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The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • B4

Publication:
The Boston Globei
Location:
Boston, Massachusetts
Issue Date:
Page:
B4
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

B4 Metro The Boston Globe FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 2016 Dozens charged in crackdown on four gangs charged are now considered fugitives, authorities said. Jonathan Pena, 22, was arrested at his family's apartment in East Boston. His mother, Juana Pena, 51, said she was shocked when about five officers entered her apartment around 5 a.m. "I was asleep," she said in Spanish. "I was startled awake when police grabbed me, put my arms behind my back, and then they put cable ties on my hands." Rosa Tejada, who identified herself as Jonathan Pena's aunt, said she was shocked by her nephew's arrest.

"It's very calm around here," Tejada said. "There's more crime elsewhere, but here is very calm." Carmen Ortiz said, flanked by US and state law enforcement officers at J. Joseph Moakley Courthouse in South Boston. The gangs, which have a heavy presence in East Boston, Brockton, Chelsea, and Everett, were identified as the 18th Street Gang, the East Side Money Gang, the Boylston Gang, and the Orient Heights Gang. More than 70 firearms were seized during the investigation, along with cocaine, crack, and heroin and about $100,000 in cash, Ortiz said.

"A dangerous pipeline of drugs and guns was disrupted and dismantled," Ortiz said, crediting several law enforcement agencies. Mayor Martin J. Walsh and Police Commissioner William Evans said the arrests will help reduce gang and drug violence. "Many of these guns you see in front of us would have taken young people's lives," Walsh said, motioning toward nearly 40 firearms confiscated. preventing firearms trafficking," Kumor said.

"We have been working to identify how these firearms were illegally trafficked, how they went from legal commerce to illegal commerce, and ultimately ending up in the hands of criminals and trigger pullers." Jassel Castillo, 21, of Boston, an alleged member of the Boylston Gang, boasted about his involvement in a nonfatal shooting last March in Roslin-dale, investigators said. Five days after the shooting, he was recorded as saying, "That hit, I just missed, bro," according to a federal affidavit. "I swear to God when that target seen me, he seen death." Investigators also targeted Oscar Oliva, who authorities say sold firearms to undercover officers. Of the 66 people charged, 43 were arrested Thursday, prosecutors said. Three were already in custody.

The remaining individuals ijL kEADERS SUMMIT OlSi-CHINA Federal, state raids targeted operations across region ByKathyMcCabe GLOBE STAFF and Miguel Otarola GLOBE CORRESPONDENT More than 400 law enforcement officers carried out a flurry of predawn raids in the Boston area Thursday morning, rousing suspected gang members from their sleep in the culmination of a 14-month investigation into drugs and firearms trafficking. Federal and state prosecutors announced charges against 66 people in the far-reaching probe, which targeted members of four street gangs whose operations stretched from Lynn to Brockton. "I believe we have taken out the leadership," US Attorney Walsh stuck to business in Beijing WALSH Continued from Page Bl ter crackers and a turkey sandwich he smuggled from Dorchester. He devoured rice and especially noodles at breakfast, and sat at the head table at a seven-course state dinner, where he sampled dumplings and red bean sauce and mushroom soup. "I tried using chopsticks on the plane," Walsh said, recalling the 14-hour Boston-to-Beijing flight on Hainan Airlines.

"I wasn't too successful." The mayor made one other brief excursion as a tourist, when a State Department security team drove him to Tiananmen Square, where he squinted in the smog as he posed for the requisite iPhone photograph in front of the portrait of Mao Zedong. Walsh marveled at the police presence and the aggres-sive street sweepers who seemed to catch scraps of paper before they could hit the ground. "I would have liked to see some of the other sites in China, obviously," Walsh said. "You don't come to China all that often." The trip, paid for by the private foundation Bloomberg Philanthropies, was an effort to build bonds between urban leaders in the United States and China as they work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reverse climate change. Walsh attended a summit that took so much of his time, he never needed to obtain the local currency, known as renminbi or Chinese yuan.

(He did use his CLIMATE i I LEADERS SUMMIT Remains identified at R.I. site BODY Continued from Page Bl sentencing in July. His lawyer could not be reached for comment. DiSarro was a father of five, and on Thursday night his son Nick told the Globe that an FBI agent called the family a couple of hours earlier and told them the remains had been positively identified as those of his father. "We've waited 23 years for somebody from the FBI to call us and say we found him," said Nick DiSarro, who was 7 when his father disappeared.

