I'm just not getting it done for you, readers, and my New Year's resolution is to really buckle down and be a whirling dervish of interesting, informative, and vibrant selections from the Boston Globe.
"Cases dropped after Lowell informants accused of planting evidence" by Travis Andersen | Globe Staff, August 10, 2013
Prosecutors have dropped 17 pending cases and vacated two convictions that were linked to a pair of Lowell police informants who were accused of planting drug evidence and lying about suspects, officials said Friday.
In a statement, the Middlesex and Essex district attorneys said the allegation surfaced against the informants in November 2012, prompting Lowell police to cease working with them. The statement did not identify the informants or say who made the accusation.
Middlesex prosecutors asked the Essex office to conduct a review of the Lowell Police Department’s use of confidential informants to avoid the appearance of conflict, according to the statement.
Investigators did not uncover sufficient “admissible evidence” to charge either informant with misconduct, but Middlesex prosecutors decided as a cautionary move to dismiss any pending cases in superior court or district court that the pair played a role in, the statement said.
When you really think about it, it is just all so funny, isn't it?
Prosecutors also decided to vacate any convictions linked to them.
So it isn't just little old Annie Dookhan, the demon of the drug lab, that is responsible for the crappy condition of ju$tice in Ma$$achu$etts.
“The detectives who were assigned to the Special Investigation Section of the Lowell Police Department did not engage in any criminal wrongdoing or negligence in the performance of their police duties, including the manner in which they obtained intelligence information from the informants,” the statement said. “And there is no evidence that the detectives who were in contact with the informants knew or should have known of their misconduct.”
Yup, cops is clean.
The district attorneys said Lowell police have policies to track the accuracy of information that confidential informants provide and to review their performance and credibility on an ongoing basis.
“This investigation is now closed and we refer the matter back to the Lowell Police Department,” the statement said.
Lowell police said late Friday night that no one was available to discuss the matter.
--more--"
I caught that off the web one afternoon. Didn't see it in print until three weeks later -- when a lawsuit was filed!
"Civil rights lawsuit to allege drugs were planted in Lowell; Man says informants framed him, others" by Michael Rezendes | Globe Staff, September 03, 2013
A Lowell man is expected to file a federal civil rights lawsuit Tuesday against the city of Lowell and a Lowell police officer who relied on two informants suspected of planting drugs on dozens of innocent victims, a scandal that already has led prosecutors to drop charges in 17 pending drug and firearm cases and to overturn two convictions.
Dozens, huh? Innocent people with their lives ruined after having been terrorized.
Jonathan Santiago, a 25-year-old with no prior drug convictions whose case was among those dismissed, said an informant planted cocaine in the gas cap compartment of his car in February 2012, then alerted police, who arrested him. He said police then filed a false report that concealed the informant’s role.
But the cops had no knowledge or should have… okay, why did they cover up the phone call? Gotta protect those $elf-$erving informers because the crime $tats will look better and more money will be put in the budgets!
Wow, does THIS WHOLE $CHEME REALLY $TINK HERE!
“I just couldn’t believe it — that law enforcement would actually do something like this,” Santiago said in a Globe interview, adding that his arrest, jailing, and ensuing legal ordeal changed his life. “I pretty much stay home now. I don’t go out anymore. I feel like I can’t trust anyone.”
I can believe it, and sadly, it is far too common an occurrence in AmeriKa these days.
Santiago’s lawsuit says that scores of others may have suffered a similar fate, noting that one of the informants has been working with Lowell police for the last decade — the arresting officer in Santiago’s case alone has testified to using the informant in more than 50 cases. The lawsuit also says that “Lowell police officers allowed [the informant] to commit crimes because he assisted them as an informant.”
Related: FBI Lets Informants Commit Crimes
This is what happens to you when you say no:
FBI Case File: The New Informant
No mercy, either.
Neither the police officer, veteran Detective Thomas Lafferty, nor a spokesman for the Lowell police would address the specific allegations in the federal lawsuit, referring questions to the city’s legal department. Lowell’s chief legal official, City Solicitor Christine O’Connor, was unavailable for comment.
Defense lawyers said the allegations in the lawsuit echo disclosures in the case of Annie Dookhan, the state chemist whose allegedly faked drug analyses were used to obtain convictions that have now been overturned, and the trial of notorious gangster James “Whitey’ Bulger, who Bulger asserts was allowed by his FBI handlers to commit crimes in exchange for providing information on other criminals.
But he was never allowed to introduce that evidence.
The Santiago lawsuit alleges “the widespread misuse of confidential informants in the Lowell Police Department” and a “policy or custom of tolerating violations of people’s constitutional rights in order to obtain convictions.”
