Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins joined Boston Public Radio on Friday to discuss her office's investigations into two possible hate crimes that occurred in Winthrop and Brighton within days of each other.
She also discussed her push to overturn tens of thousands of drug convictions tied to the scandal-ridden Hinton drug lab.
On the double homicide in Winthrop and stabbing in Brighton investigations
On June 26, Nathan Allen of Winthrop fatally shot Air Force veteran Ramona Cooper and retired State Trooper David Green, who were both Black. Investigators found racist and antisemitic writings from Allen, and say the murders may have been motivated by hate, noting that he'd walked past a number of white pedestrians before targeting the victims.
Then, on July 1, Rabbi Shlomo Noginski was attacked outside of a Jewish school in Brighton. Rollins said the alleged perpetrator, Khaled Awad is undergoing a mental health evaluation.
Both crimes occurred in broad daylight, and against a backdrop of a rise in hate crimes nationally. Rollins said she has visited Noginski in Brighton, who is recovering, as well as the Jewish community in Winthrop.
"Justifiably, [the Jewish community is] very afraid or fearful of this rise in antisemitism," she said on BPR.
Co-host Jim Braude asked Rollins if there's any connection to the crimes, given the short timeline between them. Rollins declined to comment specifically on those two cases, but put the cases in context of an uptick in violence against Asian Americans and increasing antisemitism across the country. She urged people to look out for each other.
"Things start with a thought, then maybe go to a whisper, then a word, then a loud statement, then an act," she said. "Yes, it's a huge jump to go from an act to a double homicide or a violent stabbing in broad daylight in a beautiful park in front of a Hebrew school in Brighton, but we have to really start being more aware and taking better care of each other."
On the push to overturn tens of thousands of drug convictions tied to the Hinton state drug lab
Rollins' office has asked the state's highest court to decide whether new trials should be granted for anyone whose evidence was tested at the Hinton drug lab — not just the cases involving disgraced chemists Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan, who were convicted of tainting evidence. Rollins told Boston Public Radio her move comes not just because of the two "bad actors," but due to the broad failures within the lab and widespread mismanagement.
"I am not interested in putting my name on anything that is defending behavior that came out of the Hinton lab," she said. "We've wasted tens of millions of dollars, thousands and thousands of man and woman hours on this. Had we simply done what was right in the beginning... we would have saved the Commonwealth tons of money, and maybe could have used some of this time and effort to solve some unsolved homicides, of which we have over 1,300 in Boston."
Three drug lab prosecutors — Anne Kaczmarek, John Verner, and Kris Foster — have also been found to commit intentional misconduct and rule violations. Rollins said all three of them at some point have worked in the Suffolk District Attorney's office; Verner, who Rollins said works in the homicide unit, is still on the job. Verner was cleared of a majority of wrongdoing charges, but was found to have wrongfully failed to disclose material and to sufficiently supervise Kaczmarek, according to Commonwealth Magazine.
"John is not supervising anyone in our office right now, and he is supervised well," Rollins said. "And John is a very good lawyer and I do believe there was a mistake that was made and fault that was there, but I also want to make sure that I am not the person that's externally saying we're going to give people as many chances as possible and then with my own staff saying, sort of, 'off with your head.'"
On a city-commissioned report on Boston Police's handling of Patrick Rose
Acting Mayor Kim Janey promised a review into Patrick Rose — a former officer and one-time head of the patrolman's union accused of sexually abusing children during his tenure on the force — by mid-June. According to a GBH News report, more than a month after that deadline has passed, no report has been made public.
Rollins said on BPR that Janey has been more transparent than any other mayor before her, citing the acting mayor's decision to release some redacted documents from Rose's lengthy internal affairs file.
But she also chided Janey for missing the self-imposed deadline.
"If you give the public a date you're going to do something by, you gotta do it by that date... or you have to let them know that date has now changed and here's the reason why," she said.
