Chuck Turner Statement 4/22/09

Message to Supporters
City Councilor Chuck Turner
April 22nd 2009

Dear Supporters,

As I announced earlier this year, I plan to run for a sixth term for the District 7 seat on the Council and if successful plan to run for a seventh term in 2011. However, I do not plan to run for the District 7 seat in 2013. Seven terms I believe will be enough to achieve a number of the objectives that led me to run in the first place. I will not go into those details at this time but will certainly expand on these objectives as the campaign moves forward.

Specifically, I am asking for you to join me this Saturday, April 25th from 1-3pm at the First Church in Roxbury where we used to hold our District 7 Roundtables. The meeting will be held in a basement meeting room in the new building and will focus on gathering signatures which will begin on April 28th when we will bring the petitions from City Hall to the District Office. Since there are four candidates for Mayor, it will be important to gather the 191 signatures quickly that we will need to have a place on the ballot.

My plan is to have at least 400 signatures gathered between Tuesday the 28th and Sunday May 3rd so that we can turn in at least 200 good signatures on Monday, May 4th.  By making a quick hit, we can avoid waiting until all the Mayoral signatures are counted to be assured that we have the necessary numbers.  I don’t think that we will have any problems, but would like to end the suspense early.

Also, I invite you to join me at the office of the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers (Mamleo)  at 61 Columbia Road on Tuesday the 28th for a press conference that will begin at 10 a.m.  The press conference has three objectives:

1)       The release is a study of homicides in the City over the last twenty years that Darrin Howell of my staff has put together. The study has detailed information on all homicides in Boston during the last ten years including the name, age, race, and sex of all killed as well as similar information for all those arrested. We also have information on the weapon, the location, the relationship, as well as trial results for those arrested.

2)       Announce the formation of a coalition, Community United for Change, which will use the data to start a process of bringing the community together periodically to reflect on the data. Through this process of reflection, we hope to generate recommendations on what we as residents need to do to bring peace to our community as well as generate recommendations on what changes the police need to make in their approach.

3)       Introduce to Boston, Ron Hampton of the National Association of Black Police, and Dr. James Bell of Jackson State University in Mississippi who have agreed to work with us on this process.

The members of the group are the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, Mamleo, the Nubian Voices of Experience in Public Safety, the Nation of Islam, and the offices of Councilor Yancey and myself. I will share more on this new initiative in the coming weeks. We will be distributing the study by email after its release on Tuesday so email Darrin.Howell@cityofboston.gov next week if you would like a copy.

In terms of my legal issues, we are still in a struggle with Asst US Attorney McNeil over the gag order. When Judge Hillman ruled on March 16th that I had to sign a gag order in order to receive discovery, I said to my lawyers that I was adamantly opposed to signing the order since I believe that it would put me in jeopardy of arrest if I continued to speak out. I acknowledged that such a strategy would make their defense more difficult but I don’t believe AUSA McNeil have any evidence beyond that which is in the affidavit.

However, Asst US Attorney McNeil was not satisfied and filed a motion to force my lawyer to sign the protection order so that I have to take “their evidence”. His argument is that if I don’t accept the discovery now, I will ask for a continuance and delay trial later. Obviously, he is saying to the judge and the world that I don’t have any rights that he or the court has to respect. We have sent in an Opposition to the motion, but I have also said to my lawyers that it doesn’t matter what the judge decides, I will not accept the discovery under those conditions. So the plot thickens. By the way, Sullivan resigned as of Sunday. We have also filed a motion for a reconsideration of Judge Hillman’s approval of the original gag order. (We will send copies of the orders, our responses, and accompanying press statements soon.)

Hope to see you Saturday.

chuck