Mayor Michelle Wu mentioned she was not searching for to intimidate the individuals included on the listing of critics she offered to the Boston Police Department.
Rather, the listing was made after “threats” and “explicit violence” dedicated by the included critics reached a tipping level eventually yr’s Dorchester Day Parade, and town was compelled to implement a completely new security plan for future public occasions, Wu instructed reporters on Tuesday.
“This is really a matter of safety and having to protect the city workers who unfortunately like my family for over a year have been subject to situations that have crossed the line,” Wu mentioned at an unrelated City Hall occasion.
Wu dismissed the notions that her listing was just like the so-called enemies lists compiled by former President Richard Nixon with amusing, stating, “I certainly wasn’t around then and have no sense that there’s any relevancy.”
“The people who were on this list, that was in preparation for safety — safety prep for a parade,” Wu mentioned. “The reality is we have a public safety plan for nearly all of our public events now because it’s necessary, and we’re in close coordination with Boston Police.”
The listing, first reported by the Herald in a narrative that has since gone viral, included Wu’s most vocal critics, comparable to City Council candidate Catherine Vitale, a number of anti-vaccine activists who’ve been protesting exterior Wu’s home, and North End restaurant homeowners who opposed the mayor’s restrictions on outside eating.
It was despatched in an e-mail from Wu’s former director of constituent providers Dave Vittorini to Boston Police Capt. Robert Ciccolo. The correspondence merely included the names of 15 individuals, together with Vitale, Shana Cottone, “Mendoza Brothers from the North End,” and “a woman with the last name of Thuy who was arrested before.”
Wu mentioned Tuesday that she and her household have been harassed by these individuals for greater than a yr, at native occasions, at her dwelling, and whereas she was strolling her youngsters to high school.
Further, the group dedicated violence in opposition to cops on Wu’s private safety element, and “in more recent days, even more explicit violence,” based on the mayor.
The tipping level, nonetheless, she mentioned, was eventually June’s Dorchester Day Parade, when for “90 minutes and several miles, some people were harassing my kids and me and our city, the team and other folks in very close quarters, even as they were originally asked to leave the parade route.”
In preparation for a Bunker Hill Day parade that was held later that month, a police captain had requested an inventory of the names of people who had been “involved in public disruption and harassment of the mayor at the Dorchester Day Parade and outside her house,” based on a previous assertion from a Wu spokesperson.
Wu declined to say what the police did with the listing.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”