Tears for Criminals, not for Victims

Boston sets a new low for the Democratic Party's soft-on-crime wing

When I saw this video clip I thought it was some Babylon Bee satire or an AI fake. It wasn’t.

Boston’s mayor, and District Attorney, and Police Chief offer their ‘condolences, thoughts and prayers’ for a knife-wielding attacker who was shot to death by an off-duty Boston police officer. The off-duty cop was in a Chick-fil-A Saturday night when two people chased by a man with a knife ran inside. The cop identified himself, told the man to drop his weapon, and shot him when he kept up the attack.

Public officials who appear more concerned about criminals than victims might seem to be a sure-fire way to lose elections. Even in my native San Francisco, voters recalled Cheesa Boudin, a soft-on-crime prosecutor, and Los Angeles voters gave the boot to its progressive DA, George Gascon. Still, in Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu seems unconcerned that voters in the last presidential election ranked public safety and fears of crime as big concerns. In fact, she has doubled down when it comes to criminal illegal migrants. And while she boasts that the city’s murder rate has dropped, she avoids talking about sharp spikes in rapes and other violent assaults.

Wu has made national headlines before when she proposed that the police gang database be abolished and that criminals should not be prosecuted for a laundry list of crimes, including shoplifting, larceny, disorderly conduct, receiving stolen property, breaking and entering with property damage, wanton and malicious destruction of property, threats, driving with a suspended license, possession with intent to distribute, and non-marijuana drug possession. She is on the record to defund the police and wants law enforcement to “demilitarize,” including a ban on the use of tear gas, rubber bullets, or attack dogs for riot/crowd control.

Since Trump took office, ICE has arrested hundreds of illegal immigrants who had committed serious crimes but whose location had been kept from ICE because Boston refuses — as do other sanctuary cities — to share information with immigration enforcement agents. Those arrested include MS-13 gang members as well as murder and rape suspects, and repeat sex offenders, some victims were children, and in two cases, disabled kids.

One, Wisteguens Jean Quely Charles, a 25-year-old Haitian gang with 17 criminal convictions, went viral in January when he was caught on video praising former presidents Biden and Obama. “I’m not going back to Haiti,” he shouted. “Fuck Trump, you feel me? Biden forever!”

Another, Cesar Polanco, an illegal Dominican national convicted of murdering his pregnant wife in front of their 5-year-old son, was freed last month by the Massachusetts Parole Board. ICE agents tracked him down in Boston.

Wu was upset. Not with the criminals that were rounded up, but because a Fox News correspondent had been embedded with the ICE strike force.

“With Fox News going along,” she told Boston’s WGBH radio, “with this element wanting to sensationalize and stoke greater fear about it. . . . We don’t have the ability to stop what they [ICE] are doing.”

The U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has requested Wu to appear at a March 5 hearing on “sanctuary jurisdictions.” The mayors of Chicago, Denver and New York will join her representing cities that reflect an “abject failure to comply with federal law.”

Wu dismisses next week’s hearing as “playing politics. . . . Our police department takes care of criminal activity, and they focus on local issues.”

Mayor Wu has made public safety a low priority in Boston. She is up for reelection this year. Other progressive Democrats are watching her race to see if there is a price to pay for soft-on-crime policies, even in very liberal cities such as Boston. Republicans, who made public safety a top campaign issue, will also be watching. A loss by Wu will be another sign to the Democratic Party that it is time to revert to the middle. They might start by giving their condolences to victims of crimes, not to the criminals.