Posted on 11/26/2007 5:48:04 AM PST by Leisler
During former Gov. Mitt Romney’s last year at the helm in Massachusetts, there were plenty of dangerous ex-cons like Daniel Tavares mingling with the public while our presidential wannabe was rubbing elbows with big-shot Republicans across the country.
Tavares - the sick Bay State killer who allegedly executed a pair of beautiful young newlyweds in Washington state last weekend months after being sprung early from prison for killing his mother - was coddled by a criminal justice system largely ignored by Romney.
Romney was out of the office 212 days in 2006.
Who could forget the convicted cop killer on a work-release team from the Boston Pre-Release Center emptying trash at the State House, right under Mitt Romney’s nose?
Terrill Walker, the triggerman who killed BPD Detective John Schroeder in 1973 during a robbery, was paid with taxpayer money courtesy of the Romney administration’s Department of Correction.
Walker should never see the light of day given his record. But “only in Massachusetts” could someone such as Walker be freed from prison on a technicality only to be rearrested for armed robbery during his brief stint of freedom.
There were five other killers working alongside Walker in the State House, too.
Also in 2006, the state ordered an audit of the sex offender registry board, with startling results: The audit found that 2,929 of the 15,828 sex offenders in the database were not registered.
Of those, 2,372 remained at large that summer. The audit was prompted after the state lost track of a Level 3 sex offender from Lowell, Michael Bizanowicz, who slaughtered a young woman and her 12-year-old daughter, Joanna and Alyssa Presti. He was found guilty of rape and murder a few months ago.
Does it surprise any of us that two years after Presti and her daughter were murdered by an ex-con pervert the state still couldn’t get it right, according to Romney’s own audit?
Also that year, Romney had the gall to visit the prison at Guantanamo Bay to share success stories about Massachusetts jails, even though he had only toured one during his four years in office.
That controversial trip came in the same year that four members of a Department of Correction advisory committee created by Romney quit in protest because he refused to enact the recommendations that would have helped rehabilitate savages like Tavares before they are released back into society.
Tavares was released with “good time” - set free after 16 years of a 17- to 20-year sentence. This is a guy who, incarcerated for killing his mother with a carving knife, then allegedly threatened his father, prompting his father to sleep with “one eye open” and a loaded 9 mm under his pillow at his Florida home.
This was a guy who attacked correction officers, joined a white supremacist prison gang, and spent years in solitary confinement at Walpole’s Disciplinary Disorders Unit.
“I was afraid of him,” the elder Daniel Tavares told me last week. “And I told people in Massachusetts corrections that I was afraid of him, I told them about the letters he was writing me. The letters didn’t stop, though.”
The outrageous way we coddle criminals in this state hasn’t stopped, either.
Rudy Giuliani’s right - Romney’s record on crime is “abysmal” and it’s not just because he appointed the Superior Court judge who released Tavares on personal recognizance when he was facing charges for assaulting prison guards last summer.
When he should have been managing his affairs in Massachusetts last year, Romney was courting votes in 35 states across the country, which is part of the reason killers like Tavares are running amok.
It must be a Massachusetts thing.... Can you say Willie Horton?
Mitt’s lazy and hires cop killers ping.
Detective Schroeder was shot and killed when he surprised three men who were robbing a pawn shop.
The suspect was convicted of first degree murder but released on a technicality after serving only 12 years. After being released he committed an armed robbery and was returned to jail.
Detective Schroeder had been with the agency for 22 years. His brother, Patrolman Walter Schroeder, was shot and killed in the line of duty on September 24, 1970, while working for the same agency.
Patrolman Schroeder was shot and killed while responding to a silent alarm at a bank at 0920 hours. The bank was being robbed by a gang of anti-Vietnam War activists. As he exited his cruiser and walked towards the bank a gang member who was across the street opened fire on him with a Thompson submachine gun, striking him in the back several times. Patrolman Schroeder was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. The trigger man was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, but has been denied parole each time. The other gang members were all sentenced to prison but are now mostly freed.
Patrolman Schroeder's brother, Detective John Schroeder, was shot and killed while working for the same agency on November 30, 1973.
Patrolman Schroeder had been with the agency for 19 years and was survived by his wife and nine children.
Is Mitt engaging in some sort of activism to see that these people get early release or is this business as usual in Massachusetts.
The nation had a fit when a support of GHW Bush ran an ad about Willie Horton (but ignored Al Gore Junior’s initial effort that brought Willie “into” the campaign). And for those who’ve seen Bowling For Columbine, the clip that Michael Moore used was altered for propaganda purposes.
