CARR: Mass. pols don’t crack down on crime

Judge removal garners limited support

We will soon know just how serious Massachusetts politicians really are about cracking down on the opioid epidemic that killed nearly 2,000 of their constituents last year.

The answer will be: Not very.

Because when the Legislature is offered the choice of beginning the process of removing a judge who can’t even bring himself to wristslap major Dominican heroin dealers, not to mention cop killers and sexual predators, they will blink.

Before we go any further, you need to understand the rationale of Salem Superior Court Judge Timothy Q. Feeley for releasing Manuel Soto-Vittini, a Dominican heroin dealer.

These are the brilliant jurist’s own words, transcribed verbatim:

“Uh and um, I uh am uh also um giving uh consideration to the fact that uh this was not a uh drug addict who was uh dealing to fund his um uh addiction uh but rather was a person who made some uh terrible uh judgments and decisions but uh made them for um reasons that at least he thought uh were helpful um to his uh family uh and that’s a little uh different than um the usual uh defendant that presents before this court.”

He was caught with 40 bags of heroin and some cocaine in a hidden compartment of a black Volvo well-known to the local cops because residents had been complaining about his incessant drug dealing for weeks, if not months. This Dominican with the 10thgrade education was ruining the neighborhood, not to mention the neighbors.

But Feeley, who has had his snout in the public trough since 1990, scoffed that it was just a “money crime.” Ya know, judge, some of us believe it’s likewise a money crime when you can give $2,200 to two Democrat pols and then land, as a middle-aged journeyman in the U.S. attorney’s office, a job (as opposed to work) that will soon pay $178,000 a year for 35 weeks of showing up.

This Dominican heroin dealer has been vacationing in the U.S. for 15 years, but he still needs a translator in the courtroom. It was like some low-grade comedy out of a Tom Wolfe novel. When Feeley asks him how old he is, the translator puts the question to him in Spanish.

“Thirty-three,” the foreign heroin dealer replies, in English.

“Thirty-three,” repeats the translator, in English.

The judge is very worried about the family life, if you can call it that, of the heroin dealer and his girlfriend — not wife, but girlfriend.

It was left to the assistant district attorney, Kristen Buxton, to try to enlighten Judge Feeley that the heroin dealer was using his latest child, conceived after his indictment, to work on Feeley’s white-guilt feelings about breaking up the Dominican “family.”

(At least now the welfare department knows who the father of this latest child is, so I’m assuming Tall Deval Baker will make sure the Dominican pays his child support for both children, just like you or I would have to do. Right? Right?)

“That was his choice,” Buxton said of the second baby, “and for there to be any maneuvering to accommodate that conscious decision he made is not a good social or criminal justice policy.”

How could Feeley even think of sending this nice young heroin dealer, whose brother is also a convicted heroin dealer, to prison, if it means he is to be deported back to the Third World hellhole where he belongs.

By now the prosecutor was practically pleading with the judge to wake up.

“I think it’s a dangerous view to take,” she said, “that being someone who is not a U.S. citizen is somehow mitigating when you’re talking about dealing a very dangerous substance … . He was in the ongoing business of dealing heroin.”

So now a handful of Republican state reps introduce a resolution to impeach Feeley and remove him from the bench. As of Friday night, they had rounded up exactly one Democrat cosponsor — Colleen Garry of Dracut. One! Out of more than 120 Democrats in the House.

That’s how serious the State House is about doing something to stop this plague.

One final point: Despite what you have may have read, Judge Feeley did impose some very tough penalties on the Dominican heroin dealer. He sentenced him to not one, but two sentences of probation, to be served concurrently. Plus the judge hit him with some big-time fines — $90 for the witness fee and $150 for the drug analysis fee.

Your Honor, we just have one final question. Can Soto-Vittini pay the $240 with his girlfriend’s EBT card?