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Election roundup: Barros says white murders get more attention than minority ones; candidates differ on new Celts arena

The Globe reports on a forum in Dorchster last night, in which Barros, former head of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, compared the law-enforcement response to the Amy Lord murder with the response to murders in Roxbury.

The Improper Bostonian got back answers from half the candidates on several sports-related questions, including the Olympics, building new stadiums or arenas for the Revs and the Celtics, beer sales at Fenway and the Yawkey Way deal with the Sox. They split on the issue of building a Celtics-only arena.

Daniels in the lion's den? The Boston Teachers Union holds a mayoral forum at 7 p.m. today at its headquarters at 170 Mt. Vernon St. in Dorchester. The union has yet to endorse anybody, but it will be interesting to hear how the pro-charter candidates are received.

John Carroll post-blogs the two debates on Monday, tells all the candidates to get off his lawn.

Menino to Walsh and Walczak: Back off, bubs, he's still the mayor.

The Herald endorses Conley and Connolly, but says it's really in favor of anybody but Walsh.

At-large Councilor Ayanna Pressley was endorsed by Mass. NOW:

She has been an outspoken champion of women and girls in Boston during her tenure on the City Council.

Perplexed District 5 residents get another chance to hear from the eight people who want to replace Rob Consalvo at a forum, 5:45 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, at St. Nectarios Church, 39 Belgrade Ave. in Roslindale.

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Comments

This is Boston, not Florida, so anon comments about a certain murder trial in that state are just not going to get posted.

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is trying to compare the murder of a thug to the abduction and murder of a innocent girl by a animal on a crime spree.

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Quick: Who's Joseph Morante?

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You are right to put out Joseph Morante's name here. It is shameful that attention was not paid to his killing on the level of Amy Lord. His killing was a cowardly act.

Many people see anyone darker than Gronk with a tan getting killed in the Boston Murder Zone and it is immediately dismissed by people outside of the city as just another thug dead. I don't think that way, but a lot of others do.

My problem with the groupthink from the minority candidates for mayor seems to be if we have more police with darker hues and more breasts that crime will wither away.

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Problem is, most of the murders are either thugs or someone connected to the thugs (thug boyfriend, bought drugs and/or stolen goods from thugs, etc) with a few innocents here and there, not the other way around. Try pulling a list of recent dot/rox/mattapan murders and see how many of the victims did NOT have a long police record, you'll be unpleasantly surprised.

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Men are victims of homicide 3:1 compared to women, and case clearance rates are higher for female victims than for male victims.

People keep going on about "the patriarchy", except women are the protected ones in our society. They're a significant minority in every category of violent crime except one - rape - the rarest category of violent crime, which has decreased the most of any category of violent crime in the last two decades, and those statistics are biased by underreporting of sexual crimes against men and federal definitions that made it legally impossible to apply "rape" to a woman violating a man - as well as the complete dismissal of prison rape.

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And ethnicity. And economic status.

But it's not gender. What you fail to note is that men also make up the overwhelming number of attackers. But then, "men's rights" types never do.

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The problem actually ISN'T race. Go look at your BJS reports; in violent crime, there's more bias along gender lines than any other demographic factor. The same is true for incarceration, where there are 14 times more men than women in the US prison system, the largest in the world.

"What you fail to note is that men also make up the overwhelming number of attackers."

Right, because when a man attacks a man, it's not a problem - "they" are doing it to "themselves". Now gosh, where do we see THAT attitude? Right: race.

" But then, "men's rights" types never do."

Just like those "feminazis" are a bunch of man-hating, baby-eating, family-wrecking communists, right? *rolls eyes*

Just like "feminism" isn't about hating men despite plenty of feminists who do, the men's rights movement isn't about hating women just because some of some assholes in the men's rights movement.

It isn't even about "men first". It's about equality and gender roles and stereotypes hurt men. You know, something mainstream feminism has acknowledged since, oh, about the 1970's? Go look in your history book.

But please, do continue to dismiss, insult, mislabel, generalize, etc. All the same shit people did to feminists, is being done to men now.

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Hair color and type seem to me a major factor here, regardless of race or gender. Most seem to have curly black hair!

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I have to admit the name escaped me, but I was reminded about this awful act when I saw the article. But what is your point? That Morante didn't get as much as a write up as Lord? Or is it because the incident happened in Roxbury? He appears to be white to me, but then again he's not female, nor is he a blonde white female. But then again, Lord was a brunette and she didn't get as much press as the many blonde females who get kidnapped and end up on Nancy Grace 24/7. Perhaps you want to come up with an algorithm:

1. Blonde white female kidnapped, killed: 24/7 CNN national coverage

2. Innocent black man hunted down and killed by white man claiming self-defense, or NFL linebacker: 24/7 CNN national coverage

3. Brunette white female kidnapped, killed: 3 weeks of local coverage

4. White shop-owner killed in Weston: 1 week of local coverage

5. Young innocent black/hispanic kid (under 12) caught in gang crossfire: 1 week local coverage

6. White shop-owner killed in Roxbury: 2 days of local coverage

7. Black/hispanic shop-owner killed in Roxbury: 1 day of local coverage

8. Black/hispanic gang member with lengthy record killed in Roxbury: a short notice - but in depth coverage of aggregate number of similar killings in the neighborhood in the past year and the conditions that cause them.

