Howie takes on City Hall
So the records are public… but only for the Globe.
If the persistent rumors about ambulance calls to Mayor Michelle Wu’s house are so “baseless,” then why has the City of Boston been stonewalling me for 14 months in my attempts to obtain the very records that will put the lie to the scurrilous gossip once and for all?
It’s not like I haven’t been patient. I filed my first Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the city on Oct. 9, 2022.
Fourteen months ago.
The secretary of state’s Public Records Division just ordered the city to turn over the documents, known as Computer Assisted Dispatch (CAD) records, that show all police, fire and ambulance calls to her home.
Those records do exist. I sent the hackerama CAD documents for randomly selected addresses in the city, and guess what – they all included ambulance calls. They’re very easy to get, unless you ask for the mayor’s house.
First they refused to send me the CAD records for the mayor’s address. Last December, they sent me some worthless spreadsheets and basically claimed they didn’t know what I was asking for.
That’s when I sent them the real CAD records from places where members of the protected classes don’t live.
Finally, last September, 11 months after I first asked for the documents (under the law they had 10 days to respond), they sent me a version of CAD document for the mayor’s address in Roslindale.
With all the relevant parts redacted, by way of being listed as “Default.”
Now they’re saying that the city “does not release ambulance or health records for any resident of Boston.”
But once again, the city hacks are not telling the truth. Here’s a story from the Boston Globe, dated March 26 of last year, about these so-called “baseless” rumors regarding Wu:
“Records of January and February emergency calls show no ambulance was dispatched to her (Wu’s) home to collect her for medical treatment.”
So the records of emergency calls to 15-17 Augustus Ave. in Ward 18 are apparently public… but only for the Globe.
To reiterate, they’re not public for the Herald, or for anybody else. Just the Boston Globe.
Have I got that right? Rules for thee but not for me.
I wonder if the Globe actually saw the unexpurgated CAD records? Or did they just take the word of Mayor Wu? After all, the paper’s motto is, “Afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable?”
And who could possibly be more comfortable than the hacks at City Hall?
All I’m asking for is what they gave the Boston Globe – but not just for those two months. I want all the CAD records for the mayor’s house, dating back to 2021. And when I get ‘em, I’ll put everything out there, for everyone to see just how baseless and pathetic the rumors are.
I ask for no special treatment. I merely ask to be treated like a “reporter” for the Boston Globe.
Some people have asked me, why did I drag my own feet so long? Why did I wait over a year before I appealed the city’s obvious, blatant stonewalling?
The reason is, believe it or not, Boston City Hall is no longer a major beat, for me or anybody else. In my own recent personal experience, if I want to make sure I get the minimum number of downloads for my podcasts, or next to no clicks for my columns – I just have to write about city politics.
For most Americans who work for a living and pay taxes, anything about politics in the city of Boston has become a “feel-good story.”
It’s called a feel-good story because it makes them feel good that they don’t live in the city anymore and thus don’t have to deal with all the insanity, depravity and corruption.
I know this first-hand. These last 14 months, every time City Hall gave me another run-around, I felt good – that I sold my little condo on Marlborough Street and was no longer paying (directly anyway) for all the happy horse bleep.
The flack for Michelle Wu is named “Ricky” Ricardo Patron. He’s from Wisconsin, and now he’s the spokesman for the mayor, who’s from Illinois. He was born in 1988, and she was born in 1985.
Here’s his take on the records that the Globe is entitled to, but not the Herald.
“This is another pathetic and baseless rumor from the conspiracy theory crew longing for 1970’s Boston.”
Is Ricky Ricardo talking to me – 1970’s Boston? What do any of those comrades know about 1970’s Boston?
What do the Hamas terrorists call Israelis? Colonial settlers, isn’t it?
Can those of us now slurred as “1970’s Boston” start referring to the blow-ins running City Hall as “colonial settlers?” The colonial settlers of the Mideast have been there a lot longer than Patron, Wu et al. have been flopping here in Boston as colonial settlers at the public trough.
If these drifters who so obviously despise us are in fact colonial settlers, then what is the “1970’s Boston” population? Are we native Americans, or the Palestinians of New England?
Personally, I don’t have a lot of nostalgia for 1970’s Boston. What I remember from back then was Democrats – white Democrats – stalking me with guns, not to mention C-4 explosives they got from other Democrats in the Boston office of the FBI.
On Wednesday, when I first tweeted out the letter from the Secretary of State ordering the city to turn over the real ambulance documents, a female friend texted my wife and asked her what was involved in this dispute.
My wife told her friend what was really going on, and her friend texted back to her:
“But aren’t all liberal women basket cases?”
One way or another, City Hall, the story is going to get out.
