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Murdered
By adamg on Tue, 09/28/2010 - 7:39pm
Amanihotep Smith was one of the four people gunned down on Woolson Street in Mattapan this morning. His grandmother briefly held up photos of the 2-year-old at a community meeting at Morning Star Baptist Church on the murders before she broke down in tears and was ushered out by ministers and social workers trying to comfort her. Amanihotep died in the arms of his mother, Eyanna Flonory, 21, of Dorchester, who was also shot to death.
Gov. Patrick on his murder: "Come on. Come on. Come on:"
Mayor Menino asks for the public's help (Police Commissioner Ed Davis said he has been very pleased so far with the leads provided by the public):
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Comments
thoughts...
....and prayers go out to everyone involved in this senseless and horrific story.
A young child caught up in this makes me sick to my stomach. I have two kids I couldn't imagine.
I hope that there is an end in sight. Unfortunately, I don't think this is over, especially if it's gang related.
Sad
Chronicle pre-empted for Mattapan murder special coverage
I give WCVB TV-5 credit for pre-empting taped Chronicle programming for a live special on the Mattapan murders. Heather Unruh on the desk and Kelley Tuthill, Pam Cross and Ed Harding in the street. I thought I was back in the 70s or 80s for a moment, with local TV running a news special. Kudos to all at ch. 5.
My only problem with the special was a long segment with anti-gun advocate John Rosenthal. Menino also seems to be running with an anti-gun agenda, even after stabbings, which is beyond laughable. Murder carries a life sentence. Four murders hopefully carry four life sentences. Does anyone think that upping the sentence on gun charges would deter those for whom a potential life sentence is no deterrent? My God.
The gun control crowd always
The gun control crowd always seems to forget that existing laws aren't enforced and those whom already have no regard for the law sure as hell aren't going to be stopped by any new laws. Resources need to be dedicated to enforcing current laws before levying any more onerous ones on the generally law abiding public.
How are they not enforced Haviland?
Are you saying law enforcement officials are looking the other way when they see gun crimes?
Police have made more than
Police have made more than 400 firearm-related arrests in Boston this year alone. Most are for violating Ch. 269, Sect. 10(a), which forbids carrying a firearm without a license outside of one's home or work. That offense carries a minimum mandatory sentence of 18 months in jail.
Some arrests are for Ch. 10(h), which forbids keeping a firearm without a license inside one's home or work, and there is no minimum mandatory -- it's to protect law-abiding gun owners from imprisonment if they let their FID cards lapse. The only such defendant I can recall being prosecuted under this statute was a mentally ill man who had more than two dozen handguns, rifles, and shotguns in his house after threatening his neighbor and the President of the United States.
Prosecuting straight firearm possession cases (not shootings, armed robberies, etc) is literally a full-time job -- there are so many of them that they have a special court dedicated to it. As with any other crime, a percentage of these cases don't survive legal challenges (as when two people are stopped in a car with a gun in the glove box, both are arrested, but fingerprints later link it with one defendant and leave no legal grounds for prosecuting the other), but it's flat wrong to say that gun laws aren't enforced, at least in Boston.
guns
Its about assaults and murder you take away the guns they will use knives bow and arows machetes spears or what ever. and no one will hear gun shots.
No, but
I think restricting their access to guns would deter them.
Just like restricting access
Just like restricting access to drugs does to discourage dealing and use?
There's a huge problem with DA's not fully prosecuting people for illegally carrying, selling, or transporting firearms. Those crimes are viewed as a waste of resources in lieu of prosecuting people for the actual use of firearms in violent crime. Of course if the DA's had prosecuted the 'lesser' crimes first MANY OF THE MAJOR CRIMES PROBABLY WOULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Drugs are different than guns
The demand for drugs stems from some combination of biological and environmental factors. The demand for guns stems from environmental factors. If you can change the environment, by say restricting easy access to guns, you can reduce the number of deaths and crimes by guns.
Drugs are different than guns
The demand for drugs stems from some combination of biological and environmental factors. The demand for guns stems from environmental factors. If you can change the environment, by say correcting the environmental and social factors that made them commit crimes to begin with, you can reduce the number of deaths and crimes by guns.
FTFY
anon can you show us examples...
of DA's not fully prosecuting people for gun transportation crimes? Most of these crimes are investigated by the ATF or State Police as well.
But why blame the DA's?
public safety mean accountability for results
Now or soon would be a good time for Commissioner Davis to publish the statistics on his anti-gang, anti-gun violence initiative which he said was working.
If it's working, that's great. Let's see the evidence.
If it is not, then now might be time to make adjustments.
You can twist these statistics any way you want anon.
You can look at the amount of murders, the amount of innocent people murdered compared to gang bangers being murdered, you can look at the amount of guns consficated, the amount of gun arrests, the amount of years people go to prison for gun crimes, the amount of known gun felons locked up for warrants, the amount of known gangbangers re-arrested, etc. But this doesn't always tell the whole story.
