Updated at 9:15 a.m. Feb. 21
In her first regular appearance on GBH's Boston Public Radio since becoming Massachusetts' new attorney general, Andrea Campbell outlined her plans for restructuring that office and tackling issues that might strike some as falling outside the AG's purview.
Asked by host Jim Braude if Massachusetts' gun-control laws are jeopardized by the U.S. Supreme Court's established antipathy to gun control, Campbell said her office has already filed briefs against challenges to existing state restrictions — and that, in the coming months, she plans to roll out a new gun-enforcement unit inside the attorney general's office.
"There is a way in which the AG's office, outside of advocacy in the courts and filing briefs, could be working with our police chiefs and others to educate folks, including advocates, on what their rights are," Campbell said. "How they can get a license, how they can't. Work with them to get ghost guns off the street, which is a major issue — these are firearms in our communities, and they are prevalent, that are not tracked in any way. And of course, go after those who are hoarding hundreds of guns or illegally selling them.
"This unit will be critical to that, and we're beginning to have conversations with folks about how to set that up," Campbell added.
Campbell said she's also planning to roll out reproductive-justice and police-accountability units in the AG's office. As with the gun-enforcement unit proposal, both of those ideas were featured in Campbell's campaign pitch to voters.
The attorney general also vowed to ramp up existing efforts aimed at closing the racial wealth gap in Massachusetts by continuing to crack down on wage theft and bringing the AG's full powers to bear on housing.
"Housing ... is a tool to help you build your wealth for the next generation and the generation after that," Campbell said. "We have a neighborhood-renewal division in the office that uses receivership powers and other powers to work with municipalities to look at blighted properties in your community to turn that into homeownership opportunities.
"We can absolutely do it in more municipalities. ... Housing could be more at the forefront," she said.
"I'm even looking to hire someone who will own that sort of portfolio of work around closing that gap and building economic prosperity," Campbell added. "And I don't know that any AG office in the country is really driving that home [yet]."
In the wake of a Boston Globe report suggesting that a notorious scandal at a state crime lab in Jamaica Plain may have been bigger than previously reported, Braude asked Campbell if she would consider throwing out thousands of additional convictions linked to lab personnel who could have been prosecuted but weren't.
Campbell's reply, essentially, was: we'll see.
"I am sharing very little right now, because we are still ... getting a handle on all the information," she said. "Of course, the Globe has some ... but the facts and the full picture are not always captured in the article."
Campbell was less measured when asked if she would support an independent investigation into the death of Juston Root, who was fatally shot by police three years ago after being chased through Boston and Brookline. The officers involved were subsequently cleared of wrongdoing, most recently by the Suffolk County District Attorney's office.
"We are in conversations with his sister," Campbell said, noting that she previously discussed the case with Roots' sister as a member of the Boston City Council.
"We share in the fact that, obviously, this was her brother. I've lost a brother and felt like there was no accountability, no justice. ... We are actively in conversations to see what we can do."
Campbell's twin brother Andre died while being held in pretrial custody by the state Department of Correction, and that loss — and the disparate arcs of their lives — has featured prominently in her approach to politics.
Correction: This story was updated to correct the spelling of Juston Root's first name.
