$1.2 million in Boston Police grants held up in city council committee

The city council committee chaired by mayoral candidate Andrea Campbell hasn’t moved on multiple grants meant for the Boston Police Department, causing more than $1.2 million in free cash to build up as shootings continue.

There are two large chunks of money sitting in Campbell’s public safety committee for anti-crime work by the BPD. The older is the Byrne State Justice Assistance Grant, a $300,000 lump of federal money filed Dec. 9 that’s meant to fund Operation Shot Stopper, which is a partnership between the BPD Youth Violence Strike Force and the State Police Gang Unit that’s aimed at preventing gun violence.

The second and largest grant is $850,000 for the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, a sometimes-controversial entity that aims to fight crime, gangs and terrorism.

This comes as five people were shot last weekend. A few days before that, there was a gang-related shootout in Moakley Park, and a few weeks ago a 73-year-old grandmother was struck by a stray bullet and killed. There have been 10 homicides in Boston this year and 48 total shootings in 2021.

Campbell, in a statement to the Herald, defended her handling of the grants.

“The Police Department, the Administration, and I all recognize the troubling racial disparities that exist in our policing and agree that the City must have a plan to eradicate them, including shifting practices in the BRIC and use of the gang database, which is why these grants are still under review,” she said. “All this can happen while ensuring adequate neighborhood coverage, which will require the department to shift culture and structure.”

Technically, any city councilor is able to pull the grants out of committee for a vote at a council meeting, but it’s the norm for the committee chair to do so.

Wednesday’s weekly council meeting came and went with the grants remaining in committee. It’s not unusual for grants to spend some time in committee, but it normally doesn’t take months to move them along, and many don’t even go to committee.

For example, Campbell sought a vote on $25,567 in crime-lab funding Wednesday that was just filed this week, and the council passed it unanimously.

U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch told the Herald that Boston officials need to “take a hard look at” moving the Byrne federal grant along. Lynch mentioned the Byrne grant in a community meeting that touched on a discussion of more resources following the Moakley Park shootout.

“This is certainly reason to look at that more closely,” Lynch said.

The Rev. Eugene Rivers III, a longtime anti-violence advocate in Boston’s Four Corners neighborhood, said he was “astonished” to hear about the funding held up, particularly amid the recent “explosion of violence.”

“There needs to be a public transparent accounting,” said Rivers, founder of the Boston TenPoint Coalition and member of the Youth Violence Strike Force.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3eBZBAd