Kerry Healey’s current line of attack on public safety is morally bankrupt for any number of reasons, but one of the worst is how it diverts attention from those who actually deal with serious danger in their lives, every single day. The Herald today has a story about some of them: High school kids in Boston.
Madison Park High School tops the list of the Hubs 10 most dangerous schools, where more than 200 students were victims of assault and battery last year, according to statistics obtained by the Herald.
In 60 of those cases, the attacker used a weapon. In fact, administrators confiscated more than 300 knives or other edged weapons from students at those 10 schools last year, but school officials insist many students carrying weapons do so as a misguided step to defend themselves on the way to and from school.
“Were a microcosm of the city, said Charles McAfee, headmaster at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School. A lot of crime starts in the streets over the weekend. Then when they come to school on Monday they bring those issues to the front door, and we have to deal with them.”
So maybe these kids are too young to vote and live far from anywhere where Kerry Healey can expect to get many votes. But her exploitative advertising tirades are an insult to every kid who feels his stomach turn every day, wondering if today is the day he gets assaulted, shot at, or worse.
If this campaign is going to be about public safety, the kids of Madison Park High School deserve better than the slop that Kerry Healey is pushing — and they deserve better than the dismal public safety record of the Romney/Healey administration.
Madison Park High School is a whopping 3 miles from the State House. It’s literally a straight shot down Tremont St. That’s probably too far away for Kerry Healey to notice what’s going on.
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Crap like this is why our part of the city is doing its damned best to bring this election home for Patrick. Frankly, the Republicans haven’t given a realistic policy for fighting crime that would affect cities. If they had that, maybe Healey would have a chance of winning. But instead, she’s got to go negative.
Everybody,
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I know we all can’t stand the Kerry Healey ads, and I know that they will continue all the way until election day.
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But with some of these posts and comments, it looks like we’re grasping at straws here. We look panicked and distraught.
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Kerry Healey does have some crime-fighting ideas. We should make the argument that Deval’s ideas are better.
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Our message is hope, not mud-slinging. And I once heard the expression, “he can’t chase you if you don’t run.” There won’t be mud-slinging if we don’t throw back.
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If we continue with the message of Deval’s biography, his message of hope and togetherness, the only mud that will stick will be on the other side.
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But if we become the surrogate attack dogs, and get referenced as the “liberal bloggers” throwing mud back (see Keller), voters will only see the mud flying from both sides.
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Let’s stop hiding our values here. Let’s say why we DO think that corrections can work, why we DO think that prisoners can be reformed and paroled (and monitored). Deval wrote he thinks LaGuer would make a positive re-entry into society—-maybe LaGuer is capable of just that.
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You know it. I know it. Deep down, we believe that the death penalty is wrong and Deval was right to go down to Florida and get Songer a reduced sentence for philosophical reasons.
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We lose elections when we buy into the DLC mantra, move to the center, and start defending ourselves for previously taking liberal positions. I’m afraid some of us are succumbing to that…let’s be proud of being progressive.
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The voters aren’t dumb. Let’s make the case that parole is sometimes right, that the death penalty, even for cop killers, is wrong. Otherwise, we and Deval will make same mistake that the Kerryites did not too long ago.
This is a really powerful example of the effect of govermental failure to address a crime issue in a place where a lot of kids are making the last choice to follow the path to a life of crime or try for something better. Your point is valid, but there’s less important posts it could’ve been made in…F.ck Keller or anyone else who wants to show up and make an issue of kids fighting to do right and not get killed in the process.
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This is real stuff, people. This is life and death, quite literally, for KIDS who aren’t quite ready to make the most grown up choices. This is the pragmatism of some kids who actually really may feel they need to take weapons to school just to get there, get through, and get home alive. That’s really goshdamn terrible and it deserves all of our attention.
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I’ll be honest with you. This issue really bothers me because I went to a school like this not too long ago. Before I got out of there I worried about making it out and making it home if I did. This is no environment to learn in, but it’s reality for more kids than any of us would like to think. I was lucky enough to make it out, a lot of my peers didn’t, or didn’t do much once they did…
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There’s something morally reprehensible about seeing children go through this as their excuse for an education. We owe them better, and if we ever want to see better of the Deathchesters and Glocksburies of this state we ought devise a solution as soon as possible.
