While Kraft, a Democrat, has repeatedly said he’s never supported Trump, Wu has cornered the son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft to take stronger action to defend himself.
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Lucas: Judge Shelley Joseph has her overdue day in court
Although a strong past supporter, Gov. Maura Healey will not be among those testifying on behalf of District Court Judge Shelley Joseph on Monday.
That is the day Joseph will be before a hearing of the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct. She is on her own.
The hearing is over Joseph’s “willful judicial misconduct” in allowing a wanted illegal immigrant to escape out the back of the Newton District Court in 2018 while ICE agents waited out front to scoop him up.
Joseph was indicted in 2019 on federal charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice by then U.S Attorney Andrew Lelling, a Donald Trump appointee.
The charges were later dropped after Joe Biden defeated Trump in 2020 and took over the U.S. Justice Department.
Joseph, who had been suspended, was returned to the bench by the state Supreme Judicial Court.
The case was a forerunner of the case against Milwaukee Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, a Democrat like Joseph, who also allowed a fugitive illegal immigrant to sneak out of the back door of the courthouse to evade waiting ICE agents.
Unlike Joseph, who walked under Joe Biden, Dugan, under the Trump administration, is being prosecuted and if convicted faces six years in prison
While free of criminal charges, the Joseph case was turned over to the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct, which investigates complaints of judicial misconduct.
Joseph was appointed to the bench by then-Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican.
However, upon the outbreak of news about Joseph’s backdoor justice, Baker said he found the situation “extremely troubling.”
“Judges are not supposed to be in the business of obstructing Justice,” he said, adding that Joseph should not have been allowed to hear criminal cases until the situation was resolved.
It is probably politically wise for Healey to stay away from the hearing during ICE’s roundups of hundreds of violent illegal immigrants in Massachusetts under her nose.
But her absence is in sharp contrast to the outspoken support she and other leading Democrats, like Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, showed toward Joseph when the federal charges were first filed.
Back then, when Healey was attorney general — and the state’s “chief law enforcement officer” — she called the Joseph indictment “a radical and politically motivated attack on our state and the independence of our courts.”
That was strong stuff but apparently not strong enough to convey in person to the judicial commission, which is made up by three of her appointees, three by the Supreme Judicial Court and three by the Superior Court.
Back when Healey was attorney general, illegal immigration in Massachusetts, a magnet state with generous social welfare benefits, was still a trickle and easy to support compared to the deluge it became under Biden’s open borders policy.
Joseph could still walk, of course, as she did when the federal indictments were tossed under Biden.
While the nine-member judicial commission may make recommendations to the Supreme Judicial Court about reprimanding or disciplining Joseph, it cannot remove her from the bench.
While the SJC can prohibit Joseph from sitting on the bench or even disbar her, it cannot remove her, though she could resign.
That power rests with the governor and the eight-member Governor’s Council, all Democrats. The council, which has approval power over gubernatorial judicial nominations, can remove a judge from the bench.
But it hardly ever happens, although it could.
The last (and only) time it did happen in the modern era was in 1973 — fifty-two years ago. That was when the council, after a series of dramatic hearings, voted to remove controversial Dorchester District Court Judge Jerome Troy from the bench.
The once politically connected judge had been accused of, among other things, questionable political and business dealings while on the bench, so the council threw him out on his ear.
And there was not an illegal immigrant in sight.
Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas can be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com
Nancy Lane/Boston Herald
Gov. Maura Healey (Herald file)
Murphy: Questions don’t answer evidence
Give Karen Read supporters this much —questions raised early on were worth asking.
Like, why would Jen McCabe be awake at 2 in the morning searching the internet for information about how long it takes for someone to die in the cold? (Turns out she searched at 6:24 am, after O’Keefe’s body was found, because Read asked her to).
How can a guy suffer a fatal head injury but no broken bones or injuries to his lower body after being hit by a car? (Not uncommon for sideswipe pedestrian collisions).
How can a human arm crack a taillight and suffer scratches? (Still a bit unsettled except we know the scratches were not from a dog because there was no dog DNA and the medical examiner said the injuries were topical abrasions with no depth).