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I don't think BPD dedicates fewer resources to finding killers in any communities - I really think they're better than that. But where were the community meetings and the federal and state law-enforcement resources to help find his killer?

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One was a madman who brutally murdered a woman and stabbed a bunch more (not quite Ted Bundy but you get the idea,) other was a robbery gone bad in a bad neighborhood (tragic, but fairly commonplace.) Former showed a repeating pattern and no sign of stopping until the perp was caught while latter was strictly a one-time event, hence different resource allocation. Race had nothing to do with it.

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so actually, I see no difference at all.

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No difference between robbing and deadly assault/killing?

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Who is Kimberly Rae Harbour?

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The Mattapan Massacre never made the news, nor did the more recent Steven Jones murder.

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Barros was one of my top choices until he said he puts ketchup on his hot dog. Come on!

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although, isn't that a question on one of boston.com's stupid "surveys" of "which candidate would you prefer to pull you in a rickshaw and feed you bananas?" after you eventually find it under all the sketchy pop-up ads for payday loans.

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Barros was one of my top choices until he said he puts ketchup on his hot dog. Come on!

Keep him away from Flo's Hot Dogs, where committing such a crime might get one sent to the end of the line!

Seriously though, I went there last week and found them to be nothing less than extremely friendly (and the hot dogs amazing, probably the best I'd ever had).

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So, black murderers get less attention, like middle children? Perhaps that explains the greater number of them - they are desperate for attention.

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Reading is fundamental.

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Questions of race aside, would Mr. Barros concede that the killing of Ms. Lord was more depraved and unusual in its motive and modus operandi than the gangbanger on gangbanger and personal beef violence which makes up the better part of reported crime in Roxbury and Dorchester (though definitely not all)...violence that usually finds the victim and witnesses refusing to co-operate with investigators? Add to that the fact that the cops found themselves having to do a fair amount of covering-their-ass PR activity due to the fact that they bungled apprehending the guy responsible for the Lord killing when they had a chance?

I understand the need for more diversity on the police force, and equal response to crime regardless of neighborhood, but an 'us vs. them' message like this only serves to divide the community further. You can't say the BPD has been ignoring Rox and Dot - they find it impossible to given the sheer volume of calls from those neighborhoods.

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are brought on/ created by the Black community. It's getting old, every issue in the Black community is attributed to race... You're not the only race, sex or religion who has been miss treated, but you are the only ones who continues to cry wolf.

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Quit complaining about murder coverage in the media and keep your kids and kids friends from riding around dorchester on dirt bikes shooting each other over weed and crack money.

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Because there are less of them? " Barros says the popular conception of the Roxbury of his youth was incomplete and distorted, but not entirely off-base. ”Oh, no question, it felt dangerous,” he said. “The street’s the street.” ( http://www.wbur.org/2013/08/05/barros-mayoral-profile )
Even at a young tender age in the 60's , going through Dudley street station, you knew you were fair game if alone. It was what it was, and is what it is. The Berry has always been a high crime area.

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I didn't even know a new Celtics arena was under consideration. Why should the mayor's office be involved?

If the Celtics, or some private developer, wants to buy a parcel and build an arena and the surrounding infrastructure, the Mayor's office shouldn't get in the way. But the city shouldn't spend one dime on it. It's not like the Celtics could credibly threaten to move out of Boston, especially when they've got a perfectly functional, relatively modern (read: multiple levels of luxury boxes) arena right now.

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I've seen and heard absolutely no discussion about a new arena for the Celtics. Who thinks we need one and why? The TD Garden is not even 18 years old yet, and seems to serve them just fine.

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Ron:

The Celtics are and always have been tenants of the Adams family up to the Jacobs family. They never made a dime off of the ancillary money from the old Garden or the new one. The smarter than you guys who own the Celtics can make more money with their own arena and the mix of concerts and such that go with it. Why give it to Jeremy when you can give it to yourself?

I've always wondered why a development play has not been made for the Red Line storage area next to the Broadway Bridge. Air Rights meets Transit nexus, sounds familiar, no?

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Pretty young white women. preferably from 'respectable' middle class suburban backgrounds, get A LOT of attention when they're murdered. A so-called working class / poor white guy, of any age, will get a FRACTION of the attention when he ends up murdered. Most will assume he was involved in nefarious activity. This is what most people also assume about 'poor' white women, Hispanics, etc., If her name is Abby, she's from Newton [or fill in the blank], and she bleeds, it leads.

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What if your brother is involved in a gang and it's beyond your control and you are murdered in retaliation for something his gang did? Because it's "gang-involved" does it deserve less attention than a white middle class college student's murder? Does your life have less value than hers?
Natalie Holloway. Molly Bish. Lacy Peterson. Holly Bobo. Someone please name me one missing black woman. Just one. I have to search on missing person-specific sites to even find one. Someone please tell me they know who Stepha Henry is, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in NYC in 2007.
I would also add that the case below was a TRIPLE murder, and yet no one would recognize their names, because aside from the call for the public's help on the last page of the paper every few months, it gets barely any coverage.

http://www.dotnews.com/2012/least-four-shot-one-de...

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