LAST NOVEMBER, on the day after Thanksgiving, yet another Black man was wrongfully arrested due to racially biased face surveillance. Randall Reid was detained on his way to dinner with his mother after Louisiana law enforcement agents got a warrant based on a false facial recognition match. He spent a week in jail. Mr. Reid […]
Criminal Justice
Posted inCourts, Criminal Justice, Politics
Attention turns to Arroyo’s role in Rollins scandal
RACHAEL ROLLINS wasn’t sending out text messages into the void. City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo was answering. Two scathing reports on Rollins’s conduct as US attorney showed that she crossed all sorts of lines in leaking non-public Department of Justice information to reporters and exchanging hundreds of texts with Arroyo as she tried to boost his candidacy […]
Posted inCourts, Criminal Justice, Media
Rollins wheeled and dealed with the Globe, Herald
SIPPING CHABLIS WITH Jill Biden, it turns out, was the least of Rachael Rollins’s transgressions. Ever since reports last summer that Rollins attended a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at an Andover home where the first lady was the headline guest, the Massachusetts US attorney has been under scrutiny for possible violation of the Hatch Act, […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
A reputation for straight talk – but a record of subterfuge
RACHAEL ROLLINS built her political persona on a straightforward message: What you see is what you get. But it turns out the public got a lot from the US attorney for Massachusetts over the last year that was anything but a frank message delivered in plain view. Rollins cultivated a reputation as a tough-talking, progressive […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Rollins resigning as US attorney
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE RACHAEL ROLLINS, a former Suffolk County prosecutor who quickly rose in political prominence and often drew the ire of Republican lawmakers, will resign her role as US attorney for Massachusetts this week because “her presence has become a distraction,” her attorney said. Rollins’s attorney, former Justice Department inspector general Michael Bromwich, […]
Posted inOpinion
Why Mass. chose an anti-democratic method of naming judges
THE ELECTION for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court mercifully ended last month. After $45 million in political donations, Wisconsin has a new justice. The “campaign” included charges that the candidates had stated positions on constitutional questions likely to come before the court and had failed to pledge to recuse themselves from future cases […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
AG Andrea Campbell picks her targets
ATTORNEY GENERAL Andrea Campbell has waded into some politically thorny topics so far, trying to balance an advocacy lens as “the people’s lawyer” with the practical demands of being “top cop.” A former city councilor and Boston mayoral hopeful whose legal background focused on education and employment, Campbell is about five months into the attorney […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
It’s time to restore felon voting rights
THE JOINT COMMITTEE on Election Laws recently voted a bill favorably out of committee that would expand democracy and signal a tide change in how Massachusetts weighs punishment, rehabilitation, and dignity in the criminal legal system. The bill, S.8/H. 26, filed by Sen. Liz Miranda and Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven, would return the right to vote […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Poll finds big safety concerns among Boston public school parents
AMID GROWING CONCERNS over violence in Boston schools, a new poll finds that more than two-thirds of parents of Boston Public Schools students are worried about their children’s safety in school and three-quarters would support a return of police to the city’s schools. The survey, conducted by the MassINC Polling Group for the Shah Family Foundation, […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Juul to pay Mass. $41 million in multi-state settlement
MASSACHUSETTS WILL RECEIVE $41 million as part of a $462 million settlement between e-cigarette maker Juul Labs Inc. and six states plus the District of Columbia for the company’s role promoting nicotine vaping among young people. The settlement announced Wednesday concludes lawsuits from New York, Massachusetts, California, Illinois, Colorado, New Mexico and Washington, DC, alleging […]