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Some 75 charged in H-Block gang crackdown
By adamg on Tue, 05/21/2013 - 2:22pm
From a BPD poster. See the whole thing.
Raids that began before dawn have netted some 75 people on charges related to drug dealing and violence in Roxbury's H Block section, Boston Police report.
A little more than half of the suspects were already in custody on other charges; the rest were arrested today, police say.
Operation H, "a long-term plainclothes and surveillance investigation" resulted in indictments last week by a Suffolk County special grand jury investigating years of crime in what has long been one of the city's more violent areas.
The area got its name from the fact most of its streets begin with "H."
Although most suspects are being arraigned in Suffolk Superior Court, some were charged with federal offenses and will be arraigned in US District Court, the DA's office reports.
Police say their investigations began in January:
After success by the Boston Police Drug Control Unit in making purchases and undertaking surveillance on an almost daily basis and even in broad daylight, Suffolk prosecutors assigned to the DA’s Gang Unit began presenting operation-related evidence before the Suffolk County Special Grand Jury.
The Special Grand Jury is a second grand jury, unique to Suffolk County, created in 2007 specifically to hear evidence in complex gun, gang, and homicide investigations.
Because of the large number of arrests, the defendants' arraignments are expected to continue into tomorrow.
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Comments
Please
Don't Dookhan them
No worries
They can no longer be Dookhanated, but there's still plenty of opportunities to get JudgeDouganed. Bet most of them will get sub-$500 bails, meaning $50 out of pocket. That's for the repeat violent offenders who were caught with a gun on them, others will walk on personal recognizance. Hooray for MA judges, doing all in their power to keep Boston as ghetto as possible.
We'll See
This is a claim something one can actually follow and see how true the your claim will or will not. A possible proxy to test the views between those leaning left and right and the perception of MA's policy.
Adam, any chance you can help keep tabs of their bail? Most of my checking will be mostly Google and whatever the news publish.
well
Bail is proportional to flight risk. I'm guessing most of these folks have no where to fly. It can be withheld for capital crimes and violent offenders though.
Bail has never been punishment, cause as much as these people are probably scumbags, they aren't guilty till convicted and do have rights.
That said any of them arrested for violent assaults should be locked up pending their trial. As any violent offender with a history should.
Can Still Be a Mesurement
You have a point. However, this doesn't mean it cannot be a measurement. It can still measure impartiality (proportionality to flight risk) vs partiality (if the perceive leanings leads to awarding more or less to the appropriate impartial bail and by how much).
This does make it harder to test FormerHeraldReader's claim. As one can argue a low bail is appropriate (or a high bail) as it is based on flight risk.
Alternatively, one can track sentencing for those who gets convicted in this case.
THANK YOU! Finally someone
THANK YOU! Finally someone states the actual intentions of bail. First and foremost is flight risk. If a guy was born and raised here and has no economic resources or incentive to flea, they'll take his passport and release him on bail. Likely these are also illegal gun and drug charges, not murder, so less of a public safety risk.
Jesus,do some research. You
Jesus,do some research. You clearly have never been in a Massachusetts courtroom, nor are you familiar with state or federal laws since the 1970s. We don't know who got "violent offender" labels and who didn't - these are all gun and drug charges I can guarantee you. Guns and drugs get you severe penalties, worse if it's a federal charge. Why do you think prisons are so overcrowded? Hello, guns and drugs! Not to mention three strikes you're out law which just got passed in Mass. - who knows what strike each of these guys is on. Not sure where you get your info from that repeat violent offenders walk, but here is a helpful chart for you. Even for minimum offenses like driving without a license that a violent offender might incur, the judge has the discretion to incarcerate. Unarmed robbery and unarmed larceny at that level can even get you 4 years minimum in prison. The judge can only depart from the mandatory minimum sentence if the defendant has no criminal record or has substantial mitigating factors, and in a lot of cases they have to write up an explanation of why they departed from the guidelines. Most judges would rather not do this. I was just in court today with a juvenile judge who said he has no tolerance for violent juveniles - those kids get sent straight to adult courts now, zero tolerance. Across the board, punishment has become way more severe since the early 80s. That's why prisons are filled to the max, and why the penalty for a teaspoon of weed was reduced - the state doesn't have the beds or the resources to arraign and house every BU kid caught smoking a joint on a Friday night when they're processing Oxycontin traffickers on a regular basis.
http://www.mass.gov/courts/formsandguidelines/sent...
Shall I retrieve for you the mandatory minimum guidelines for gun and drug offenses? Or would you like to maybe search for the evidence yourself before you make uninformed statements next time?
check out the mugs
on these clowns
http://www.bpdnews.com/wordpress/wp-content/upload...
Surprise surprise, I only
Surprise surprise, I only recognized 80% of those named by BPD as repeat offenders.
Of course it is. it involves
Of course it is. it involves the gang unit and they're trying to get the guys most likely to start trouble out of the way before the summer - are you surprised? did you mean this to be a particularly insightful comment?
FINALLY!! Now I just hope
FINALLY!! Now I just hope some soft-ass judge doesn't let them go with a slap on the wrist.
If the charges are federal
If the charges are federal gun or drug charges they can't.
Operation H?
I bet this took a lot of Preparation...
Quit being such a pain in the....
.
Why don't you just call it
Why don't you just call it Operation Ass Cream, ass?
I'm sorry...
Did you say you wanted some ice cream?
Read the BPD release, people.
Read the BPD release, people. They only convene a grand jury for complex gun and drug cases. That probably means federal charges. Most of these guys are probably looking at mandatory minimum sentences based on what and how much they were selling. In that case, the judge is taken out of the equation. This is not New Orleans with their notoriously lenient judges, in this state they have adopted mandatory minimum sentences for guns and drugs and 3 strikes you're out laws. This severely limits the sentence the judge is able to impose. He must follow guidelines based on criminal history and severity of the charge. I'm guessing most of these guys have criminal histories and will do hard time; the BPD release states that some were already in custody for other charges which will add a lot more time to their eventual sentence. I don't know why people on here think they'll walk - guns and drugs are the easiest way to get a prison sentence.
why
75 were arrested!i only see pictures of maybe 20 you guys can't just go arresting any one.
Who is "you guys"? I didn't
Who is "you guys"? I didn't arrest anyone, I just don't have time in my day to make citizens' arrests.
hey smart guy: the BPD
hey smart guy: the BPD doesn't post booking photos for everyone they arrest cuz it's just a PR website. shocking! And if they arrested juveniles (which they likely did), there would be no names or photos released anyway.