Politics

“The progressive base of the Democratic Party is soft on crime and doesn’t want to hold people accountable for their actions,” City Councilor Ed Flynn alleged. 

A Boston city councilor criticized progressives as “soft on crime” after a man who was still on probation for a 2020 shooting allegedly gunned down motorists Monday on Memorial Drive. 

Tyler Brown, 46, pleaded not guilty to several assault and firearms charges Thursday as prosecutors recounted his checkered criminal history, including multiple convictions for violent offenses. 

“There is absolutely no way this person should have been released on probation and/or parole,” Boston City Councilor Ed Flynn told Fox News. “When you have a lengthy criminal record and you constantly continue to be convicted and engaged in criminal activities, there should be a long prison sentence for someone that continues to disregard rules of society.”

When Brown was convicted for firing several rounds at police officers in the South End in May 2020, Suffolk County prosecutors cited his criminal record as they asked for a prison sentence of 10 to 12 years. Judge Janet L. Sanders, who has since retired, instead gave Brown five to six years in prison, with credit for time served. 

“I’m kind of taking a chance on you,” she told Brown at the time, according to The Boston Globe. 

“I can’t look into a crystal ball and figure out what’s going to happen once you get out,” Sanders added. “But I do understand that I am taking on risk here. And I just pray that … my intuitions are right and that you have the ability, the smarts, the will, the support — not to go out there and endanger other people like you have in the past.”

Almost six years to the day after the South End shooting, however, prosecutors say Brown armed himself with an “assault-style rifle” and began firing erratically on a busy Cambridge roadway. Speaking to Fox News on Wednesday, Flynn argued that cases like Brown’s feed into a perception in Boston that the justice system “works for the criminals.”  

“For the criminal justice system to work, we have to hold people accountable for their actions,” he said. “It might be politically incorrect to do that, but we have to provide a safe and healthy environment for residents of the city, for our police, for our neighborhood, and for our neighbors. Ignoring violent crime is not an answer; that only adds to the problems we have here in Boston.”

Flynn, a Democrat, also accused some in the Democratic Party of ignoring local crime, which he said destabilizes neighborhoods and contributes to a decline in quality of life.

“The progressive base of the Democratic Party is soft on crime and doesn’t want to hold people accountable for their actions,” he alleged. 

“I think residents are pushing back against our soft-on-crime policies, and they’re asking for accountability and responsibility,” Flynn added. “And I take that recommendation very seriously.”