the candidates, Charlotte Golar Richie has perhaps the greatest opportunity to broaden her base. She is the only woman running for mayor. In Boston, 57 percent of voters in the last three mayoral elections were women.
“The one difference between her and anyone else is her village is citywide in one demographic and its makes up [almost] 60 percent of the electorate,” said Golar Richie’s campaign manager, James McGee.
In West Roxbury a few blocks from Connolly’s home, the fact that Golar Richie is a woman mattered to Sandra Cummings.
She is leaning toward Connolly because she likes his focus on education, but Cummings said she wanted to learn more about Golar Richie.
“We have a very diverse city, and I think that is a good reason to consider a woman or a minority candidate,” the 66-year-old Cummings said. “Part of me feels like I’ve seen enough white Irish guys be mayor of Boston.”
--more--"
Related: Candidates try to stand out
And who has?
"Crimes have put Daniel Conley in limelight; Flow of dramatic news coincides with mayoral bid" by Stephanie Ebbert | Globe Staff, July 28, 2013
Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley has occupied center stage in some of the summer’s most prominent crime dramas, elevating his public profile at a time when he’s running for mayor of Boston and trying to break away from a pack of 12 candidates.
However grim and unsettling the news, political observers say, the publicity can’t hurt.
“In a crowded field and as the days are getting shorter, with everybody trying to get some attention, it’s an advantage,” said Paul Watanabe, chairman of the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Boston. “They’re all trying to break through.”
Other candidates are working valiantly to draw attention to their campaign pledges and public safety initiatives.....
Conley was already the best-funded candidate and one of the first to pay for TV ads in the race to the Sept. 24 preliminary election. And in recent months, he can’t seem to get out of the news.
Related:
"Leslie Moonves, chief executive of CBS Corp., which owns 29 stations, said last year, “Super PACs may be bad for America, but they’re very good for CBS.” Next year’s midterm elections will be a boon to stations, as well, and “2016 could be amazing,” said Mark Fratrik, chief economist for BIA/Kelsey, a media consultancy."
Now all the s***-fooley political coverage makes $en$e.
In April, just two weeks after he entered the race for mayor, the Boston Marathon bombs exploded and Conley was among the political and law enforcement authorities who gathered to announce developments in the investigation.
Last week, when the body of a young woman was found in Hyde Park after a shocking kidnapping and murder, Conley was at the crime scene gathering information from investigators. Though he declined to comment, he offered to let the TV cameras capture footage of him that would help fill the empty hours before he and other law enforcement officials held their press conference.
Conley could even find himself involved in some high-profile cases that happened elsewhere — or years earlier. Though former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez is facing murder charges in Bristol County, the Globe has reported that Suffolk prosecutors are also making a case to a grand jury that he should be charged in a separate double murder in Boston in 2012.
Related: Goodbye, Chuck!
Also see:
Hernandez appears to be holding gun in surveillance images
$500k bail set for ally linked to Hernandez
Say hello.
Conley’s office also may have to confront requests about whether to bring charges against Patrick Nee, who’s been implicated in murders by witnesses in the ongoing murder trial of South Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Where is Whitey Bulger's Brother?
Also see:
Bulger held no-show jobs, alleged money man testifies
A G-man’s testimony helps dispel myths of ‘Whitey’
Is there really anyone other than the mouthpiece media that believes government anymore?
Funeral held for Stephen Rakes
Traces of the old Southie
Same as the new Southie.
As if there weren’t enough crime news surfacing, Conley dug up one nearly 50 years old: He announced that investigators would exhume the body of DeSalvo and use DNA to confirm his jailhouse confession as the Boston Strangler, at least in the case of the final victim.
See: Slow Saturday Special: Choked Up by Strangler Story
Looks like the perfect candidate to look after your civil rights.
But Conley spokesman Jake Wark said the new inquiry into the DeSalvo evidence began with the Boston Police crime lab and had been underway since late last year. It was also handled in cooperation with the attorney general and State Police.
Wark suggested that the flurry of high-profile cases was nothing new for the district attorney ‘s office, which prosecutes 40,000 cases a year.
“This is the big city,” Wark said. “Every day is a busy day.”
*************************
Prosecutors who run for other political offices often face intense scrutiny for what they haven’t done — for lost opportunities, failed prosecutions, or investigations gone awry. The same high-profile cases that make a law enforcement candidate look like a white knight cast a dimmer glow if the cases go unsolved — a prospect that could pose a problem for Conley.
It won't effect the primary or election in a few months.
Last week’s seemingly random attack on 24-year-old Amy Lord — who police say was kidnapped outside her South Boston home and forced to withdraw money from ATMs before she was killed — has shaken the neighborhood where she lived.