Did Mass. do away with representative democracy and all civil servants and suddenly put all decision making authority of government into the hands of the governor? Stupid stuff like this happens everywhere. If there is a case to made that Mitt bears direct responsibility then make it. This ‘it was in his state so he is at fault for it’ is bogus, judges and others have their roles and it isn’t Mitt’s place to micromanage their every move and review their every decision.
That would be “no” Romney is not some champion of work release programs, this is the attempt at a hit piece on the Taveres killing.
Dukakis actually proposed and implemented the work release program that led to Willie Horton’s appareance in those ads.
In this case, a judge appointed by Romney let Taveras leave prison a year early, the other person was released also through a Constitutional issue in his original trial.
Once again, hardly Romney’s fault.
And as a hit piece I must say it needs work, it is not personal enough, and there needs to be more direct quotes from Romney concerning the programs that led to the releases of those inmates.
When the Willie Horton ads were running they used direct Dukakis quotes and sound bytes to definitively tie him to Horton, along with that dopey “A better future for all mankind” speech that he gave.
WHEN IS THE PUBLIC GOING TO START HOLDING DEMOCRATS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ATTROCITIES COMMITTED BY CRIMINALS RELEASED EARLY BY THEIR JUDICIAL APPOINTEES?
Is that the basics? Did I miss any baby, little kid ‘bwaut mommy I twyied really really hard’ excuses?
Mitt can do as he like, but the facts are not his. He left the state about the same as he found it. It was if he was never hear. How that is a selling point to anyone but the ignorant is beyond me. Mitt could of stayed, he has just begun to learn. He would of gotten reelected. Even a third term and that, and rebuilding the party would of been awesome. Instead he just watched Republican political troops get slaughtered and he moved on. Not my kind of guy. To be in a political fight and find him out the door in the first round.
If no one takes the political power away from the Democrats, then they get to keep it. What you see is the deadly fruits of Democrats without meaningful competitors. It doesn’t matter what the people want, if there is no political alternative. We’ve seen this at the federal level where Republicans, now, spend faster, tax more than any Democrat Congress since WWII.
Nice reality, isn’t it?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Rudy Giuliani’s right - Romney’s record on crime is “abysmal”
Mr Sanctuary City Rooty should STFU. His record isn't any better on some of the wacko leftist affirmative action judges he appointed. Not to mention his coddling, enabling and abetting of criminal illegals in "his" city.
Immigration politics have similarly harmed New York. Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani sued all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend the city’s sanctuary policy against a 1996 federal law decreeing that cities could not prohibit their employees from cooperating with the INS. Oh yeah? said Giuliani; just watch me. The INS, he claimed, with what turned out to be grotesque irony, only aims to “terrorize people.” Though he lost in court, he remained defiant to the end. On September 5, 2001, his handpicked charter-revision committee ruled that New York could still require that its employees keep immigration information confidential to preserve trust between immigrants and government. Six days later, several visa-overstayers participated in the most devastating attack on the city and the country in history.
New York conveniently forgot the 1996 federal ban on sanctuary laws until a gang of five Mexicans—four of them illegal—abducted and brutally raped a 42-year-old mother of two near some railroad tracks in Queens. The NYPD had already arrested three of the illegal aliens numerous times for such crimes as assault, attempted robbery, criminal trespass, illegal gun possession, and drug offenses. The department had never notified the INS.
Not only did Rooty protect criminal illegal 'Hispanics', his policy protected the Muslim Terrorists who were planning the 9-11 attack in that now infamous Brooklyn Mosque.
Not defending Romney. Rooty just has no room to talk on this subject (along with a long list of others).
Like curing terminal cancer with a heart attack...
In MA, the Governor’s Council hands the the Governor a list of applicant’s qualifications. No names are on it. My how convenient. This is how the left wing defense trial lawyers get their applicants on the bench under the radar.
It is a Massachusetts thing. Liberal judges, a more liberal Parole Board, and an Ultra-Liberal Legislature. They make it hard to throw someone in jail for a full term, and no reviews of the violent criminals they release. In other words, when some con is relelased and commits yet another violent assault or rape, the Parole board is never questioned by ANYONE.
Let me add that Gay ex Senator Jarrett Barrios blamed Romney because there wasn’t a sufficient Jobs Training Program for the blood thirty killer.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
So what is it, is Tavares a man who should have been kept in jail for life even after his sentence expired, or was he a good man who could be rehabilitated if only Romney had signed on to some feel-good wasteful government spending?
Make up your mind.
Agreed, he could/should have... so could have each of the predecessors... but more likely they made deals to leave it running as it is. The Mass. Prison system and Courts are a Hackorama, for both parties.
It happens. Mitt’s on to bigger and better things. ( Care to buy a like new, used Governor?)
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