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Councilor has charges added for Jamaica Plain crash that injured her son
By adamg on Wed, 07/19/2023 - 9:54pm
WBUR reports that at a probable-cause hearing today, City Councilor Kendra Lara (Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, Mission Hill) had charges of negligent operation and recklessly permitting bodily injury to a child added to the charges of driving an unregistered and uninsured motor vehicle and driving with a suspended license that police initially charged her with after she alleged drove into a house on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain on June 30. Councilors Tania Fernandes Anderson, Julia Mejia and Ricardo Arroyo attended the hearing to support her.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
Lara, Anderson, Arroyo must go
This is like some sort of corrupt cabal:
Lara? Enough said.
Anderson? Nepotism.
Arroyo? First fired by the city for sexual harassment, the state ethics violation, and then all the pretty clearly asking Rachel Rollins to release information on his political opponent (granted, who was also an ass, but Arroyo is nevertheless an absolute disgrace to my district to still be in office after all this.)
Councilor Mejia is a little bit of a different story -- there's nothing so blatantly corrupt, criminal or immoral -- but I sure do think less of her character hanging with this crowd. Not exactly a secret that they share a political affiliation, but what a moment to cling to this bunch.
(* Edit -- meant to have Mejia in the last paragraph, was Anderson initially - corrected)
Wellll
If you somehow get the job of city councilor and do not understand that you are not allowed to hire your relatives, you are not ready for prime time. Like that is obvious shit. So you can either believe one of two things: Anderson knowingly hired them as an act of corruption, or Anderson has zero basic knowledge about the rules of working in government.
They give an ethics certification test and all you basically need to know is: cannot accept gifts above $50, you can’t rule or decide on things where you or family have a direct financial interest, and you cannot take government stuff for personal use.
Hiring two relatives is just absurd and it is shocking how little the fallout was.
In the end, it's up to the electorate
I put Anderson in the same category as Frank Baker- knows how to get their base going at the expense of everyone else. Much like Baker up to this year, if the voters want, they can oust, but I doubt that will happen. Whether she be able to, or know when, it's time to leave on her own accord is to be seen, but she's safe for now.
Arroyo is my councilor, and I'd love to see him out. That said, I'll vote for whichever candidate personally asks for my vote.
Lara is in trouble. She got elected by slinging mud, and what goes around comes around. I'd love to see her campaigning at Forest Hills, as the jokes would just write themselves. "Good to see you're taking the T, Kenda." Still, not a race I can vote in, so whatever.
All politics is local
And city council is more local than others.
You seem a bit dismissive when you say Baker "knows how to get [his] base going." It makes him sound like he's the same as the Freedom Caucus in the House who are great at ginning up the outrage machine, but are hapless when it comes to actually sponsoring legislation and seeing it through the chamber.
Baker's office is very responsive to folks in his district and I've heard many stories of him helping constituents with the nuts & bolts of city government. That sort of help (or first hand knowledge of it for family or a friend) is going to motivate voters just as much if not more than the political grandstanding that he does.
That's why I'm a bit on the fence with him. The more public facing stories you see with him here or in The Globe show the jackass side of him, but then there's the side that he's generally doing right for the people that he represents on practical matters. They're apples and oranges so it's hard to figure out which way the scale tips overall.
Good points
I guess I could have said "do well by their constituents" and made a better point, in that at the end of the day, if Anderson's constituents, or Arroyo's or Lara's for the matter, think that she is doing a good job representing them, they'll return her. In the end, Baker isn't leaving because he doesn't want to help his district. He just sees that the council is turning against him. He went over the line with redistricting, but then again, his colleagues tried to get him out by cracking his area in the redistricting process.
Personally, I don't think Arroyo is doing good for District 5. Reading the local newspaper, his absence from issues affecting the district- and mostly in the heartland of Hyde Park to boot- was noted repeatedly. Kind of like when his dad got bored of being a City Councilor and started spending sizable chunks of time out of the country on what we'll call personal matters.
and Mejia, too
City government is looking more and more like Argentina under Kirschner or DC under Marion Barry.
Fake left populism and racial agitation to cover for venal corruption and impunity.
Trump is the mirror image on the right.
Only the agitprop and the voter bases are different.
The corruption is the same in intent if not in scope.
Oh absolutely
When you think about it, driving without a license really is exactly the same thing as stealing military secrets. Two sides of a coin,,,,
Deliberately miss the point much?
The point wasn’t to draw equivalence between Trump’s offenses and Lara’s, (note dselby specifically pointed out “not in scope.”) it was to point out the commonality of grandiose posturing on social issues while basically being useless or worse from an actual governance perspective.
Yeah i’m not buying it
I read it just fine, thanks. On which social issues does Trump posture uselessly? Have you followed the state of the Supreme Court?
A rant
The city council, with a members like this, the Boston Public school system, with teachers who wouldn't send their kids to them unless it's an exam school, the Boston police and Fire department, with employees who like to work here for the excellent pay and generous pension but do not want to live here and move as soon as possible. Is why folks with kids are leaving
It's depressing, I've lived here all my life and I see friends and family following others out of the city.
What data do you have?
Anecdotally nearly all of the BPS teachers I know had their kids go through the public system from kindergarten up.
I also know plenty of cops & firemen who stay in the city after the mandated residency so I'd be curious what the percentage is there too.