Most importantly, why would the feds open an investigation of a pending state murder investigation? (Utterly perplexing even today though it did end with no finding of misconduct by anyone).
The first trial didn’t exactly answer all these questions, but it, along with the prosecution’s case thus far in the second trial, did provide a solid pile of forensic proof that Karen Read dropped John O’Keefe off in front of 34 Fairview Ave; he was found dead feet from where she dropped him off; taillight pieces from Read’s car were found on John’s clothing and strewn around the crime scene; and John’s DNA was found on Read’s car, near the taillight.
If that were the only evidence, it would be a lot. But there’s more, including computer data from Read’s car showing that right after she dropped O’Keefe off, she gunned her car backwards at 24 miles per hour, with the gas pedal at 75% force, before leaving the scene and driving back to O’Keefe’s house.
If this isn’t enough to for you, that’s fine. And if these facts don’t answer all the questions about whether evidence was planted, and whether cops behaved badly and acted overzealously because one of their own was killed, that’s fine, too. And if you think Read was overcharged, I can see the argument. It’s fair to assume that extra efforts would be used to prosecute an accused cop-killer.
What’s not fair is pointing the finger at innocent people in the name of due process. Nothing in the Constitution says that a criminal’s fair trial rights include the right to defame an innocent person by falsely claiming that they committed murder. That said, this isn’t the first time innocent people have been falsely accused because the law in this state is ridiculously generous to criminals – to a point where judges in other states roll their eyes when lawyers cite Massachusetts law as a guiding principle.
For example, defendants in this state are allowed to hire experts to lie and the defense can then whip the public into a frenzy by promoting the lies. It’s not that there’s a rule that says “the defense can lie” it’s that there are no meaningful sanctions when they do.
If the prosecution or one of their experts lies, a judge can suppress evidence and even dismiss charges as punishment (remember Annie Dookhan?). This threat of sanctions works very well as a deterrent, but it doesn’t apply to the defense.
No matter how unfair or even unethical the conduct of a defense attorney, a judge cannot suppress evidence or punish the defendant. The Supreme Judicial Court made this clear years ago in a case where a trial judge excluded evidence favorable to the defendant because the lawyers violated the rules of discovery.
The state’s highest court reversed that decision on the grounds that the rights of the accused are more important than the deterrence of defense misconduct. The judge in the Read case, Beverly Cannone, was obviously aware of this when she recently ruled that evidence helpful to Read would not be suppressed even though the defense violated the rules.
So Read will be able to use every piece of relevant evidence that could possibly help her case – but she has a big problem named Hank Brennan. He is a highly skilled defense attorney – serving as a prosecutor just for this case – and he knows all the tricks. Even worse for Read, she has made too many damning public statements that are devastating to her case and Brennan used all of them brilliantly.
The defense does have some helpful evidence, like disgusting texts sent by the state trooper in charge of her case to a group of his buddies. Read also has in her favor the fact that Brian Higgins, an ATF agent friend of O’Keefe’s, threw his phone away in a very suspicious manner after Read kissed him and they engaged in sexual banter with by phone.
But these sideshows do nothing to diminish the physical and forensic evidence.
The jury can’t help but see this case as a straightforward drunk driving hit-and-run homicide. So the real issue is whether jurors see a murderer in Karen Read.
Most people are uncomfortable thinking that an educated white woman from suburban Massachusetts could be a killer. But if the jurors in this case can get over that discomfort, Karen Read could soon be doing a mandatory 20 years for second degree murder. Even the lesser charge is mandatory five.
Either way Read will have a long time behind bars to contemplate whether the circus was worth it.
Battenfeld: Indignant Healey, Democrats blaming Trump for migrant arrests
After encouraging illegal migrants to come to Massachusetts for political reasons, then almost bankrupting the state supporting them, an indignant Maura Healey and other Democrats are blaming President Trump for spreading fear and intimidation in the immigrant community.
Attorney General Andrea Campbell is putting out “guidance” to illegal immigrants about how they should deal with ICE, when her job is to protect actual citizens of Massachusetts.
