Boston reverend rejects 'defund police,' demands mayoral candidates stop 'terror' in Black neighborhoods

A longtime religious leader in Boston is demanding that mayoral candidates address rising gun violence in Massachusetts’ capital after a recent incident sprayed 40 bullets across a neighborhood street, arguing that "calls for defunding police and the elimination of school police are absurd."

Though no one was injured in that incident, Rivers is still offering a $10,000 reward after the tragic fatal shooting of 73-year-old grandmother Delois Brown in April, who was killed by strayed gunfire while sitting on her Dorchester porch. Still no arrests have been made.  And another shootout in July involved an exchange of 37 gunshots, and four pistols recovered. Meanwhile, there is a bill in the state legislature pushed by Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan to make firing at homes a felony offense and upping the penalty to a five-year sentence or $10,000 fine.  "There has been no substantial response from the mayoral candidates to this unbelievable display of violence in the poorest and Blackest neighborhoods in this city," Rivers said in a statement to the Boston Herald before the upcoming press conference. "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."