Menino Sees the Light

Well, it's more like he got the light beaten into him.

But, hey, anything that can improve the quality of life for the people of Boston and make their mayor look like a bigger buffoon than he already shows himself to be on a regular basis, is what I call a win-win situation.

From the Boston Globe:

Menino agrees to use State Police
After criticism, OK's special role

Mayor Thomas M. Menino, amid an outcry from Boston city councilors and community leaders, said yesterday that he will accept an offer from Governor Mitt Romney to loan state troopers to Boston for special operations this summer.

Romney had offered the use of State Police as Boston's understaffed police force battles a wave of crime and heads into a summer that some fear will be the bloodiest in years. On Thursday, Menino said he had decided to refuse the help, largely because Boston's powerful police unions would oppose it.

But the mayor came under a firestorm of criticism yesterday, with city councilors and residents of some of the city's hardest-hit areas accusing him of letting politics interfere with the well-being of the neighborhoods.

Noooooo!!! Say it isn't so!

State troopers were brought in to aid Boston police on several occasions by Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole, who also used them to assist during the Democratic National Convention and in the Neighborhood Shield and Rolling Thunder operations.

But the use of outside forces angered Boston's police unions, which argued that it reduced opportunities for overtime within the Boston police force.

Some yesterday were upset that such calculations may have played a part in Menino's initial decision.

Note the appropriate use of the word "upset" - not "surprised", "shocked", "stunned", or "startled".

"Public safety is not and should not be a political partisan football, and it shouldn't be determined by who gets overtime," said Ginny Allen, founder of the North of Rossfield Crime Watch in Hyde Park. "It's the difference between life and death. Politicians need to put vanity and pride aside and provide the city with adequate police personnel to cope with the gunfire crisis. To do anything less is indefensible."

Welcome to Boston City Hall.

And, saving the best for last, the Boston Globe article closes with this money quote.

"I don't think police are the only answer," Menino said. "People are avoiding the real answer here. It's responsibility."

Do I even have to reply to that line of horseshit...again?

What a quack.