"That happened today when I was at work and it was surreal." He said his family is looking forward to giving his father a proper burial, with a gravestone they can visit. The FBI's investigation into DiSarro's death, which is being handled out of the US Attorney's office in Boston, is focusing on a number of people, including Francis "Cadillac Frank" Salemme, according to two people familiar with the investigation. Salemme is currently in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Notorious gangster Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi told federal and state authorities in 2003 that he walked in on the murder of DiSarro on May 10, 1993, at the Sharon, home of Salemme's ex-wife, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration report filed in federal court in Boston. Flemmi said Salemme and two other men were watching as Salemme's son, Frank, strangled DiSarro.

He identified those men as Francis Salemme's younger brother John and a friend of Francis named Paul Weadick. Flemmi said that he quickly left the house and that Francis Salemme later confided he had helped his son dispose of DiSarro's body at a Rhode Island construction site, the report said. Working numbers for John Salemme and Weadick could not be located Thursday. Flemmi told authorities that Francis Salemme also said Rhode Island mobster Robert DeLuca "was present during the burial" of DiSarro, according to the report. An FBI affidavit filed in support of Ricci's arrest last year described him as a longstanding Mafia associate who was close to DeLuca.

Francis Salemme's son died in 1995. By the time Flemmi implicated the elder Salemme in DiSarro's slaying, the former Mafia don was already in the witness protection program for cooperating with the prosecution of South Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger and his corrupt FBI handler, John J. Connolly Jr. Salemme was kicked out of the program in 2004 when he was indicted on federal charges of lying and obstruction of justice for previously denying any knowledge about DiSarro's slaying. He later pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to five years but denied the allegations that he was present when DiSarro was killed and helped dispose of his body.

By early 2009, Salemme was back in the witness protection program. Steven Boozang, an attorney for Francis Salemme, said Thursday that he "absolutely denies any involvement in Steve DiSarro's murder." Boozang called Flemmi a "serial liar" and said, "This bizarre tale that he is putting forth never happened, pure and simple." Flemmi told authorities that Francis Salemmi had given him bribery money to pass to city officials so the Channel could get an entertainment license, according to the DEA report. In addition, Flemmi said Salemmi had expressed concerns about DiSarro's friendship with a man cooperating with law enforcement, as well as DiSarro's tax problems, the report said. Flemmi, who pleaded guilty to his role in 10 murders and is serving a life sentence, was the longtime sidekick of Bulger and was a key witness at the gangster's 2013 trial. Evans said the scope of the arrests sent a message he hoped would serve as a deterrent.

"If you are going to be involved in gangs, then we are going to be on you," he said. "We are going to find out who you are, and we are going to take you down, like we did today." At the same time, officials emphasized that law enforcement efforts cannot reduce gang violence on their own and asked for help from residents in gang-plagued areas. "We cannot make them safe on our own," Ortiz said. "We cannot solve crimes on our own. We need them to care, to help us reduce the violence, and to make the community safe." The investigation originally targeted the 18 th Street Gang but was expanded to include three other gangs, said Daniel Kumor, special agent in charge of the Boston office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

"One of our top priorities is spoke on Tuesday at the US-China seas. Recounting Boston's record-breaking winter, he was conscientious enough to quantify the impact using the metric system. "Last year, we were hit with about 3 meters of snow," Walsh said. "It was probably a direct result of climate change." Speaking with Chinese officials, Walsh learned that traffic remains one of the most intractable problems in urban China. They told him that rising health care costs have been a driving force behind the push to curb emissions because pollution can cause asthma, cancer, and other ills.

"It is amazing that climate change could bring the nations closer together," Walsh said, adding, "The United States and China might disagree politi appointed board final approval of labor contracts. The union argued that the plan ran afoul of a federal law designed to protect the collective bargaining rights of public transit employees. In its latest protest, the union is objecting to a new policy that requires employees to use vacation and earned sick time before they can take family leave, which gives workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid days a year to take care of a serious illness, new child, or sick family member. Managers made the change after the Baker-appointed panel reported last year that about 30 percent of employees, in 'The corner, are impact BRIAN MBTA chief JohnR. EUementofthe Globe staff contributed to this report.

KathyMcCabe can be reached at KatherineMcCabe globe.com. Follow her on Twitter GlobeKMcCabe. CLIMATE ANDY WONGASSOCIATED PRESSPOOL Cities Summit in Beijing. US Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who made an appearance at the climate summit.

