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One-man wrecking crew went on overnight rampage that included damaging Paul Revere's tombstone and the Holocaust Memorial, police say

Boston Police report arresting a man they say went on a spree of destruction in Chinatown and downtown Saturday into Sunday before retiring to the city shelter on Southampton Street.

Lawrence Hawkins, 46, now faces multiple counts of destruction of property, destruction of a place of worship and defacing a burial ground, police say.

According to police, sometime between Saturday night and early Sunday morning, when he checked into the Southampton Street shelter at Mass and Cass, Hawkins used a brick to smash the front door of a business at 125 Charles Street South, smashed in the window of a cruiser parked outside the A-1 police station on Sudbury Street, damaged part of the Holocaust Memorial across Congress Street from City Hall by throwing another brick at it, broke a window at the JFK federal building next to City Hall and broke still more windows at 201 Washington St. and 15 Court Square.

Police say they discovered still more damage, to two historic burying grounds, this morning:

Around 10:44 AM, officers responded to the Granary Burying Ground located in the area of Tremont Street and Bromfield Street for a vandalism report. Officers were advised that multiple tombstones on the property had been vandalized including Paul Revere’s. A total of 14 tombstones were vandalized by being pulled from the ground or broken into pieces.

As officers continued their investigation, they observed vandalism to six additional tombstones located in the adjacent King’s Chapel Burying Ground. Officers observed one tombstone to be forcibly pulled from the ground.

Police say they quickly got a bead on Hawkins via surveillance cameras as he careened around downtown - and then to the shelter at 112 Southampton St.

A supervisor contacted the Newmarket Command Center who confirmed the suspect was inside the shelter.

At about 4:30 AM, officers responded to the shelter located at 112 Southampton Street and located a suspect matching the description from the prior vandalism incidents. The suspect was placed into handcuffs and transported to District A-1 for booking.

Innocent, etc.

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Comments

Come on, Paul Revere's gravestone! Have some respect. A hole.

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Keep him homeless and angry and addicted. He'll spend less time in jail than the time spent waiting for housing that doesn't exist.

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If you were a betting man, would you put your money on: "He acts like an asshole because he's unhoused" or "He's unhoused because acting like an asshole has made him unemployable and unwelcome in most housing situations?"

I'm 100% on board with housing first as a concept. I'm not interested in seeing this guy punished. I am, on the other hand, interested in seeing him caged. As a taxpayer, I'm happy to pay for his cage to be comfortable, even luxurious if need be, and for his needs to be met. But there needs to be a secure physical barrier between him and the rest of us.

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With the way this city works I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Paul Revere is cancelled so maybe he is taking the lead on this.

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Or is this just a dumb strawman?

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Because he was a white guy that indirectly benefited from the slave trade. That is enough for some folks to demand he be removed from history.

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Name one.

Name anyone trying to cancel Paul Revere.

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I said at some point someone will be upset about some part of Revere's past and demand action. Folks are easily triggered these days.

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Put up or shut up.

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What am I putting up? I'm sorry you don't get what is being said here. Maybe I'm not being clear. I will move on as to not upset you further.

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"Put up or shut up" means "you just made an assertion, now back it up". You're declining to do so; therefore your assertion is invalid.

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It's a future assertion based on past history. Why is that so hard to understand?? I don't have a person to name as this will take place in the future. is it really that hard to believe someone would be upset by a person that benefitted from the slave trade? I don't think so.

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It's a future assertion based on past history. Why is that so hard to understand??

The "hard" part is swallowing your assumption that the "past history" is a thing and not simply people whining about facing the consequences of their actions.

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Folks are easily triggered these days.

Indeed, you certainly are.

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Someone clearly means "imaginary person in Username Unknown's head."

You're just making shit up. It's so dishonest.

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Not sure what I am making up. Never said this was happening now. I am pontificating about a future event that is easy to believe could happen. Reread the thread.

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Again, you can't.

You desperately invent a strawman and then double down on the dishonesty. It's easy to win arguments when you can lie about whatever you want. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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How can I name someone for an event that has not happened yet. In case you are not following, I said this is something that is possible in the future simply based on past history of folks being upset. Why is that hard to understand? What am I lying about and why is it so upsetting to you?

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Exactly. Your argument is a dumb strawman. You got nothing, so you make shit up.

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It's "Username Unknown makes up a person to be mad at". I pontificate this will happen a few dozen more times in the next few weeks.

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I am pontificating about a future event that is easy to believe could happen.

Well, that's your filters, you know? You have it in your head that people who object to the status quo and/or speak the truth about the past are "triggered". To me it seems you have things exactly backwards. "Triggered" means reacting reflexively without thought, and that is exactly what you're doing here. If you responded to actual events rather than imaginary scenarios, and listened and learned rather than braying "TRIGGERED!!!11!1!", you might find it "easy to believe" that the world, and other people, are more nuanced than your blinkered view would have it.

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great

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Some people are certainly easily triggered these days.

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how in a story here with a real villain, you still feel the need to make someone up to be mad at. I guess this way you get to be the victim?

