Hearing sought on high-powered gun ban
City Council President Michael F. Flaherty plans to ask the council today to hold a public hearing on banning a high-powered handgun that fires rounds capable of penetrating some kinds of body armor. Police warned officers about the FN Five-Seven after it was used in at least two street shootings last month. US Representative Martin T. Meehan and state Senator Jarrett T. Barrios have also condemned the gun. Barrios said he intended to introduce legislation to outlaw the gun in the Bay State because he said only its large magazine keeps it from being sold here.
City officials and Stop Handgun Violence will unveil a new antigun message today on a big billboard along the Massachusetts Turnpike. The billboard will criticize the gun laws of states such as New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine, saying that they and 29 other states allow private owners to sell guns without criminal background checks of buyers, contributing to gun trafficking and crime in Massachusetts. Meanwhile, a local youth ministry is calling on parents and businesses to participate in a new gun buyback program. Members of Youth In Crisis Ministries sent letters this week to dozens of churches and local businesses, asking them to donate vouchers to those who turn in guns. Unlike other buyback programs, the program is aimed more toward parents than to youth, said the Rev. Shaun Harrison, the organization's executive director.
Saying they did not have enough evidence to prove his guilt, Suffolk County prosecutors dropped murder charges yesterday against a man accused of participating in the 1997 fatal beating of a woman in a Roxbury housing project, according to a press release. Wanda Rivera, 29, of Cambridge, was found behind the Academy Homes housing development and prosecutors said that DNA matching 33-year-old Demetrius Bowers was found in the apartment where she was attacked. Prosecutors said they could prove that Bowers was in the apartment at some point, but not that he was involved in the Jan. 12, 1997 assault.
Deval Patrick, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, called yesterday for immediate public release of data being collected on possible movement in the roof of the Interstate 93 tunnels. Patrick, reacting to a story in the Boston Globe, asked the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which oversees the Big Dig, to establish a public review process of the data. Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, who is also a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, is heading the state's investigation of the $14.6 billion Big Dig project. Engineers have inserted sensitive instruments into the roof at four locations to determine whether cold weather caused steel girders to shrink and then pull away from the walls enough to allow water to leak into the tunnels. The data are covered by a confidentiality agreement, although the attorney general's office said it would eventually be made public.
Three Massachusetts residents pleaded guilty last month to charges related to transporting a minor for prostitution in several New England states. Robert Williams, 48, Dawn Young, 40, and Brooke Denman, 29, pleaded guilty to using a minor for prostitution activities in Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, according to the US attorney's office. The minor was 13 through 15 years old during the crimes, which took place from October 2000 to September 2002. Williams and Young took some or all of the minor's prostitution earnings while Young also operated an escort service in which the minor received calls for prostitution, the prosecutors said. Williams pleaded guilty Monday to charges including sex trafficking of children and transporting a minor to engage in prostitution. Young pleaded guilty Feb. 9 to charges including sex trafficking of children. Denman pleaded guilty Feb. 9 to conspiracy and sex trafficking of children, said prosecutors. The three will be sentenced in May, said the DA's office.
QUINCY
The Quincy Historical District Commission has rejected a proposal by United First Parish Church to hang a massive banner supporting same-sex marriage outside the storied old church, which once included John Hancock and John Adams in its congregation. On Monday night, a majority of commission members objected to the proposed banner's 34-by-4-foot size. The Unitarian-Universalist church will next make its case to hang the banner for a 90-day period to the city's Zoning Board of Appeals.