“From arresting parents in front of their children to pulling people who present no public safety threat out of their cars in broad daylight, the aggressive ICE tactics we’re seeing across the Commonwealth do not protect the public and instead spread fear,” Campbell, who has had a meteoric rise from failed Boston mayoral candidate to AG, said. “In releasing this guidance, I strongly encourage everyone to inform themselves of their rights when they see immigration officers in their communities.”
Both Healey and Campbell are clearly siding with people who are in Massachusetts illegally, many of whom are felons or criminals.
This could come as a surprise to voters who supported them, and may explain why half of Bay State residents don’t approve of the way Healey is doing her job.
Healey – whose state has an order preventing police from assisting immigration authorities – is demanding information from ICE about the arrest of a Milford high school junior.
“Yet again, local officials and law enforcement have been left in the dark with no heads up and no answers to their questions,” Healey said in a statement. “I’m demanding that ICE provide immediate information about why he was arrested, where he is and how his due process is being protected.”
It’s not a one way street, governor.
If you want ICE’s cooperation, then cooperate with ICE.
Why should ICE tell Healey’s office or police anything? They’re not obligated to inform the governor of anything.
But after getting a beating from Healey and other Democrats, ICE came out swinging on Monday.
“Sanctuary policies put us in a position to go out into communities and look for people,” ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Acting Director Patricia Hyde said at a press conference. “When jurisdictions don’t cooperate with ICE and we don’t arrest people, in custodial arrests, then we must go out into the community. And when we go out into the community and we find others who are unlawfully here, we are going to arrest them.”
Hyde and officials said they weren’t looking for the 18-year-old Milford student, but his father, who is still in hiding.
Why hasn’t the father surrendered to ICE? Why haven’t they filed for asylum before?
Those are good questions for Democrats now demanding ICE release the 18-year-old and others arrested in sweeps across Massachusetts.
New Hampshire rehab center ex-CEO charged with harassment against journalist
The former CEO of a New Hampshire addiction rehab center has been federally charged with directing a harassment campaign against journalists and their families in response to negative coverage.
A Federal grand jury indicted Eric Spofford, 40, of Salem, N.H., and Miami, Fla., on several interstate stalking-related charges.
In March 2022, New Hampshire Public Radio published an article detailing allegations of sexual misconduct and abusive leadership against Spofford, who was a co-founder and former chief executive officer of the for-profit drug and alcohol treatment company Granite Recovery Centers.
Spofford himself isn’t accused of participating in the harassment campaign against the reporter and her editor — as well as their family members — in retaliation for the report, but instead tapping his close friend Eric Labarge to do the work for him.
In turn, Labarge enlisted Tucker Cockerline, Keenan Saniatan and Michael Waselchuck to carry out the campaign. Federal prosecutors say that Spofford paid Labarge $20,000 in cash as well as the victims’ addresses and specific ways he wanted them harassed.
The first reported instances happened in April of 2022, with Cockerline throwing a brick through the reporter’s former house in Hanover, N.H., on April 24, 2022. He also spraypainted a four-letter derogatory word beginning with “C” in large, red letters on the front door of the home.
That same day, Saniatan did the same to the editor’s home in Concord, N.H., and the reporter’s parent’s home in Hampstead, N.H.
The campaign continued the next month first when Cockerline spraypainted that same C-word in large red letters on one of the garage doors of the reporter’s parent’s home and then hours later when Waselchuck targeted the reporter’s new address in Melrose. There, he threw a brick through the window so that she would come out and see the message spray-painted in red on the side of her home: “This is just the beginning.”
The Middlesex District Attorney’s office issued a press release following that attack and released a SimpliSafe home surveillance recording of the frightening incident of the man throwing the brick. As authorities continued to investigate, they found this was an interstate campaign and federal authorities took the case over.
Labarge, Cockerline, Saniatan and Waselchuck already went through the legal system for their dirty work starting in 2023, when they were charged, and 2024, when they were sentenced, as the Herald has covered.
Cockerline was the first to be sentenced when he was slammed with two years and three months in federal prison for his role in August 2024. Waselchuck was sentenced next that September with a year and nine months in prison. Labarge was sentenced that November to three years and 10 months and the following month Saniatan was sentenced to two and a half years in prison.
