The police, too, have dug of their heels in opposition to Ms. Wu’s proposals. The mayor despatched a powerful message final summer season by appointing a brand new police commissioner, Michael A. Cox Sr., who was himself a sufferer of misconduct by his fellow Boston officers 30 years in the past. However bending the phrases of the police contract shall be exceedingly troublesome.
“With an establishment as entrenched as this Police Division, as set in its methods, you want a dragon slayer,” stated Jamarhl Crawford, a group activist who served on town’s Police Reform Activity Drive in 2020.
Crime has not surged in Boston because it has elsewhere, although there have been 17 murders within the metropolis this yr, in contrast with 10 in the identical interval in 2022. The speed stays among the many lowest in many years, and the incidence of most different forms of crimes has fallen or remained steady, making the problem much less of a preoccupation for Ms. Wu than it has been for different big-city mayors within the pandemic’s wake.
She takes a measured tone in her public feedback about policing, emphasizing officers’ morale and the problem of their work. That strategy, alongside along with her proposal for a modest enhance to the police finances subsequent yr, has not been misplaced on the union, which saves its harshest criticism for the Metropolis Council. However Ms. Wu has additionally made it clear that there shall be no contract deal with out the modifications she views as essential, even when the police contract results in arbitration.
Greeting residents on the well-attended espresso hour in East Boston, bundled up in a hooded sweatshirt bearing the title of a neighborhood soup kitchen, Ms. Wu listened intently as one after one other lined as much as voice issues.