It's a well-known secret.
Middlesex prosecutors dropped charges or vacated convictions against Santiago and 18 other defendants earlier this year after one of the informants advertised his services to the Massachusetts State Police and “boasted about his skill and experience in planting evidence,” citing specific examples of his work with the other informant on behalf of Lowell police, according to the lawsuit.
So when does his criminal trial start?
Last month, prosecutors issued a statement saying that “out of an abundance of caution and in the interest of fairness” it would dismiss any pending cases and vacate convictions in which information from either informant was used.
However, Middlesex prosecutors, aided by investigators from Essex County, said in the statement that their investigation of the Lowell Police Department’s use of the informants “from approximately 2010 through November 2012” found no wrongdoing by law enforcement. The prosecutors said the allegation against the informants is “uncorroborated.”
It's called a whitewash.
In addition, investigators were unable to find any evidence that the detectives “knew or should have known about their misconduct,” the statement from the Middlesex and Essex prosecutors said.
But Howard Friedman, a lawyer representing Santiago in the civil rights case, said Lowell police either knew or should have known that the informants were planting evidence because they had been working with them for so long.
“If this informant has been working for 10 years and the police officers do not know of his misconduct, that is damning,” Friedman said. “It is hard to believe the officers were that ignorant.”
Well, it is and it is not.
Friedman also questioned the thoroughness of the district attorneys’ investigation, which only covered two years, especially since one of the informants apparently told State Police he was planting evidence. Friedman said that investigators did not interview Santiago or other wrongly charged defendants.
“Since there was no attempt to corroborate the allegation, of course it’s uncorroborated,” said Friedman, who suspects that innocent people may still be in prison due to evidence planted by the informants….
The Globe is refraining from publishing the names of the informants because they have not been charged and their safety could be jeopardized if their identities are revealed….
Yeah, forget about the safety innocent people who were jailed by these liars.
In fact, the alleged use of at least one of the informants dates back to when Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis was Lowell’s chief from 1994 to 2006, though there is no evidence that Davis was involved with any of the cases involving the informant….
And he could have been DHS director.
In an effort to find out if additional people were convicted based on information provided by the informants, prosecutors granted immunity to one of the informants and questioned him in front of a Middlesex grand jury, the law enforcement source said.
(Harrumph!)
Prosecutors have not been able to locate the other informant, the source added.
Oh, really? The government is spying on all of us, every single move, and they don't know nuthin'??
In his lawsuit, Santiago asks for unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for an episode he said left him frightened and concerned that he would be “treated as a criminal for the rest of his life.”
Hey, you wanna be an informant then?
The ordeal began after he left a friend’s apartment and encountered one of the informants, an acquaintance, who asked him to join him at a local bar for a drink, but insisted that he take his own car.
Lafferty and two other officers were waiting for Santiago and pulled him over, later asserting in a police report that Santiago had been swerving in the vehicle and circling the neighborhood “like a drug dealer.” Santiago said those assertions were false.
“To make it appear that they independently found the drugs,” the lawsuit says, “Lafferty called in a police dog to search Mr. Santiago’s car,” and the dog led officers to the gas cap compartment of Santiago’s car.
After opening the compartment, the lawsuit says, Lafferty and the other officers found nearly 27 grams of cocaine and booked Santiago on charges of cocaine trafficking and cocaine trafficking in a school zone, because Lafferty and the other officers “chose to stop Mr. Santiago’s car as he was driving near a school.”
Santiago was facing a mandatory five-year prison term when the charges against him were suddenly dropped.
When Santiago’s public defender, Julie Olsen, asked why, prosecutors told her there was a problem with the informant, which she said was the first time she realized an informant was involved in the case.
Looking back, Santiago said he was particularly traumatized at the thought of what his two young girls would think. “I wouldn’t want them to see me in prison. I wouldn’t want them to see me in that state,” he said.
I don't blame him for feeling that way.
--more--"
Of course, I'm ignoring all the good things about Lowell:
"UMass Lowell’s growth has city asking for return; Each side stresses how it benefits the other" by Lonnie Shekhtman | Globe Correspondent, November 29, 2013
LOWELL — The University of Massachusetts at Lowell has expanded from its two campuses on opposite sides of the Merrimack River into the heart of its host city, acquiring and revitalizing a struggling arena, hotel, and hospital — and boosting the local economy when it needed it most.
But as the university grows beyond its traditional footprint, taking property off tax rolls while straining roads, police, and other municipal services, Lowell officials are asking it to consider making voluntary payments in lieu of taxes to offset the cost of providing it with services. UMass Lowell has resisted making cash contributions to the city, arguing that the economic activity it generates provides far greater benefits.