Courtesy / U.S. District Court
A man later identified as Keenan Saniatan is seen in surveillance video around the time he vandalized the Hampstead, New Hampshire, home of the parents of an NHPR journalist. (Courtesy / U.S. District Court)
Originally Published:
ICE reorganizes as Trump seeks 3,000 migrant arrests per day
The agency tasked with carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign is undergoing a major staff reorganization.
In a news release Thursday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced leadership changes at the department tasked with finding, arresting and removing immigrants who no longer have the right to be in the country as well as at the agency’s investigative division.
Kenneth Genalo, who had been the acting director of Enforcement and Removal Operations, is retiring and will serve as a special government employee with ICE. Robert Hammer, who has been the acting head of Homeland Security Investigations, will transition to another leadership role at headquarters.
The agency said Marcos Charles will become the new acting head of ERO while Derek Gordon will be the acting head at HSI. ICE also announced a host of other staff changes at various departments within the agency.
ICE said the changes would “help ICE achieve President Trump and the American people’s mandate of arresting and deporting criminal illegal aliens and making American communities safe.”
The news comes after White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said on Fox News earlier this week that the administration was setting a goal of 3,000 arrests by ICE each day and that the number could go higher.
“President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day,” said Miller.
Three thousand arrests per day would mark a huge increase in daily arrests from current figures. Between Jan. 20 and May 19 the agency arrested 78,155 people, which translates to an average of 656 arrests per day.
This is the latest staff shakeup at an agency that is central to Trump’s vision of removing everyone in the country illegally. In February, the acting director of ICE was reassigned as well as two other top ICE officials.
Carrying out deportations, especially in high numbers, poses logistical challenges.
There are a limited number of enforcement and removal officers — those tasked with tracking down, arresting and removing people in the country illegally — and the number of officers has remained stagnant for years. ICE also has a limited number of detention beds to hold people once arrested and a limited number of planes to remove them from the country.
But the administration is pushing for a major funding boost as part of a package in Congress that could supercharge immigration enforcement. The plan would aim to fund the removal of 1 million immigrants annually and house 100,000 people in detention centers. The plan also calls for 10,000 more ICE officers and investigators.
Trump eyes more cuts to Harvard grants
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to divert billions in grant dollars away from Harvard University and give those funds to trade schools across the U.S., escalating his clash with the elite institution.
“I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land,” Trump said in a post on social media. “What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!”
Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Trump administration has already moved to freeze funding and block Harvard’s ability to enroll international students in an intensifying battle over what the president has cast as a failure by the Ivy League university and others to crack down on antisemitism. Harvard is the oldest and richest U.S. university with a $53 billion endowment.
Administration officials have been using that rationale to pressure schools to institute wide policy changes that university officials say infringe on free speech and their academic missions. Harvard has been front and center in Trump’s campaign, with the administration already suspending more than $2.6 billion in federal research money and saying the school won’t be able to receive new funding.
The government had demanded a series of changes as a condition of continuing its financial relationship with the university: It has to remake its governance, transform admissions and faculty hiring, which the administration has called discriminatory, as well as stop admitting international students who officials say are hostile to American values.
The administration has also said that Harvard should ensure more diverse viewpoints on a campus that it says leans too liberal. Harvard sued in April. The government has also moved to bar Harvard from enrolling foreign students, but the university won a temporary court order blocking the government from enforcing that ban.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said last week that Harvard’s responses to the government’s requests to provide information about misconduct by foreign students were insufficient.
To regain its program certification, Harvard was given 72 hours to provide six categories of information about foreign students over the past five years, including disciplinary records and video of those engaged in protests.
Harvard still hasn’t turned over the information about foreign students, with Trump calling the university “very slow in the presentation of these documents.” The information is needed, Trump said in a second post on Monday, the Memorial Day holiday, to determine “how many radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our Country.”
At Harvard nearly 6,800 students — 27% of the entire student body — come from other countries, up from 19.6% in 2006, according to the university’s data.
Harvard says its international population on campus is comprised of more than 10,000 people, which includes fellows or others coming for nondegree programs and their dependents.