Related: Amy Lord is remembered in churches and at vigils
"Southie Strong!"
Also see: Bulger's Ghost Haunts South Boston
And the intense focus on the crime is already prompting secondary criticism about whether law enforcement authorities pay enough attention to victims of less sensational, everyday violence.
That's what I've been saying about Zimmerman.
Though Lord’s murder “hit home” for Charlotte Golar Richie, a mayoral candidate and the mother of two daughters close in age to Lord, she said: “I want to see the same high-level visibility, sense of urgency, and unity of purpose in solving cases and supporting families who have lost loved ones to violence in every neighborhood. And I’m going to work toward that as mayor.”
--more--"
Related:
"Boston mayoral candidate Charlotte Golar Richie, one of the dozen in the running to become Boston’s next mayor, organized the forum after the controversial George Zimmerman not-guilty verdict, which prompted protests across the country and renewed national discussions of racial profiling. Golar Richie, the lone woman in the race, is a former executive for YouthBuild USA, an organization that focuses on providing education and job training to at-risk teens and young adults."
Women shouldn't be allowed the vote if they are so monolithic they will vote for someone just because she is the only woman, as the Globe implies.
Now onto that ungodly slaying that may decide the race:
"2012 case linked to ‘person of interest’ in woman’s death; Edwin Alemany’s ID found with attack victim, but police didn’t follow up; ‘I’m very disappointed in what the detective did,’ Davis says" by Maria Cramer and Javier Panzar | Globe Staff | Globe Correspondent, July 26, 2013
Boston police disclosed Friday that one of their detectives failed to follow up on the 2012 assault of a woman who was choked into unconsciousness and then awakened to find she was holding the wallet of her suspected assailant — the man now under scrutiny in this week’s fatal stabbing of a young South Boston woman.
The horrible murder could have been prevented?
The suspected assailant in the 2012 choking, Edwin Alemany, is charged with attacking two women in the past week, and is considered a “person of interest’’ in the killing of Amy Lord, the 24-year-old who was abducted as she left her Dorchester Street apartment, forced to withdraw money from five ATMs, then stabbed to death at Stony Brook Reservation in Hyde Park.
The announcement by police that one of their detectives did not aggressively pursue Alemany raised the troubling prospect that a highly dangerous man with a lengthy criminal record was allowed to remain on the streets....
Well, if there are no criminals you don't need any cops, right?
The victim in that 2012 case, a young architectural student who asked that her name not be published, said she did not follow through with police after she was attacked on a Roxbury street in September of last year. She said in an interview Friday that she had wanted to put the ordeal behind her.
“Now that I look back on it, it’s kind of stupid. I should have called,” she said, growing emotional....
“As you can imagine, it’s incredibly frustrating that we are here today talking about a man that has 18 juvenile arraignments, and 34 adult arraignments and is still not incarcerated,” said Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis during a late afternoon press conference....
All the spy s*** and surveillance they have going on and this guy "slips through" the cracks?
--more--"
Related:
Parents torn over children’s safety, dreams
Fear surges after attacks in South Boston
"In South Boston, fear remained pervasive. At gyms, women asked for self-defense classes, and men volunteered to walk them home. Police said they had added extra patrols, planned to hand out whistles to women Friday afternoon, and announced that they would host self-defense classes."
Didn't they catch the guy?
"This is an anomalous crime, but one that has shattered the sense of safety in every corner of the city. The only comfort now is that police appear to be making progress in the case."
NEXT DAY UPDATE: Police ‘close’ to answer in South Boston slaying
"Keypad alarms on cash machines: Preventing future murders?
The shocking murder of Amy Lord this week has brought a renewed realization: ATMs are tools for criminals, but they could also be tools for crimefighters. Lord’s story might have ended differently if, as her assailant forced her to withdraw cash from five different ATMs last week, she had been able to secretly alert police to her plight.
In fact, criminologists and entrepreneurs have long peddled ideas about high-tech ways to help victims while they’re in the process of withdrawing money. Many have pitched that technology to various state governments, often in response to other horrible crimes. The proposals take on a range of forms, from “panic buttons” on ATM keypads to special PINs — perhaps the customer’s regular access number in reverse — that would dispense money but also set off an alarm inside the bank or at a police station.
Banks have long lobbied against any laws to require high-tech safety measures, saying they are prohibitively expensive, could lead to false alarms, and could put victims in greater danger by angering their assailants while they struggle to remember special PINs. A spokesman for the Massachusetts Banking Association also told the Globe it would be unfair to require this technology at bank ATMs but not at cash machines in gas stations or convenience stores.
Isn't it amazing how despite all the computer foul-ups and such, bank ATMs never lose a cent?
