Walczak explains his opposition to casinos after Codman Square
interview with Eastboston.com
(BOSTON, August 18, 2013) – Bill
Walczak, candidate for mayor of Boston, today released his public safety
blueprint at an anti-violence rally in Codman Square in Dorchester. Codman
Square is where Walczak moved in 1973 and helped to transform the neighborhood
from a place of arson, violence, and racial unrest to a growing area with a
large community health center, charter school, affordable housing, and a growing
local business district.
Neighborhood watch efforts, neighborhood e-alert systems and other methods for
better communication, a more diverse police force and leadership, improving the
way we bring those who have served their time back safely and productively, a
public health approach to violence and violence against women, dealing with the
cause of violence from a young age, and creating opportunity for those in high
schools, are part of this blueprint for action.
Walczak’s platform is centered on creating not just safer communities, but
healthier and stronger communities. “Safer streets take the efforts of an entire
neighborhood and many supporting institutions, and these efforts have the
ability to change a community for the better,” said Walczak.
Elements of Walczak’s public safety blueprint include:
* E-Alert and Technological Approaches To Crime Fighting and Keeping More Police
In The Community Longer
* Changing the Leadership Selection Process for Boston Police
* Better Police Deployment
* Crime Watches And Community Policing Using Street Workers And Citizen
Constables
* Comprehensive Reentry Services and Programs for People Coming Out of Prison
* A Public Health Approach to Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence
* Resources and Services to LGBTQ Community
* Re-Create the Comprehensive Efforts that Resulted In the “Boston Miracle”
* Create Opportunity for School Age Children for Careers Rather than Crime.
“I want to use what I learned in Codman Square and apply it across the city,”
said Walczak. “No Boston resident should be afraid to walk down our city’s
streets at night. We know how to stem the violence that it invading our streets
because we did it in the 1990s. No child should die due to violence in Boston.
We need to strike at the heart of violence by finding ways to end the cycle of
poverty in our neighborhoods for the long term and utilizing community policing
best practices to stem violence in the short term.”