The flight home had no Wi-Fi, leaving Walsh disconnected as he flew over Siberia, the Arctic Circle, and Hudson Bay. Walsh had left his schedule free Wednesday afternoon to recover from the jet lag of the 12-hour time difference. But when he landed, his phone buzzed with news: A gunman had shot and killed a 17-year-old student outside Jeremiah Burke High School. Police met him at the airport and whisked the mayor to the scene. Andrew Ryan can be reached at andrew.ryangIobe.com Follow him on Twitter globeandrewryan.

change that requires employees to give two hours' notice, instead of one, when they are going to be absent. The union says two hours' notice is not fair to workers who encounter last-minute problems, like bad weather, car accidents, or an illness in the family. The union also says many employees wake up at 3 or 4 a.m. for early shifts, and that it is not reasonable to expect then to wake up even earlier if they have to call in absent. The Carmen's Union had initially filed a grievance when the attendance changes were first proposed in December.

O'Brien said the union then suspended its grievance because it hoped to negotiate cooperatively with management. But last Friday, he said, the union "moved the grievance forward because of MBTA management's refusal to negotiate a more equitable policy." Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson globe.com. Follow him on Twitter mlevenson. PU.S.-CHINA Climate-SmartLow-Carbon cally on certain things internationally, but certainly around the environment it seems like there is a lot of common area. It's a good place to build strong relationships." He left the hotel at 6 a.m.

for a tour of the Temple of Heaven, a few hours before his flight. Walsh joined mayors from St. Paul, Dubuque, Iowa, and other cities. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton stepped into a stone circle to test the famous echo on the temple grounds, saying, "Bring me rain." Walsh followed suit and quipped, "Bring me good press." Hours later at Beijing Capital International Airport, Walsh picked up a copy of the English-language China Daily. He found his own picture on Page 3 with cluding 65 percent of subway drivers, had received approval to use the family leave law.

The board said that rate of family and medical leave taken was "disruptive to union files grievance over new attendance policy Boston Mayor Martin Walsh credit card, he said.) Even cloistered in the hotel, Walsh encountered Chinese culture. The mayor, for example, followed local etiquette with business cards, which he exchanged with Chinese officials, mindful to hold each with two hands as a sign of respect. He held a press conference with two dozen members of the Chinese media. Working with a translator, Walsh took questions about Boston's efforts to curb carbon emissions and steps that can be adopted by cities in China. Walsh told reporters about cleaning up Boston Harbor, changing old-fashioned street lights to energy-efficient LEDs, and moving heating and cooling systems to the roofs of new buildings to prepare for rising lost to unscheduled absences through April, compared to last year.

"The MBTA is turning a corner and the new rules are having a positive impact on productivity and customer service," said Brian Shortsleeve, the T's chief administrator. "We are reducing absenteeism, resulting in fewer dropped trips and creating an atmosphere where good attendance is valued. We are disappointed by any attempts to weaken this policy, which is consistent with state and federal law." The new attendance policy is one of several contentious changes made by managers that have rankled the Carmen's Union. In February, the union decried the T's move to privatize several departments, which could eliminate about 250 jobs. And last year, the union threatened to sue the state or petition the federal government to cut off millions of dollars in aid for the if state lawmakers approved the governor's proposal to give a Baker- MBTA is turning a and the new rules having a positive on SHORTSLEEVE administrator CARMEN Continued from Page Bl appointed panel found last year that workers were absent 1 1 to 12 percent of the time in 2014, roughly twice the rate reported by transit systems in other major US cities.

In many cases, employees were tapping into the 12 weeks of unpaid leave guaranteed them under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act. The panel, which Baker convened as the struggled to recover from a series of massive snowstorms, blamed the "excessive absenteeism" on "weak MBTA management" and said "tens of thousands of trips are canceled each year due to unplanned absences." The argues that since the new attendance policy was put in place, absenteeism among bus operators has fallen 34 percent below last year's average and the average number of dropped trips per day on buses fell 40 percent between January and April of this year. All told, the agency says, 14,000 fewer work days were But the union says the new policy cracking down on the practice goes "well beyond the scope of management rights" and must be negotiated with the union. "The reason for our grievance is pretty simple: changes to contracts agreed to through collective bargaining must respect the legal process of contract negotiations," O'Brien said. The union also objected to a Andersen can be reached at trauis.andersenglobe.com.

Murphy can be reached at shelley. murphyglobe. com..

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