Wednesday Morning: A City Enraged

Published September 29, 2010

Boston Globe front page, 9/29/2010What’s news on a mild Wednesday morning in Boston — untempered outrage as the city reels from a quadruple homicide in Mattapan:

Police Vow Arrests In Mattapan Massacre

Boston’s grisliest mass murder in nearly two decades — made all the more horrific by the senseless execution of a baby in his young mother’s final embrace — sent horror rippling yesterday throughout the city, from the most powerful seats of government to the child’s devastated family. (Herald)

Woolson Street Wonders If More Cops Would Help

Woolson Street is one block away from the bustle of Morton Street. It’s a neighborhood of triple deckers in vinyl siding or in need of paint. And early Monday morning it was the scene of a crime that left four people, including a toddler, dead. (WBUR)

District Attorney: Cuts Cost Crime-Fighting

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said plummeting budgets have led to crippling crime-fighting cuts, including layoffs to community liaisons instrumental in helping prevent violence such as yesterday’s Mattapan slayings. (Herald)

‘Forget The Miracle. That’s Old Rhetoric’

Rev. Eugene Rivers said the “Boston Miracle,” which pulled the city out of the murder spree of the 1990s, is “antiquity” now.  “We need a model that deploys faith-based workers, working with the police supporting them, and then providing seven-day-a-week wraparound care.” (WBUR)

We’ve Hit A New Low In Depravity

Residents across huge swaths of Boston haven’t felt this kind of fear and uncertainty since the crack-induced violence of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the combination of drugs, huge profits from dealing them, and guns fueled a surge in the homicide rate that seems unimaginable today. (Brian McGrory/Globe)

What else is news: Amtrak has unveiled plans for a high-speed train that would travel from Manhattan to Boston in 84 minutes. And Massachusetts appeared to weather the recession better than most, according to new census data.