A prominent Boston reverend has come out against the “defund the police” movement and challenged mayoral candidates to release comprehensive plans to combat gun violence.
“Calls for defunding police and the elimination of school police are absurd,” said Rev. Eugene Rivers just days after more than three dozen gunshots were fired, hitting vehicles and buildings on Monday night, according to the Boston Herald.
Rivers, who will host a press conference in Dorchester on Thursday, issued a “moral challenge to the mayoral candidates” to address “violence in our black neighborhoods.”
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The reverend called the shooting an “unbelievable display of violence in the poorest and blackest neighborhoods in this city” and decried the lack of “substantial response from the mayoral candidates.”
“Any mayoral candidate that fails to present a systematic, evidence-based policy prescription and program to reduce the violence, which is plaguing Boston’s poorest neighborhoods, should not be elected to the office of leading executive of the city,” he said.
Although there were no people shot and no injuries reported in Monday’s shooting, law enforcement officials said six vehicles and two buildings were hit.
“Terror is rising in the neighborhoods where this explosion of gun violence is occurring,” Rivers said. “Every one of the candidates seeking the office of mayor must be publicly challenged regarding their indifference to the well-being of the most vulnerable residents of the city whose principal offense is that they are poor and black.”
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In addition to his most recent call against gun violence, Rivers helped raise $10,000 as a reward for anyone who can provide information leading to an arrest in connection to the fatal shooting of 73-year-old grandmother Delois Brown. Brown was killed on April 10 while sitting on her porch, but no arrests have been made in connection to her death.
