MAYOR WALSH ON THE TERROR ATTACK,
Mayor Martin J. Walsh joined Boston Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” program yesterday to talk about Wednesday’s terror attack in New York City and what preventive measures city officials are taking when it comes to combating terrorism.
Q: Have you spoken to Mayor Bill De Blasio?
A: I shot him a text yesterday, just because I know he was getting inundated with calls. I just said, “Our thoughts and prayers are with you and the people of New York” and he shot back a text a little later in the day, “Thanks pal.” It’s just a horrible situation . ... It’s scary when you think about the series of events that have happened this year alone. We’ve had trucks driving through crowds in Paris, we’ve had buses driving through crowds in Paris, we had a lone shooter in Vegas . ... We had this driver plowing through a crowd, we had the Charlottesville (Va.) protest where somebody drove a car into a crowd. So when you think about all of these different things, you think of how to protect the people of Boston ... We’ve changed the way we do things ... It’s just this constant evolution.
Q: You bring up the Las Vegas shooter. A lot of people were pretty angry that he wasn’t called a terrorist right away.
A: He’s a terrorist. I think they’re terrorists, I think they’re cowards, I think they’re punks. They’re anything you want to call them. I mean they’re horrible acts when you hurt innocent people. I mean all of these acts that you’ve seen, whether it be in another country or in another city here in America, these are all cowardly acts.
Q: What did you and police Commissioner William B. Evans talk about?
A: The commissioner was updating me as time went by . ... We will sit down and talk about what happens in Boston . ... Every week we’ve got something going on in Boston with large crowds of people and we want to make sure they’re safe — especially at high-profile events. When we had Open Newbury Street, we put large trucks on all the cross streets. That’s something that we wouldn’t have had to do 15 years ago.