UPDATE: Answers from the candidates
Courtesy of gumby, below, we have answers to my question 2 from the candidates.
Warren Tolman: yes, I would have investigated (5:50)
Maura Healey: That’s why I’ve called for the creation — first time ever — of a child and youth protection division (8:20)
I see. It appears that Maura Healey’s approach to protecting witnesses from being killed by police is to create a child and youth protection division of the AG’s office. No wonder she prefers to show ticking clocks.
Warren Tolman’s answer is clear and precise.
Original start
By request, I’m starting a new post based on a comment I made in another thread.
I was pleasantly surprised to note the recognition given BMG in the Boston Globe announcement of the agreement regarding the people’s pledge:
He made his announcement just before 4:30 p.m. Friday on the liberal blog Bluemassgroup, saying that, with just with 60 days until the primary, it was time to reach an agreement on the People’s Pledge.
Now that the people’s pledge is done, and since each candidate is an active participant here, I wonder if the two candidates or their campaigns will respond to my many repeated questions about their respective stances towards:
1. Protecting the privacy of Massachusetts residents from surveillance (especially government surveillance).
2. Protecting Massachusetts residents from abuse by government authorities (police, “tactical” units, FBI thugs like Aaron MacFarlane, and so on). Ibrahim Todashev, unarmed, was killed by 12 shots fired by Mr. MacFarlane while in FBI custody in Florida. A contingent of Massachusetts State Police was present at the scene. Mr. MacFarlane left the Oakland CA police department under a cloud with a generous disability pension. Mr. MacFarlane is still an active agent in the Boston FBI office, and as far as I know is still receiving a full disability pension from the Oakland PD. Yet the current Attorney General has expressed no concern about this sorry episode. Numerous stories of exceptional harassment of witnesses in the marathon bombing case have been published. I’d like each of the candidates to address their views about such behavior.
3. Halting or reversing the increasing militarization of our local law enforcement authorities (like state and local police, transit police, tactical units, swat teams, and so on).
4. Protecting the right of Massachusetts residents to see, hear, videotape, report, and complain about abusive behavior by law enforcement authorities.
Whenever I think about asking this question, I stop and ask myself whether it’s really a good idea to put candidates for state Attorney General in a position where they have to comment on the actions of the U.S. Attorney. And that’s always the end of that. Which is annoying, because for all my concern about not making things more difficult for an incoming AG than they have to be, before I vote for or against a candidate for any office that has any prosecutorial powers whatsoever, ideally I’d like to have their honest and unvarnished opinion of the conduct of Carmen Ortiz and her office in the Aaron Schwarz case.
And when I say “ideally I’d want to know,” I mean that as far as I’m concerned, that would be a litmus-test kind of issue.
Maybe the way to frame it would be how would you handle a hypothetical state-level case with similar facts and circumstances.
I’m not sure Massachusetts should go against federal standards on surveillance and other “homeland security” issues where the feds are active, but certainly the new AG could raise questions, and advocate to some extent.
Massachusetts government rightly found a number of ways to push back on the right-wing demands to use drivers licenses and traffic citations to harass immigrants.
It is precisely because the feds are “active” at shredding our rights to privacy and at turning our police into military combat platoons that we need an AG who shares our desire to preserve our liberties.
It’s not like we control the Presidency and the Senate.
I certainly agree that we need better feds.
Still, we must play the hand we’re dealt. The current AG was enthusiastic about embracing the various excesses of the Patriot Act, has taken no action regarding the NSA spying scandal, and has taken no steps to slow the other points I mentioned.
I therefore want to know what the next AG has to say about these issues.
I hope that the candidates and/or their staff see and respond to this.
For at least some of us, the responses to these questions determine our vote.
I personally asked Maura Healey a question on #2 – should our AG have investigated the Florida FBU incident. She gave some generic “we need transparency in general” answer which was fine, but she didn’t say yes or no.
Tolman said “yes, I would have investigated” in an interview on Broadside. Healey, in her interview, dodged and changed the subject. Links below.
Tolman’s answer (time 5:50): http://www.necn.com/06/26/14/Broadside-Warren-Tolman-on-Democratic-pr/landing_broadside.html?blockID=868488&feedID=11122
Healey’s answer (time 6:30): http://www.necn.com/06/17/14/Broadside-Healey-hopes-to-become-Baystat/landing_broadside.html?blockID=868089&feedID=11122
(I’m new here – I go by Gumby and just moved from Medford to JP)