First, I am a “liberal blogger”. If I couldn’t describe myself as such … well, I’d be wasting my time. Keller is experienced, smart — and a very nice guy in person — but he doesn’t know everything.
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Second: “There won’t be mud-slinging if we don’t throw back.” Can’t agree with that. The response to mud-slinging is to punch back — perhaps not in kind, but with something that shows backbone. Patrick has done reasonably well with that: “All talk and no action.” Nice.
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I agree with your call for an assertion of positive liberal values. I’m tired of being told that “liberal Democrats don’t understand crime.” We damn well do understand it — better than Republicans taking cheap shots at anyone who’s ever been a defense lawyer. And we also understand that promises of budgetary free lunches have real-life consequences.
This region has seen some high-profile violent incidents in recent years (although I don’t believe our overall crime rate is considered significant). Informants told local cops that one particular nutty drug dealer was using his gun in response to incidents where someone insulted his car, or declined a request to bum a cigarette. A witness who cooperated with police after one shooting became the next gunshot victim as local knuckleheads moved to intimidate him.
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Gangs are expanding from the big cities and branching out into smaller communities.
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I have been told that almost all violence is drug (or substance abuse) -related.
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Kids who grow up surrounded by violence see this pattern and adopt it as a way of life. Either that, or they become very cynical about whether the community cares at all; whether we are making an effort to keep them safe. You would not believe the survival techniques these children are forced to internalize at a very young age. No wonder we see kids who are hard and bitter, even in the 7th grade where I teach now.
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“We lose them in middle school,” a Superintendent told me a few years ago. There are two kids in my 7th Grade English class who volunteered one day that they would like to be police officers. Both of these boys are discipline problems, and are probably right on the edge of being lost. I want to find a way to push them toward law enforcement careers, and not to see them sitting in the back seat of a cruiser.
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So, yeah, the central message for this Gov campaign is hope. But we fail if we think that the message is the goal. It’s about implementation. Providing a path out of violence and despair is one of the most important forms of hope the Patrick/Murray ticket will provide to these kids.
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when i was in city year. terrifying place to be.
It was scary then too.
I agree with MaDemVoter that what is lacking is any substanative debate on public safety issues. The press coverage is superficial, and the debate formats (so far) have been inadequate.
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Both campaigns are tossing up sound bites because that’s all will be captured by most of the media. We know that Healey’s camp is going after Patrick’s record on parole, and the Patrick camp is going after Healey on spending. One of those attacks holds up to a fact check. The other appears to be quite easily debunked with a check at the DoR/DLS website where you can find out the stats on municipal police spending:
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It doesn’t seem to me that spending is the issue, especially when you take into account how much is paid out via the worthless Quinn bill or the COPS grants that put cops in schools in Andover!! I know, crime can happen anywhere, but please.
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If we could get beyond this surface level discussion, I think we’d see some similarities between the two candidates, at least in terms of what issues they think are important. Their differences are in the details.
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Patrick has called for an additional $80M for 1,000 more cops. $80,000 per person, for more of the same. I don’t want more of the same, I want something better.
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I lived in Somerville, just a few blocks away from Foss Park. The Mayor refused to beef up patrols in our neighborhood. She was booted out at the next election, and the police were given some authority by new anti-gang legislation. I think Healey’s plan, which draws upon the recommendations from the 2004 report of the Joint Committee on public safety is a better approach to improving public safety.
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Yes, I am supporting Healey. So, please let’s not get distracted by a discussion of whether I’m a troll.
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Because you’re a self-declared Healey supporter, I see no point in trying to disabuse you of your misguided and wholly ill-informed thinking. I will say, however, that the tortuous leaps you make in order to justify your status as a Healey supporter are, in short, plain bizarre. Bloody strange.
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Look at the number of man-hours of police time actually worked on a per capita basis.
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Of course the spending goes up every year, it’s called inflation. The number of hours worked is going down though because we’re being killed by healthcare costs.