Former US Rep. Charles Rangel of New York dies at 94
By DEEPTI HAJELA and CEDAR ATTANASIO
NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, an outspoken, gravel-voiced Harlem Democrat who spent nearly five decades on Capitol Hill and was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, died Monday at age 94.
His family confirmed the death in a statement provided by City College of New York spokesperson Michelle Stent. He died at a hospital in New York, Stent said.
A veteran of the Korean War, he defeated legendary Harlem politician Adam Clayton Powell in 1970 to start his congressional career. During the next 40-plus years, he became a legend himself — a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, dean of the New York congressional delegation, and in 2007, the first African American to chair the powerful Ways and Means Committee.
He stepped down from that committee amid an ethics cloud, and the House censured him in 2010. But he was reelected. He went on to serve in Congress until 2017, when he decided not to seek reelection.
Rangel was one of the Gang of Four — African American political figures who wielded great power in New York City and state politics, along with David Dinkins, New York City’s first black mayor; Percy Sutton, who was Manhattan Borough president, and Basil Paterson, a deputy mayor and New York secretary of state.
Few could forget Rangel after hearing him talk. His distinctive gravel-toned voice and wry sense of humor were a memorable mix.
That voice — one of the most liberal in the House — was loudest in opposition to the Iraq War, which he branded a “death tax” on poor people and minorities. In 2004, he tried to end the war by offering a bill to restart the military service draft. Republicans called his bluff and brought the bill to a vote, and even Rangel voted against it.
A year later, Rangel’s fight over the war became bitterly personal with then-Vice President Dick Cheney.
Rangel said Cheney, who has a history of heart trouble, might be too sick to perform his job.
“I would like to believe he’s sick rather than just mean and evil,” Rangel said. After several such verbal jabs, Cheney hit back, saying Rangel was “losing it.”
The charismatic Harlem lawmaker rarely backed down from a fight after he first entered the House in 1971 as a dragon slayer of sorts, having unseated Powell in the Democratic congressional primary in 1970. The flamboyant elder Powell, a city political icon first elected to the House in 1944, was ill and haunted by scandal at the time.
Rangel became leader of the main tax-writing committee of the House, which has jurisdiction over programs including Social Security and Medicare, after the 2006 midterm elections when Democrats ended 12 years of Republican control of the chamber. But in 2010, a House ethics committee conducted a hearing on 13 counts of alleged financial and fundraising misconduct over issues surrounding financial disclosures and use of congressional resources.
He was convicted of 11 ethics violations. The House found he had failed to pay taxes on a vacation villa, filed misleading financial disclosure forms and improperly solicited donations for a college center from corporations with business before his committee.
The House followed the ethics committee’s recommendation that he be censured, the most serious punishment short of expulsion.
Rangel looked after his constituents, sponsoring empowerment zones with tax credits for businesses moving into economically depressed areas and developers of low income housing.
“I have always been committed to fighting for the little guy,” Rangel said in 2012 when he announced he was running for reelection.
During the Korean War, he had earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. He would always say that he measured his days, even the troubled ones around the ethics scandal, against the time in 1950 when he survived being wounded as other soldiers didn’t make it.
It became the title of his autobiography: “And I Haven’t Had A Bad Day Since.”
A high school dropout, he went to college on the G.I. Bill, getting degrees from New York University and St. John’s University Law School.
Originally Published:
‘I felt called to serve’: Marine severely injured in evacuation of Afghanistan receives Bay State honor
When the planes hit the twin towers on September 11, 2001, Tyler Vargas-Andrews was just three years old.
He couldn’t have known it then, but the events of that day and the subsequent decades-long war which followed would shape his life in profound and lasting ways — far more than the average American or even most veterans.
Vargas-Andrews, 27, was a 23-year-old U.S. Marine sergeant when he became one of the last U.S. casualties of the nearly 20 year war in Afghanistan. And on Thursday, he was honored by Massachusetts Fallen Heroes with their 2025 Daniel H. Petithory Award, named for the first soldier from the Bay State to die during the war.
The first and the last
Sgt. 1st Class Petithory was killed by friendly fire in early December of 2001, and was among the very first casualties of Operation Enduring Freedom. The bomb that took Petithory and two other U.S. service members also injured the future President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai.
