Marty Walsh misses the point in probation case

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The Boston Globe
July 31, 2014
By Yvonne Abraham>

You can take the mayor out of the Legislature, but apparently you can’t take the Legislature out of the mayor. In a gobsmacking display of blinkered vision, Mayor Marty Walsh weighed in on the corruption trial of former Probation Department chief John O’Brien on Tuesday, calling the case “bizarre” and the guilty verdict “a sad day for Massachusetts.”

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I’ve said this a gazillion times, but once more, for the mayor: Probation jobs aren’t like jobs shelving books in a library or working metal detectors in a courthouse. The scheme over which O’Brien presided made a mockery of a profession that is on the front lines of our criminal justice system. Great probation officers keep offenders out of jail, moving them off destructive paths and onto productive ones where they’re contributing to society, rather than terrorizing it. The best probation officers save not just money, but lives.