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This has got to stop. Boston has become host to an all day, all night, wrecking crew of several thousand highly intoxicated and sometimes destructive individuals. Tourism us huge industry and it seems Mr Dawkins has dealt a blow to the Freedom Trail.
Tired of the random violence,Boston is too small, most people want the chaos to end. This guy is most like l on way to Bridgewater. Wonder if he was driven into Boston by a rehab who did not get him a bed in a program. It is a nightmare created by an industry that is not delivering services.

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there's thousands of people causing destruction throughout the city around the clock?

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Sad when it happens, but they are achieving their goals of pretending that democracy doesn't work and crime is out of control, therefore we need a strongman dictator to fix the US.

This bizarre overreaction to what wouldn't even make headlines in the '80s is part of the game. But facts are the enemy of convenient emotionally-driven panic.

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Including elderly abuse.

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Wut?

Okay, honey. I'm so sorry you don't get to see your man Tucker anymore. I'm sure it hurts.

Please feel free to keep your fact free nonsense to yourself, though.

PS - destroying pensions and social security like your reichwing masters want to do is elderly abuse.

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Nothing of what you posted is correct.

Back to the topic you’re trying to avoid - Do you want me to post links to your posts excusing juveniles because *maybe, but probably not* their parents are working two jobs? Or that one where a girl harassed then assaulted a 80 year old man only for you to come in and make excuses for her?

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Sounds like you, trollbo.

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Feels like you’ve been slacking over the holidays. I’m happy to see you’re back and posting as hard as ever!

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Your head, rent free, trollbo.

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Rent free, when you injected your self into a conversation that had nothing to do with you just to call me trollbo. Hm, sure seems like it’s the other way around, and I’ll be collecting the back rent you owe me. Nothing is free in this world, western mass.

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Boop

we need a strongman dictator

Beep

bizarre overreaction

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Vandals are destroying monuments, statues, spray-painting houses of worship and MBTA stations and trains. The courts have to take these crimes serious and punish the offenders with serious time in the House of Corrections or the vandals will continue destroy downtown Boston.

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broke a window at the JFK federal building next to City Hall

The city may slow-walk any solutions and let this dude out on bail immediately, but the feds are not going to be so kind.

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Downtown Boston after dark.

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It’s the damn blue bikes, get rid of them or have cops do random checks to anyone on them who looks like they might not have paid. It’s either stealing directly or receiving stolen property, case closed.

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have cops do random checks to anyone on them who looks like they might not have paid.

Yeah, asking for the cops to be harassing anyone who "looks poor" is some choice fascism right there.

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And what might those distinguishing features be?

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Deluxe set.

Y'all might try visiting an urban area sometime. It ain't what you think it is. These reactions are hilarious.

This person is clearly a nutjob. Meanwhile, crime isn't even a fraction of what it was 40 years ago and its dropping again.

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Other posters claims yet don’t do the same. Crime rose ~3% from 2021 to 2022, but you’d know that if you actually looked it up instead of throwing around opinions as facts.

https://ma.beyond2020.com/ma_tops/report/crime-overview/boston/2022

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This is an AI bot roundup with no cleaning of duplicate events or contextural breakdowns before shoving numbers into fancy graphs that make you think they MUST be accurate because ... numbers! and charts!.

Your chatbot data scraping and dumping ground is also looking 2022, not 2023. Here's the trends for 2023: https://counciloncj.org/mid-year-2023-crime-trends/

I'll check around for Boston specific data and reports - I believe the Globe and Herald have both been tracking the pandemic/post pandemic world.

In the meantime, this is a round up of 2022 data from the Boston Herald, where at least humans analyzed the data, not Chat GPT. Those humans found that crime was down overall: https://www.bostonherald.com/2023/01/03/bostons-ov...

Oh, and here's some context on the crime rate over time and the manufacturing of panic that is out of proportion to the historical rates of crime: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/11/20....

I got here in the 80s when a violent attack on one of my housemates wasn't even news - you? Crime is nothing like it was from '75-'95. Whether you are a boomer primed to panic over the mention of crime, or a youngster with no clue about history, you need to stop drinking the koolaid.

IMAGE(https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/FT_20.11.12_CrimeInTheUS_2.png)

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The link I posted is linked from Mass.gov and funded through a grant from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.

Your first link is incomplete national trends and the second is the Herald and behind a paywall. So what point are you trying to prove aside from your statement that overall Boston crime is down is wrong and unsubstantiated?

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This thread is about a mentally unstable guy with no where to go but a shelter. What he could have benefited from was Massachusetts State Hospital which of course was closed by Governor Dukakis following Ronald Regan's defunding of such institutions.

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you are losing your mind over what you claim to be a 3% increase year over year, which isn’t even a particularly instructive data point to begin with.

take a break from the internet, touch some grass ,,

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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data.html

You just want fascism. I want facts. There is a difference.

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Fascism? Ok, whatever you say

What does shoplifting in NYC have to do with overall crime in Boston? You’ve been struggling in this interaction so I’ll answer my own question. Nothing. The two are completely unrelated.

Don’t you need to jump over and start making excuses for that 14 year old that brought a gun to school?

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