Your anecdotal examples are noted
I have put two children through BPS, one for 8 yrs, who graduated last year, the other is going into the 10th grade, I know lots of teachers who choose to send their kids to private school, and I don't blame them, I sent my oldest to private school once he hit high school age. The point is that many teachers choosing private school is proof of a failing school system(the state isthisclose to taking it over every few years it seems), the same for firefighters and cops moving out.
I've lived here all my life and I didn't just make them up, if people choose to dismiss my post, that's fine .
Nearly all the cops firefighters and teachers you know of are the exact opposite of nearly all the ones I know of, I suppose.
FWIW
Of my BLS buddies, the cop and teacher are both not living in Boston. In general, very few of my classmates live in Boston proper.
I'm the holdout of my peers, but I'm probably moving since the property tax break will likely disappear over the next 5 years.
What is wrong you people?
She said she is sorry. What more do you want?!?
/S
Said she's sorry.
Was that for the one time she got caught? Or was she sorry for every day of the last 10 yrs she knowingly drove Unlicensed & Uninsured?
That type of conduct endangers everyone around you and illustrates a definite lack of both ethics and responsibility.
Forgiveness isn't warranted under those circumstances. Being voted out of office is what's deserved.
No she didn’t
Her statement was not an apology
The fact that she has support is sickening
The person who ran down and killed the kid in Hyde Park two days ago almost surely was also unlicensed, uninsured, going twice the speed limit, and driving in a car that shouldn't be on the road.
To these loser councilors, friendship is the only thing that matters.
Damn them all. They make the society they claim they want to change.
This
If I had a friend who was driving around at 50 mph on city streets with their kid bouncing around crashing into people's porches and then barely saying they're sorry, well, they wouldn't be a friend anymore.
To think that a few years ago the heart of the council was Campbell, Pressley and Wu. Well, it was a good couple of years, I guess.
Arroyo’s quote
In the WBUR story is also ridiculous, but not unexpected from him:
"I think she's being accountable, she was here in court today to answer to this, and I think she's going to continue to go through this process as she should," he said.
The accountability bar is pretty low if showing up for your court date is touted as being held accountable. I suppose it’s more than she did in CT back in 2014.
What gets me
Okay, there's a lot that gets me about this. So colossally irresponsible. Lying, breaking the law, avoiding responsibility for her actions, endangering a child. Complete disqualification for any political office, ever, IMHO. But this:
Is Lara really stiffing the lady whose fence and house she damaged? Eighty-three years old and she has to deal with this deadbeat driver? That injustice offends me. This is not a victimless crime, and it sounds like Lara is stiffing the victim.
I hope a lawyer stands up and takes on a civil suit for damages pro bono.
Such a lawyer might point out, given Flynn's recent move to review parking policies at City Hall, that the City of Boston, Lara's employer, had the ability to determine that Lara was driving illegally - how did they give a parking permit to someone without a license? Did the City have a duty to stop her then? I think it has a duty now.
She shouldn't have to go after them
The homeowner's insurance should cover the damage and the insurance company probably have their in-house lawyers who can then go after Lara.
It's better that way because then the owner will hopefully be made whole soon by getting the repairs done via her insurance, then the litigation aspect will not be her concern as it (inevitably) drags along.
Insurance has a deductible
Homeowner insurance policies often have very high deductibles to make them more affordable. The insurance company won't go after Lara to cover that part of the cost.
And insurance companies
Are notorious for increasing your premium after you file a claim. So the homeowner could be paying for this for years.
And
If she makes a claim on her policy, her future rates are going to be much higher.
Lara really screwed this homeowner (a former teacher, if I recall) by not driving a car that was insured. If her fellow councilors want to "support" her they could chip in for the cost to fully repair the damage she caused.
The audacity
This bullshit bothers me too though...
THAT'S THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT! She was going WAY too fast to cope with NORMAL TRAFFIC CONDITIONS like a car pulling out of a parking space when they had an opportunity, given that they can't be expected to predict your car approaching at 53 mph!
You can't just hand wave off ("...fast or not fast...") the factor that the speed played in WHY your client would swerve UP an embankment, through a fence into a house.
You can't "hold yourself to a higher standard" and yet agree with your counsel to go out and make asinine statements similar to "I mean, this could have happened to anyone...it's really the other car's fault...". Doing 53 mph on a 25 mph street means you don't have foresight, the other drivers have been stripped of their ability to have foresight by you, and if *anything* goes wrong, then it's going to go wrong a multiplicative factor worse than if you'd been going slower.
If anyone had been on the sidewalk in front of that fence, they'd almost have been guaranteed to be dead.
You want to take responsibility? You send your lawyer to the DA to plea down to something minor and ACCEPT THE RESPONSIBILITY. You contact the victim whose yard and house you hit and you start arranging to recover their property for them. You start figuring out whose political action group or staff you can silently join and which staff member you will vociferously advocate for replacing you and you get off the city council.
But instead, she continues to take the EXACT OPPOSITE approach every time news breaks.
Where is that quote from?
I do not see it in the WBUR article.
Globe
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/19/metro/boston-city-councilor-kendr...
Unacceptable
I've tried to withhold judgement and wait for all the facts etc, but there has been absolutely no new information that mitigates what she did. Every single aspect of this incident is damning.
I don't know what's worse: that she's not resigning, or that her fellow councilors are publicly supporting her instead of pressuring her to resign. It's severely damaging to the credibility of the City Council as a whole.