Can't get your vote right, but when watching the pennies for banks.... (sigh).
But these are not good reasons to abandon the idea altogether. Isolated, stand-alone cash machines represent the easiest targets for criminals; ATMs in stores and gas stations are inherently safer because there are other people around. The cost estimates of keypad technology vary, but if they are truly large, they could be offset by some state subsidy, or by a small surcharge on consumers.
Yeah, as long as the banks can make a profit off it.
And it’s impossible to guess how criminals would act in every situation; surveillance footage released this week suggests that, in at least this one case, Lord’s assailant wasn’t hovering over her shoulder as she withdrew cash.
Yeah, were was he because the media has been very vague about this? If he didn't have a gun and wasn't right by her side, why wouldn't she run?
The Legislature has a chance to take up the issue soon. State Senator Brian A. Joyce, a Milton Democrat, has sponsored a bill that would require greater ATM security standards, such as adequate lighting, surveillance cameras, and emergency phones. Joyce and his cosponsors should also launch a full inquiry into keypad technology ideas and their relative costs. Doing so would be a tribute to Lord’s memory that could help prevent similar outcomes.
--more--"
"Emotional trauma may have kept Amy Lord from fleeing" by Chelsea Conaboy | Globe Staff, July 26, 2013
It is the question asked by so many people trying to will the story of Amy Lord’s slaying to a different end: Why didn’t she run when she appeared to have the chance?
Beaten and terrorized, Lord was probably in such fear of her assailant that escape did not seem possible, specialists said Thursday.
A surveillance camera captured the 24-year-old stepping out of the passenger side of a sport utility vehicle, along a busy Boston road in the morning light Tuesday, cars passing nearby. Police say the image, released to the news media, was captured during Lord’s abduction, when she was forced to withdraw cash from five bank machines. Presumably, her attacker was in the driver’s seat.
Did he stay there? And if not, he would have been on surveillance tape, right? And what of the second person allegedly involved? You know, the one that always disappears in mouthpiece media reports?
It is impossible to know what was going through Lord’s mind at that moment or whether she had tried to get away earlier or would try later. Police have not said whether her abductor was armed.
Odd. I was under the impression he had a knife.
But a law enforcement official said that her attacker brutally beat her in her South Boston apartment that morning, and specialists who study the mind-set of victims and assailants said that trauma could help explain why she did not escape.
I'm not into mouthpiece media speculation and rationalization, sorry. Seen enough of it over the years.
Lord may have made the same judgment many others have made in a moment of terror, believing that the safest option was to go along with her attacker’s demands, said Dr. Ronald Schouten, director of the law and psychiatry service at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“You want to believe — it’s survival mode — if I do what I’m told, this person won’t hurt me,” he said.
Perpetrators in cases such as this one often display an ability “to be calming and manipulative,” even if they are also violent, said Schouten, who coauthored the book “Almost a Psychopath.” They terrorize and cajole, convincing their victims that if they do as they are told, they will escape further harm, he said.
Specialists interviewed for this article were not involved in the investigation but spoke generally about patterns of victimization. Often in such crimes, they said, attackers know their victims and use threats against them or their loved ones as a means of control.
In other words, they act like a government looking to wage war.
Police have given no indication that was the case with Lord. No one has been charged, but police have called Edwin J. Alemany a “person of interest.” The 28-year-old has been accused of attacking two other women in the same area Tuesday and Wednesday.
Dr. Harold Bursztajn, a psychiatrist and founder of the program in psychiatry and the law at Harvard Medical School, said that head trauma could have played a role in Lord’s case, if she had been badly beaten, leaving her confused or disoriented. People respond in a variety of ways to emotional trauma, he said.
Then having a different PIN number would have meant nothing.
“The usual acute traumatic stress disorder involves either fight, which some people do, flight, or if you’re badly enough injured, people freeze,” he said.
“She may have been, literally speaking, scared stiff.”
Often, victims are afraid of escalating the violence against them, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. He pointed to the murder of eight nursing students in Chicago in 1966 by just one man, Richard Speck. Speck tied the women up in their apartment, promising that all he wanted was money, and then killed them.
“People just oftentimes trust that he wants the money . . . that taking my life is not going to get him anything,” Fox said. “They reason. They believe that, logically, the best move is then not to get them angry.”
--more--"
Also see: Residents, mayor welcome new restaurants in Hyde Park
Didn't even mention Lord.
Related:
"Police say Beverly woman fabricated abduction story" by Lauren Dezenski | Globe Correspondent, June 17, 2013
Police believe that a Beverly woman who initially said she was kidnapped and locked in the trunk of her car made the episode up, and she will face a charge of falsifying a police report, Beverly police spokesman Mike Boccuzzi said.
