REMARKS OF DISTRICT ATTORNEY DANIEL F. CONLEY CHELSEA BUSINESS BREAKFAST GROUP May 15, 2002 Let me begin by thanking the Jordan Boys & Girls Club for having me here today, and let me thank all of you for starting your business day with me. I know how valuable your time is, and how busy the days can get between business, family, and other responsibilities, so I am grateful and honored that you're taking this time out this morning. I've been looking forward to our discussion. Before I start talking about my job as district attorney, and how I share many of the same goals as the business community, I'd like to say a few words about this wonderful city of Chelsea. I love coming to Chelsea - and not just for the corned beef at Arthur's Deli or a business lunch at Rita's, although I won't turn down any invitations to either. The thing that has always struck me about Chelsea is its vitality. It is, literally, full of the sights, the sounds, the aromas of life. We all know it has had its bad times, but you can't keep a good city down, and Chelsea, this Phoenix on the Mystic River, has risen again. And due in large part to you, the business leaders, and dedicated public servants like Gene O'Flaherty and Jay Ash, and wonderful organizations like the Jordan Boys & Girls Club, I am certain that Chelsea will never again fall into the stifling grip of corruption and fiscal woe that nearly strangled it to death more than a decade ago. Quite to the contrary - I believe Chelsea's best days lie ahead. Whenever I come to Chelsea, I am struck by both the diversity of its people, and the diversity of its places. I served as a Boston City Councilor for eight years, and I can tell you that Chelsea has many of the same attributes that make Boston such an attractive city. Like its larger neighbor across the river, Chelsea has a proud history dating back to Colonial times. Some of the founding patriots of this great nation, soldiers who found the courage to fight tyranny, helped begin the American Revolution right here on your shores during the Battle of Chelsea Creek. Chelsea has a diverse population, and that is cause for celebration. The Hyde Park section of Boston, where I was born and still live, is a diverse neighborhood where people of all ethnicities live together in harmony. I sense the same thing here. One thing that has made Chelsea great is that it has always welcomed immigrants, be they Jewish or Irish, Eastern European or Puerto Rican, African or Salvadoran. How many American Dreams were launched on these streets? More than you could ever count. That's something to be proud of. Chelsea has a bustling downtown and thriving commercial zones. How many other cities can boast great little mom-and-pop stores, like you have on Broadway, just a 10-minute walk from the gleaming modern offices of Everett Avenue. You have a waterfront that brings the Boston skyline so close you'd swear, on a clear day, that you could reach out and touch it. You have state-of-the-art schools. You have a fledgling artists' colony down by the water. In Prattville, you have leafy residential streets that rival anything in West Roxbury or Hyde Park. What else can I say … this is a city on the rise, and I am thrilled that it is part of the county I serve. As many of you know, I was appointed District Attorney on Feb. 19. For me, the appointment was the culmination of a professional dream that was born many years before, when I worked in the Suffolk DA's office as a prosecutor. Like all young prosecutors, I started out in the district courts, handling a huge volume of low-level cases. I was promoted first to the Boston Juvenile Court, where I saw the problems caused by young offenders, and later to a Superior Court Trial Team, where I handled everything from drug trafficking to armed robbery to murder cases. I served on the first anti-gang task force, and I was eventually promoted to the Homicide Unit by former District Attorney Ralph Martin. I responded to countless crime scenes, many of them homicides, but I never grew immune to seeing the ramifications of crime. It always hit me, seeing the pain in the eyes of someone who had just lost a family member to violence, or the fear in the face of a witness who I had to meet in secret, in the darkened hallway of an apartment building, because the witness didn't want to become the next victim. In those formative years, I realized that my calling was as a crime fighter, to lock up people who committed crime, to help their victims, and to prevent further crime. In 1993 I ran for and won a seat on the Boston City Council because I thought I could make a valuable contribution to the war on crime from a policymaker's position. Last year, I decided that I would be a candidate for district attorney, and when Ralph decided to step down before the end of his term, I told Governor Swift that I would like to be considered for the appointment. I'm grateful that she agreed that I was the best person for the job. This is the role I have prepared myself for throughout my professional career. I passionately believe that it is not just my job but my calling, not just my vocation but my avocation. It is a calling I wouldn't trade for any other in the world. And one of the things I most