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Gypsy cab driver picks woman up along South Boston waterfront, rapes her, State Police don't tell anyone
By adamg on Fri, 08/16/2013 - 8:43am
The Herald reports on the Aug. 6 attack in which a woman got into a cab on Northern Avenue, then got driven to Newton and raped.
The Herald quotes a State Police spokesman as saying, oops, yeah, they sat on the news because of an ongoing jurisdictional dispute with Boston Police over who gets to patrol the waterfront, at a time when women in South Boston are already on edge thanks to the murder and other attacks for which Edwin Alemany has been charged and a separate attack on a woman in Fort Point.
State Police, who during the same period found the time to tweet about truck surfing on the Expressway and the beer truck in Charlestown, have been locked in a dispute with Boston Police for years over who gets to patrol the large swaths of the South Boston waterfront owned by Massport, land that was once used mostly for holding and shipping cargo but which now houses bars, restaurants and hotels, and, soon, large numbers of apartments.
In 2011, State Police boycotted a City Council hearing at which Boston Police officials charged the staties had impeded criminal investigations in the area and said it was time the state legislature let Boston take full control of the area as it transforms from a seaport into a residential district.
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Comments
The cops are here to protect
The cops are here to protect us, right guys?? It's a good thing they put public safety first and not their own personal gains. We should probably have a parade for these hero's.
Glorified hall monitors napping at construction sites vs coke head city cops .... now that's a reality show I'd watch.
Bitter much zetag
Bitter much zetag
bitter that the police put
bitter that the police put themselves before public safety, live by a completely different set of rules, face no consequences for their actions, and bleed the state dry through useless details and settling lawsuits? Yeah, I guess you could say I am a little bitter.
No
Their here to protect the details and overtime.
No duty to protect.
Shut up, citizen!
yeah, that's just their legal
yeah, that's just their legal cop out (no pun intended).
That whole "Protect and Serve" thing is just something that they say, kind of along the same lines as "Liberty and Justice for all"
The Massachusetts Police Industry needs to get it together.
In no other large city have I seen a "turf war" between police departments. Is this a joke? That language (used in the Herald) makes the departments sound like roving gangs and clearly puts public safety at risk. Don't forget that Massport PD is also looking for part of the action in the Seaport. That creates one more crack that a case like this could fall through. And now one has.
In NY(C), the state police don't even patrol within the city. City Hall insists on running everything in the 5 boroughs, but I guess Boston City Hall is hobbled and somehow powerless. NY City takes whatever funding it might get from the state, if any, and runs its own highway unit, park patrols, etc.
But, IF YAH DON'T LIKE IT HEEYUH, WHY DONCHA GO HOME! Just don't take a livery cab.
Massport PD?
Never heard of it....Scratch that, just looked it up. Weird that I never see them at Logan, just the usual collection of Staties.
Is that really a thing? The
Is that really a thing? The Massport website only refers to the State Police Troop F.
State Police patrol the airport; Massport PD patrol
State Police patrol the airport; Massport PD patrol Conley Terminal and the Seaport District. Part of the "turf war." Massport PD also does street details in the Seaport. Saw two of them there last week.
They patrol the Massport
They patrol the Massport operated parks as well (by that, I mean lock and unlock the gate, only time I've seen them there), but they have no jurisdiction at all on airport property.
Boston City Hall is
Boston City Hall is powerless? That's the funniest thing I've ever read on this blog. Maybe they're too busy dealing with liquor licenses to do anything useful.
Simple solution
The Boston PD needs to patrol this area and respond to calls. The State Police can do all the details there, but only ones that involve road work. The Boston PD does the details on private property. This is the way it works on the other various parkways in the City of Boston. The State Police handles the crashes and details, and the BPD handles the calls to the various houses/stores/buildings/etc that are located on those roads. And the BPD would do the details on the bars located on those roads as well.
Hell, maybe this Rt. 9 sign conspiracy involves the State Police looking to do details on Huntington Ave!
The Governor needs to step up and take action.
See
Its all about details. Better solution, use flag men and private security and FORCE the cops to do why they were hire for. POLICE.
They do the details in their
They do the details in their time off, not on duty. So how would you "force" them into policing when they're off duty. Also, flag men make as much as the off duty cops so there is no real savings.
Or use nobody. For the vast
Or use nobody. For the vast majority of construction projects, the police aren't directing traffic -- they're chatting with construction workers or talking on the phone.
When you say "Gypsy Cab" do
When you say "Gypsy Cab" do you mean a non-registered one? See those all the time in Dudley.
The way this city, metro area, and state is set up
regarding political/county boundaries and 'turf' is completely effed up and archaic. It dates from a time that's long passed. We need to be modernized, badly. side from the very serious issue of crime, this is also one of the main reasons our taxes are high and continue to go higher. It's a system set up first and foremost as a gravy-train for a multitude of city/town, county, state, etc., workers, who then are the driving force for local and state politicians [along with special interest lobby groups] in their elections.
State Police shouldn't be involved in doing day to day urban police work, period. That job should be the exclusive domain of municipal police. They should only be involved for special situations and when requested, similar to the FBI at the national level. Other than that, they should be patrolling highways.
