Defend law enforcement
The legacy of law enforcement, including ICE, in Massachusetts must feature the progress made against MS-13 and should give cynical politicians pause when the next occasion to deride those who protect us presents itself.
As The Associated Press reported, 60 members of MS-13 were rounded up by the FBI and state and local police in January 2016 in the largest single offensive against the ultra-violent gang. “Operation Mean Streets” was led by more than 400 officers from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the state police, and local, municipal police forces.
The raid is estimated to have neutralized about one third of the ranks of MS-13 in Massachusetts and put a dent in its entire East Coast operation. Sixteen defendants were charged in six killings from 2014 to 2016. Forty-nine gang members have been convicted and are serving long jail sentences.
“It gave us a restart,” Chelsea police Capt. Keith Houghton said of the raid. “We now have a chance to work with new kids coming to our community to show them things are different. You can come here and have a chance to be a normal kid and not get mixed up in gangs.”
“Operation Mean Streets” was in the works for three years and featured an informant who infiltrated the gang and recorded members bragging about the myriad crimes they’d committed.
Since the Boston raid, violent crime in the communities where MS-13 roams the streets has dropped. However, the vicious gang is trying to reconstitute its former presence and law enforcement will have its work cut out for it.
Prominent politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Ayanna Pressley have called for the abolishment of ICE, one of the agencies that was involved in “Operation Mean Streets,” and both have referred to the criminal justice system as “racist.”
We must ask that our elected leaders show law enforcement the respect they have earned doing the dangerous work to protect society from barbaric street gangs like MS-13. On a daily basis, officers put their lives on the line and our only obligation is to support them. Certainly we all can and must resolve to do that.