Then there is the other side. How many people have had their rights violated because of these policies? Oppressive governments and police states always have great crime statistics because they crack down on crime in a way where the end stats look good, but people rights are violated in the process. Some police departments don't mind a few 4th amendment violations as long as the murder rate goes down. Some departments also look as police officers that have a lot of complaints must be doing a good job because they usually make the most arrests. Are the amount of citizen complaints up or down? Are those complaints valid?
That being said, there are always simple numbers and stats that you can look at. And I can bet 50% of people will look at them one way while 50% will look at those another way (police doing a good/bad job with crime vs. police are/are not violating peoples rights.
It is very hard to find gun arrests. If you are smart and have an illegal gun, it is very easy to legally keep that gun from the police. That is one of the main problems we are having.
Davis made a claim that
their strategy to combat gang gun violence "was working" he said.
There have been a lot of shootings and murders since he made that claim.
I'd like to see him present that facts so that the public can evaluate on the merit.
Good point
Good point on the flipside of the statistics. Barry Bonds was cranking out some good statistics but then we found out why and the whole thing is tainted - -and that's just baseball. If crime stats drop, but in return the police are instituting less than savory tactics (e.g., randomly stopping kids in the street and frisking them for no other reason than they fit the demographic), then the thing is tainted -- only it ain't baseball.
Obviously, guns are an issue, but I'm not sure how much further we can go on guns before we're at the point of needing a Constitutional amendment. I am not a gun fan, but I am also not a fan of the govt telling me what I can or can't do within reason. Is owning a gun within reason? I'm not interested in owning a gun, but I'm not going to tell other people not to. I think the issue is the availability of guns through secondary resale markets sourced back to gun shows and loose laws in other states. That might be one pinch point that we should focus, if we must have a supply side solution.
A real solution should probably be on the demand side. Legalize certain drugs, introduce a more holistic way of treating the issues that lead to addiction especially in poorer communities and make sure that kids in these neighborhoods feel connected to something other than gangs. I think the Police had started a family-based approach to heading off crime after the LaQuarrie Jefferson shooting on Seaver Street. I thought that made sense; where is that effort at this point? Is it still going on? Have they tried expanding it? Addressing root causes may take longer, but I would hope is better than continually bandaging symptoms.
The game keeps changing
They may have an effective strategy for what was going on last year. Unfortunately, the nature of the game changes constantly as these groups adapt to pressure from law enforcement and the market for drugs changes with the economy and other social forces.
They may have a cat that has done a great job catching lots of mice, but now there are rats and it takes time to retool.
BTW: Excellent perspective in the Boston Herald. Just don't look at the right sidebar when it spools up the Dexter ad.
We can only hope
That this poor tiny child's execution spells the end of "stop snitchin". You would have to be completely crazy to protect the people who did this.
Well, they are
Their hatred for police knows no limits.
Seriously, can we just kick Mattapan out of Boston at this point? Let them fend for themselves.
only if we can move it to Burlington VT
Just kidding. It's our problem. Also it's not isolated in Mattapan.
Re: Will La Tulippe
well, you think "they" are all animals don't you? I am sure that's the attitude that's going to help stop crime right?
Can we banish Will and his trivia act to crappy bars only?
Oh wait... Harry's, White Horse... someone already did. Cool.
What a cool guy you are
You walked by during a gig lately? Do you see how I fill the place? I'm sorry my bars aren't cool enough for you. Go drink a PBR at the Model, you tool.
With all due respect to the
With all due respect to the criminological knowledge of the mayor, this has nothing to do with illegal guns. It has to do with why people use guns. This sort of crime is socioeconomic. Boston remains a heavily racially and economically segregated city. The criminalization of recreational drugs continues to motivate powerful drug gangs. Politicians will only tell you what you want to hear. The truth is, our economic system and hypocritical lifestyles underlie this crime.
Really? This is the thread
Really? This is the thread you want to use to go there?
It takes a lot of willful
It takes a lot of willful blindness to ignore the role guns play in these crimes. It just doesn't follow that many of these crimes could or would be carried out with bats and knives.
It takes
willful blindness to not see that passing more anti-gun laws will only hurt LAWFUL gun owners and won't put a dent in ILLEGAL gun crimes. The problem is two fold, socioeconomic and liberal judges. The socioeconomic problems cause people to turn to crime to make money, and the liberal "He was trying to turn his life around we should give him another chance for the 9th time" judiciary just puts people back on the street that should be receiving long prison sentences.
These are not homemade guns,
These are not homemade guns, at some point they were legal and found their way into criminal hands. Tracking down where the bad guys are getting their guns is counter insurgency 101 and a reasonable part of a plan to reduce homicides, yet the "law abiding gun owners" as represented by the NRA refuse even the most modest attempt to regulate gun traffic. Its seems to me that rather than take a stand for their rights the gun lobby has decided that loads of loose guns in the hands of gangs are an acceptable price to pay so that they might go up to NH and stock up on the props for their paranoid role playing.
Justice
I feel so bad when I read and watched the video and I don't understand why people like to kill. My heart is really melting with the story.