Boston and surrounding cities and towns should combine police forces and have some kind of metro police agency. Same with fire departments. It would create tangible advantages in economy of scale, and end up saving taxpayers in the metro area $ in unnecessary administrative and management duplication. This is done in other cities and metro areas with little to no problems.
Boston and surrounding cities and towns should be a single county, not [for example] Boston being Suffolk, Brookline being Norfolk, Cambridge/Somerville,etc., Middlesex, Salem,Lynn, etc., Essex, and so-on. It's silly and wastes taxpayer $.
The political boundaries of the city and surrounding cities and towns themselves are also very outdated and archaic, and make little sense in the second decade of the 21st century. They should all be combined into one,single municipality/county super-city, like Houston [the City of Houston is 700 square miles in area!], or like Canadian cities like Toronto and Montreal, both of who consolidated the city and surrounding cities and towns into a single entity back in the 90s. Toronto went from being a city of 650,000 to 2.5 million at the stroke of a pen. It works overall well for them, and saves $.
And our taxi laws and regulations are naturally, like everything else around here, archaic and outdated.
Enough of the bullshit.
I agree with you when it
I agree with you when it comes to moving the Staties out of urban police work.
But you're wrong when it comes to re-organizing local government. First of all, we have little to no county level government in most of Massachusetts. Suffolk County and Middlesex County exist only as administrative divisions; they have no government. Norfolk County has three county commissioners that hold onto their paychecks because no one knows they're still around. If anything, I would prefer that we abolish our remaining county governments entirely and adopt a districting system for the DAs/Registrars/Judiciary that can be amended by the legislature to balance budgets and manpower requirements.
Combining Metro Boston into one metro government is a terrible idea. It would further fracture and divide a region that is already fractured and divided. If you criticize Boston's current form of government and the way it treats its neighborhoods, remember that what we now know of as "Boston" is an amalgamation of several different cities - from 1868-1912, Boston annexed Roxbury, Charlestown, Dorchester, Hyde Park, West Roxbury, and Brighton. Today, some of those neighborhoods receive good government services. Others are ignored. Brookline managed to resist a contentious attempt at annexation, and I don't think anyone can say that Brookline is a neglected town today. Many of the towns surrounding Boston are Open Town Meeting or Representative Town Meeting (Brookline, Belmont, Winchester, Arlington, Needham). Those citizens aren't going to give up the right for voice in government in exchange for one or two city councilors. If we amalgamated Boston, every election would be an all-out city-versus-suburbs war, with no winner.
You refer to combined metro governments that seem to work well. With Toronto, I give you Rob Ford. His involvement with Toronto's drug trade aside, he was elected by campaigning heavily in the suburbs about how awful and terrible the urban core was. When Ontario's government finally got a transit plan together and put cash behind it, he cancelled it. Montreal is on its third mayor this year. Houston is 700 square miles because there was nothing near Houston before the oil boom. It didn't annex other cities and towns, it just expanded its borders into unincorporated areas. Miami-Dade is, well... I don't think anyone would call Miami-Dade a success story. I'm not saying there aren't inefficiencies to be eliminated, but eliminating the independence of Boston and its suburbs is not the answer.
So basically that will turn
So basically that will turn into the wealthy suburbs further supporting the poor but voter heavy neighborhoods of Boston. No thanks. Brookline has vastly better municipal services than any neighborhood in Boston for a reason. Try driving around D4 (Back bay, Fenway, South end) at 4am, you probably won't see a single cop car. Cross over into Brookline, and all you'll see are cops cars.
OH my goodness.
We certainly couldn't let that happen to the wealthy suburbs, could we? After all, what's the use of being wealthy if you don't get to feel superior to the poors?
I was witness to an incident
I was witness to an incident in Oak Square, and the Brighton police were literally trying to change my account of events as to make it look like it was MBTA cop jurisdiction.
COP: "So it all happened on the bus?"
ME:"No, I just told you, they came from across the street, then eventually made their way onto the bus."
COP:"So it all happened on the bus."
ME:"..."
Not at all surprising... and
Not at all surprising... and fahgettaboutit if you're in the 18-32 crowd. Brighton police couldn't be more apathetic about serving the area if they tried.
Don't forget the revenue from the meters
Some of the parking meters in the area are Boston and others are Massport. The meters have different rules. It gets confusing when you park there unless you check the meter to find out who owns the meter... The most annoying? Time limits do not apply to handicap plate/handicap placard vehicles if it is a Boston meter but
DO apply to Massport parking meters. At least the now have the same hours and rates. That used to be different too.
http://www.seaporttma.org/pdf/Parking%20Meters%20I...
Meters?
Who gives a flying fuck about the meters? A woman was raped.
Run for your lives!
We're all gonna die!
Northern Ave
Is the Seaport area, patrolled by the Staties, not South Boston, patrolled by BPD.
Turf war??
Who are they? The Sharks and the Jets? The Bloods and the Crips? What a bunch of worthless shitbags.
Seaport
Here's some inside baseball. The area of the Seaport owned by Massport comes under the juristiction of the State Police. Legislation passed several years ago gives the State Police EXCLUSIVE juristiction in that area. As a result of this leglislation, Boston Police do not have ANY juristiction, even though the area involved is within Boston.
This is a very unusual situation. A number of attempts to change the situation were unsuccessful. Boston Police want shared juristiction but the State Police and the Leglislature have not been receptive to this.