At the time, Vargas Andrews was a toddler and too young to know his country was at war.
Even though he didn’t come from a military family, Vargas-Andrews said that he knew he wanted to serve his country from a young age. He went to Vanden High School, a Fairfield, California, a district also attended by the children of service members stationed at nearby Travis Air Force Base, until the 10th grade.
It was there, he told the Herald, that he saw what service meant, with “one if not both” of his friends’ parents deployed repeatedly as the Global War on Terror entered a second decade.
With the conflict building through his entire childhood, the desire to serve eventually became impossible to ignore.
“I chose a path where I could do the most good for others — I felt called to serve — and I’m grateful to say I did it,” he said.
He enlisted in the Marine Corps in August of 2017 and eventually was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, known as “the Professionals.” He was a rifleman, like all Marines, but also a sniper.
According to Congressional records describing his service, he was a “professionally instructed gunmen and radio operator for his sniper team.” According to Vargas-Andrews, he spent his enlistment doing what all Marines try to do in “chasing the legacy of those who came before us.”
It was “almost four years to the day” after his enlistment, he told the Herald, when he was assigned the task of helping to evacuate U.S. personnel, assets, and allies from Afghanistan at Hamid Karzai International Airport, named for the now-former President injured nearly 20 years earlier on the day Petithory died.
Records show he and his team “aided in the evacuation and processing of over 200 United States Nationals at Abbey Gate in Kabul, Afghanistan and were the primary Ground Reconnaissance and Observation asset throughout Evacuation Operations at Abbey Gate.”
As the evacuation was underway on August 26, 2021, a suicide bomber detonated explosives outside the Abbey Gate. Vargas-Andrews was among the dozens of U.S. troops caught in the blast, which claimed the lives of 13 service members and at least 169 Afghan civilians.
Vargas-Andrews was severely injured. He lost his right arm and left leg, and needed 49 surgeries. He spent months in recovery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
He wasn’t done there, though.
Vargas-Andrews has spent the time since he was medically retired from military service attempting to help his fellow veterans learn to live with their own wounds, and heal where they can. He’s testified before Congress, become a fitness advocate, and has run in marathons across the country.
Coming full circle
Choosing Vargas-Andrews to receive the Daniel H. Petithory Award this year, according to Dan Magoon, the executive director at Massachusetts Fallen Heroes, was a “no-brainer.”
“Tyler is an amazing, resilient warrior,” Magoon told the Herald. Vargas-Andrews, Magoon said, has dedicated his life post-service to his “brother and sister veterans and gold-star families.”
“And he’s used his experience and the tragedy that he lived through to share that message of resiliency. He has a motto: ‘you are never a victim.’ The way he carries himself and does more for others makes him — not only an exceptional Marine — but an unbelievable human being,” he said.
Vargas-Andrews, in speaking with the Herald ahead of Thursday’s award presentation, was remarkably positive considering his tragic circumstances. It’s not always easy, he explained when asked how he manages to keep his spirits up, but continuing to serve helps a great deal.
“I owe it to my friends who died to try to be happy and live a good life,” he said. “The Marine Corps has shaped me into the man that I am today and it’s given me the people I love most in my life.”
One killed in Dorchester double shooting
One man has died and another victim remains in critical condition following a shooting in Dorchester on Saturday night, Boston Police reported Sunday.
At about 9:47 p.m. Saturday night, police responded to a shot spotter activation around 38 Franklin Hill Ave. in Dorchester, BPD stated.
At the scene, officers found two victims with gunshot wounds. Both victims were taken to a local hospital with “life threatening injuries,” police said.
On of the victims, identified as an adult male, was pronounced dead at the hospital, BPD said. The other remains in critical condition as of Sunday morning.
Boston Police said the Homicide Unit is actively investigation the case, and anyone with information is encouraged to call the unit at 617-343-4470.
Tips may also be reported anonymously through the CrimeStoppers Tip Line at 1-800-494-TIPS, by texting “TIP” to CRIME, or online. The Boston Neighborhood Trauma Team offers free and confidential support 24/7 for those affected via the number 617-431-0125.