Around noon Monday, criminal investigators were interviewing Maria Brayfield about the alleged carjacking when they determined she made up the story, Boccuzzi said.
The 24-year-old woman initially told investigators that Sunday night at least two masked men abducted her from her Beverly apartment and ordered her to drive them in her car onto Route 128.
Once on the highway, the men ordered her to stop the car and to get into the trunk, she told police.
About 3:30 a.m., two motorists stopped near Brayfield’s car to provide assistance for what they believed was an accident. The car was parked on the side of Route 128 northbound near Exit 17, police said.
As they approached the vehicle, the motorists heard Brayfield screaming from the trunk. The motorists smashed the back window to free her, and called police.
Brayfield was not arrested and will be summoned to Salem District Court on a charge of falsifying a police report.
--more--"
Also see:
"A day apart but in eerily similar circumstances, another man in Dorchester was shot in a car, as a child slept in the back seat. This, the ninth shooting in five days, comes as the city grapples with a surge in violence as warm weather ushers in summer, a time when urban violence tends to peak. In Monday’s shooting, a man was wounded at Devon Street and Vaughan Avenue while his girlfriend and 5-month-old daughter were in a car. By Monday, there had been 115 shootings in Boston so far this year, 19 of them fatal, according to police statistics. That is an uptick from the same time last year, when the city experienced 88 shootings, 12 of them fatal, according to police.... In May, Mayor Thomas M. Menino unveiled a plan to curb summer violence that combined city-sponsored events like outdoor movie nights with an increase in police presence and neighborhood watch groups."
A watch group? After Zimmerman?
"Boston grappling with a spike in violence" by Maria Cramer and Colin A. Young | Globe Staff | Globe Correspondent, June 17, 2013
A citywide surge of violence has many worried about what the summer, a typically dangerous time in some parts of the city, will bring....
As of June 11, there had been 104 shootings in Boston, 17 of them fatal, according to the city’s latest data. There were 81 shootings, 12 fatal, over the same period last year.
Well, you said 88 above, but who cares about inexactitude in a newspaper?
The
spike
comes
after decades of declining crime
, both in Boston and nationwide. Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis said he doesn’t think the recent shootings signal an end to that trend.
“We have a pretty good track record of keeping a long-term trajectory going in the right direction,” Davis said. “Crime is decreasing every year and we intend to keep that going.”
But some community leaders said fear is pervading neighborhoods where shootings are more commonplace, and where community-based organizations that have traditionally helped stem violence by offering jobs and trauma counseling are suffering financially.
“I’m way past concerned,” said Jorge Martinez, head of Project RIGHT, a nonprofit group in Grove Hall that combats violence by working with young people. “We’ve already started with a huge amount of violence and shots being fired. If we’re starting off with these numbers already this spring, what are we looking forward to at the end of the summer?”
******************************
The weekend violence, which left one man dead and at least five people injured, was the result of several factors, including drug deals gone bad and parties that erupted into fights, Davis said.
Time to legalize the drugs and ban the booze!
“The good news is it’s not one particular issue that’s driving the violence that occurred this weekend,” he said. Multiple shootings tied to a gang dispute are more worrisome because the back and forth violence can stretch on over time.
I fail to find any good news in it, sorry.
The rise in the number of shootings in Boston comes at a time when other cities and towns across the country are seeing similar increases.
Just as the disarm the people agenda needs to be picked up.
In 2012, the number of violent crimes reported by law enforcement agencies around the country increased 1.2 percent, while the number of property crimes decreased 0.8 percent, according to the FBI Uniformed Crime Statistics, which collects the data. It was the first time in six years that violent crime rose in the United States.
--more--"
And you know what wins elections 'round h're, right?
"Six candidates reported more income than Menino: Walczak; Ross; John F. Barros and his wife ($258,575); Charlotte Golar Richie and her husband ($255,028); Walsh; and Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley and his wife ($196,811). The tax returns showed that Golar Richie was the candidate who gave the smallest share of her family’s income to charity, donating $451, accounting for 0.2 percent of their income. A campaign spokeswoman said that Richie and her family did not claim all of their charitable donations on their returns. “She has given much more than that,” said the spokeswoman, Joyce Ferriabough Bolling.... “They all have good jobs, but they don’t have complicated returns,” said Sean Wandrei, a certified public accountant and lecturer at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “I didn’t notice any huge investment income, like a Mitt Romney.” One slight exception was Ross, who reported earning $146,000 in interest in 2012 from a federal investment."
Then they will go to work on the winners.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Historic diversity in Boston’s mayoral field
Bold stands hard to come by in mayoral race
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Historic diversity in Boston’s mayoral field
Bold stands hard to come by in mayoral race
