REMARKS OF DISTRICT ATTORNEY CONLEY TO MASSACHUSETTS CRIME PREVENTION ASSOCIATION Tuesday, May 14, 2002 Let me begin by thanking one of Winthrop's finest, Lt. Frank Scarpa, for hosting today's gathering, and let me thank the Massachusetts Crime Prevention Association for having me here today. It is truly an honor for me to stand here before a group of such dedicated law enforcement professionals. You truly are among society's heroes, and I thank each and every one of you for the jobs you do. My brother is a Boston Police officer, and I have worked with countless officers in Suffolk County during my nine years as an assistant district attorney and my eight years as a Boston city councilor, and now again as district attorney. In fact, many of the officers who are my contemporaries, whom I got to know as good street cops when I was a line prosecutor, now hold leadership roles. I know how noble your profession is. I also know how hard it is. I recognize the dangers you face to protect us, I recognize the stress felt by families who love and worry about you. One of the saddest days I had as a young homicide prosecutor was when I responded to the tragic death of a Boston police officer, who had been struck and killed by a train as he was running after a young suspect - In the blink of an eye, one of those who had protected us was gone, and life had forever changed for his family. How can we adequately thank people willing to do that job? Where would we be without you? I shudder at the answer. Today I want to spend a few minutes sharing my vision for the Suffolk County District Attorney's office. But before I get to that, I can say this to you unequivocally: No matter what my goals and priorities are, my office needs the cooperation of the police departments in our county to achieve the results we're looking for. One of the main reasons we drove crime down in the 1990s was the partnership between my office and the police departments in Suffolk County. Prosecutors and cops have developed an excellent working relationship, on everything from homicide investigations to quality of life problems, and we are better fulfilling our mission because we are working together. I want to build on that partnership, I want to make it even stronger. We are on the same team. We strive for the same goals - to protect people, to put lawbreakers in jail, to give comfort to their victims. If we continue to work together, if we work hard, and if we work smart, the bad guys will not have a chance. And that theme leads to one of my main goals - a renewal, a re-energizing of the partnerships that worked so successfully in the last decade. Partnerships between prosecutors and police, surely, but also between law enforcement and the residents and merchants we protect, between the cop on the beat, the prosecutor in the courtroom, and the community leader in the civic group. It's a grass-roots effort, where everyone communicates what their problems are and we work together to solve them. You know what I'm talking about because many of you have done it successfully - they call it community policing in the criminal justice textbooks, but many of you have been doing it since long before that term came into vogue, and I urge you to keep doing it. Know your communities, know your beats. I tell my prosecutors the same thing. As prosecutors, we need to get into the community too, to hear what people are saying, to find out what they're afraid of, to determine the best way we can help them. We've all read the stories about crime rates on the rise. Now, more than ever, cooperation between prosecutors, police and the community are critical. Of course, any program, and any crime-fighting strategy, benefits from a periodical review and concerted effort to sharpen its focus. That's what I'm doing with one of the District Attorney's Office's most heralded and successful programs - the Safe Neighborhoods Initiative. The Safe Neighborhoods Initiative, or SNI as we call it, targets specific geographic areas and address the most pressing public safety problems as defined by prosecutors, police, probation, and community members. What we've seen is that these problems range from violent crimes and gang activity to issues that erode the quality of life in our neighborhoods, things like car breaks, vandalism, and the like. Because I consider this strategy so critical, I recently made the SNI program its own team, elevated our most experienced SNI prosecutor to lead it, and added two additional prosecutors. I am also looking into ways to expand the geographic range of programs like this, programs that target certain neighborhoods. It is vital that the District Attorney's Office be plugged into the community. We need to be flexible, adaptable, and nimble, ready to address new issues as they arise. That quality is critical today, because we're not looking at the same problems that we were a decade ago. Gangs and gun-toting teenagers, who thought nothing of randomly spraying a street corner with a hail of bullets, fueled the street violence of the late '80s and early '90s. I served on the first anti-gang task force. I saw first-hand the damage they did. Today, we're not seeing as much of the random violence. Much was made in the media about the homicide rate in Boston last year, which was about twice as high as the previous year's total. Many of those homicide victims and defendants knew each other. Some had served prison time and had been released back into the community. How can we make that transition a peaceful one? That is one of the challenges facing us today, and another of my goals is to play a leadership role in that effort. We need to consider recidivism, rehabilitation, and economic and employment factors. One way we are addressing that challenge is through the Reentry Initiative, in which my office partners with ministers, probation officers, sheriffs' offices, the city of Boston, the US Attorney's Office, and private sector partners. We're working to address those social and economic issues that can hinder a person's productive and peaceful re-entry into our communities. I want to do more of this. Another priority of mine is protecting our elderly citizens. The old adage is true: One test of a society is how well it protects its youngest and its oldest members. My office's Elders and Persons with Disabilities Unit handles about 150 cases per year, and it's no secret why it's so busy - elders and people with disabilities are among the most vulnerable members of our society, and are often easy targets for victims. The types of cases we usually see involving elderly victims are fraud, larceny and, in the saddest of cases, physical abuse. In a good number of cases, the culprit is a family member. We currently have two lawyers and a victim advocate assigned to this unit. This is a tough economic time, a time that is forcing us to prioritize how we use our limited resources, but one of my clear priorities is to add another lawyer and other resources to the unit as soon as I am able to do so, to further strengthen our commitment to what has often, and correctly, been called our "Greatest Generation." Another priority of mine is using the moral force of the bully pulpit. I believe that I, as the county's top elected law enforcement official, have the responsibility and the forum to draw attention to important public safety and legal issues. When I identify a need for new legislation, I plan to author and sponsor that legislation. Likewise, when I see proposed legislation that can undermine public safety, I plan to oppose it vehemently. I found myself in that latter position twice in the last two weeks. First, I became alarmed at a legislative effort on Beacon Hill to weaken our strong gun control laws. The proposal would allow people who have been convicted of violent misdemeanors to obtain a license to carry and an FID card. This is asking for trouble. I urged the governor and legislative leaders to reject this proposal. And last week, I was outraged to discover that an amendment to the state budget would decriminalize such crimes as prostitution, vandalism, and certain motor vehicle offenses, making them, instead, civil infractions with no chance for jail time as a penalty. Again, I fired off letters to the governor, key lawmakers, and the entire Suffolk County delegation. This bad legislation absolutely ignores the facts you and I know to be true - that these so-called quality of life crimes can erode the fabric of a neighborhood, and make life miserable for law-abiding people. I vow to continue to fight any attempts to decriminalize these or other serious offenses. That is a snapshot of my priorities. That is my vision for the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office - a leader in partnerships that reach across different segments of society to make our neighborhoods safe and viable places to live, work, and raise our families; a proactive office that goes to the heart of our neighborhoods - the good people who live and work there - and ask them to tell us what their concerns are, so we can address them swiftly and effectively; an agile, adaptable office, that quickly and easily accepts new challenges and seeks answers to new problems in our neighborhoods as they arise, before they get out of hand; an agency that commits every available resource to protecting the most vulnerable among us, the children and the seniors; an office that is a leader in the public policy debate; an office where we stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters in law enforcement - prosecutors and police officers side by side, working hand in hand to protect the people of our neighborhoods. I ask all of you to join in that effort, to help us achieve that vision. With professionals like you by my side, we will truly make our neighborhoods of Winthrop, Revere, Boston and Chelsea safe places to live and work.