want to do is make the neighborhoods of Suffolk County, including Chelsea, safer places to live, to work, and raise families. I want to ensure that Chelsea remains a viable place for economic and personal growth, a place where people want to open a business, want to settle, want their children to be educated. How can a district attorney - the top elected law enforcement officer in the county - do that? The answer is very simple. In order for all that to happen - in order for businesses to thrive, for people to buy houses, for children to learn - you need one basic ingredient: public safety. Crime is a hindrance to commerce. People won't come to a store if they think they will be robbed on their way home. Young couples will not buy houses in a neighborhood they perceive as threatening. Kids can't learn if they are worried about getting beaten up after school. My job is to work with your fine police force and make sure you have the peace of mind to do all those great things you want to do. That is exactly what I am doing. I can give you two examples from recent months. Several weeks ago, State Police detectives assigned to my office broke up a drug ring here. And my office is also working with Chelsea Police and other agencies to combat a problem with street gangs. What I want to do is bring the strategies we used so successfully to fight gang violence in Boston over the last decade and use them in Chelsea. You're fortunate that you have a police department, led by Frank Garvin, that is committed to using progressive measures to solve the gang problem, and that is what we are going to do, working together. Another priority of mine is to address what we call 'quality of life' issues - problems like vandalism, low-level drug dealing, car thefts, and the like that occur in Chelsea and all urban communities. I want to make sure people want to stay in Chelsea to live and work. I have found, in my years as a prosecutor and city councilor, that what drives a family away from a neighborhood, more often than violent crimes, are the nuisance crimes like vandalism and public drinking and stolen cars. These crimes touch many more people than do violent crimes, and they seriously threaten the basic standards of living that we are all entitled to - peace of mind, quiet neighborhoods, clean streets. No one should have to look out his or her window and see a drug deal going down on the corner. No one should have to look at graffiti on the side of buildings or cars. Of course, solving and preventing violent crimes remains our most important priority, but I want to make sure the courts also realize how much damage quality of life crimes can cause to our neighborhoods. I want to make sure judges realize this is a serious issue, and treat these defendants accordingly. Just last week, I was outraged to discover that a section in the House version of the state budget decriminalized such crimes as prostitution, vandalism, and certain motor vehicle offenses, making them, instead, civil infractions with no chance for jail time as a penalty. I fired off letters to the governor, key lawmakers, and the entire Suffolk County delegation, urging defeat of this ill-thought-out budget language. 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. To best fulfill the mission of the DA's office, I want your help. One of the hallmarks of my office will be its accessibility. I want you to tell me what your concerns are, what problems you have that we can help you with. One of the most effective strategies we used to drive crime rates down over the last decade were partnerships between prosecutors, police, civic groups, and local businesses and residents. Those partnerships remain in place, and we plan to further build on them. Of course, any program, and any crime-fighting strategy, benefits from a periodic 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, which we operate in four neighborhoods, including Chelsea. The Safe Neighborhoods Initiative, or SNI as we call it, targets the most pressing public safety problems as defined by prosecutors, police, probation, and community members. We ask the community to tell us what the crime problems are, and we work together to address them. While the SNIs have been successful, I want them to be even better, even more in tune with the neighborhoods they serve. I recently made the SNI program its own team, elevated our most experienced SNI prosecutor to lead it, and added two additional prosecutors. Further, I've begun a review of the SNI program, to see how we can focus even more precisely on the problems Chelsea and the other SNI communities face. In a sense, I have just outlined for you my vision for the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office - an office that is 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. I envision 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; a office 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 that makes neighborhoods viable places for economic and commercial growth. I ask all of you to join in that effort, to help us achieve that vision. With business leaders like you by my side, we will truly make Chelsea and all of Suffolk County a safe place to live, work, and do business. --END--