The negotiation here is one that also plays out in many other communities across the country as they try to balance the economic impact of tax-exempt operations, such as universities, hospitals, and museums, against the need to fund critical services financed by property taxes.
See: The Massachusetts Model: Tax-Exempt Memory Hole
In today’s knowledge-based economy, few would contest that such institutions have become engines of growth. But as local officials try to balance budgets, many ask: Is that enough?
****************************
UMass Lowell responds that making payments to the city would interfere with its key mission: providing access to higher education by keeping tuition low for Massachusetts residents.
“There’s a very good reason why public universities are exempt from taxes,” said UMass Lowell chancellor Martin Meehan. “The idea of increasing tuition on students to give money to the city doesn’t square well with me.”
Payments in lieu of taxes are familiar to Boston, Cambridge, and other communities that are home to universities, hospitals, and other nonprofits. More than 200 local governments across the country, including 92 in Massachusetts, have negotiated such payments with tax-exempt institutions, according to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a Cambridge think tank.
Boston, where 52 percent of property is tax-exempt, collected $23.2 million in voluntary payments last fiscal year from its largest institutions, including Boston University, Simmons College, and the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, according to assessors.
UMass’s flagship campus in Amherst, where its students account for most of the town’s population, pays for the costs of municipal services it uses, based on an annual invoice sent by local officials. In 2012, UMass paid about $360,000 for ambulance services alone.
In Worcester, after buying five properties that will take $1.7 million off the tax rolls, University of Massachusetts Medical School earlier this year agreed to make nearly $1.6 million in grants over the next five years to the city’s library and public schools.
UMass Lowell holds about 4 percent of all property in Lowell, according to Moses. If the university paid taxes on its land and buildings, valued at more than $270 million, the city would collect about $7 million a year.
Lowell officials could not estimate the cost of services provided to the university, but demand for them has almost certainly increased. Student enrollment has jumped more than 45 percent since 2007.
“In any city where you have 10,000 to 15,000 residents come in and leave within the course of one year, and those residents are very active, that’s not easy to accommodate without significant cost,” Moses said.
UMass Lowell, however, argues the university more than compensates for such costs, providing an economic spark to an old mill city that has spent decades trying to reinvent itself.
The university is Lowell’s second largest employer, with nearly 600 workers earning $24 million this year, according an economic study recently released by UMass Lowell.
Since Meehan became chancellor in 2007, the study noted, the university has launched some $600 million in construction projects, including dormitories, parking garages, and academic buildings. Perhaps the most visible impact has come in and around downtown, where UMass Lowell has spent more then $100 million to acquire, renovate, and revive three failing properties.
They are the former Tsongas Arena, a sports and entertainment venue; a former DoubleTree Hotel, which UMass Lowell operates as an inn, conference center, and dormitory; and the former St. Joseph’s Hospital, which will open later this year as a student center including restaurants, shops, and meeting places.
These projects have supported the revitalization of downtown, attracting students, parents, and visitors to restaurants, shops, and nightlife there. On a recent rainy afternoon, downtown’s Merrimack Street was buzzing with backpack-toting students. Brew’d Awakening Coffeehaus, a cafe on nearby Market Street, was packed with people of all ages.
That just sent a real chill down my bones and not because it's below zero outside -- unless that was all sort of some staged and scripted false flag and hoax.
Owner Andrew Jacobson, who graduated from UMass Lowell in 2004, said his business has grown 8 to 10 percent annually since opening four years ago. He attributed half that growth to the university’s increased presence downtown.
“The impact of the university’s growth and development on the economy of the city is unquestionable,” said Adam Baacke, Lowell’s assistant city manager.
Ultimately, old industrial cities such as Lowell, grappling with poverty and low educational achievement, should consider the range of universities’ contributions when they consider policies such as payments in lieu of taxes, said Benjamin Forman, executive director of Gateway Cities Innovation Institute.
The institute, run by the Boston think tank MassInc, is a project to revitalize cities such as Lowell, New Bedford, and Worcester.
Perhaps the most important contribution of universities, Forman said, is helping to strengthen public schools in communties, making them more appealing to middle-class families who would buy homes and rebuild the tax base....
--more--"
Well, enough milling around Lowell. Looks like times a wor$e than ever.
At least there is new life being brought to Lawrence.
I suppose we will see how much life my fiery new attitude has when it comes to by New Year's resolution. I hope I don't disappoint you, readers, and if I do I'm sorry.
