BOSTON (AP) - Three members of the Boston City Council want to start diverting nonviolent 911 calls away from police.
The councilors have filed an ordinance that calls for “an alternative response from non-law enforcement agencies,” The Boston Globe reported.
They said Boston police often respond to nonviolent calls for service that include issues such as homelessness and substance abuse that are beyond the scope of their function.
The councilors are Michelle Wu, Lydia Edwards and Julia Mejia.
The Boston councilors want the city to create a crisis-response plan for non-violent 911 calls within 90 days. They said the plan should connect people who need help to unarmed service providers such as health care professionals instead of police.
In other news related to demonstrations about race and law enforcement in New England:
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MAINE
Police in Maine are investigating to try to find out who strung a noose from telephone lines in Deer Isle.
The noose has been removed, the Bangor Daily News reported. Police are also investigating to try to find out who vandalized Black Lives Matter signs in the area.
Photos of the noose circulated on social media Friday, which was the Juneteenth holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.
Also, some Mainers are questioning whether Waldo County and other places named after Gen. Samuel Waldo should be renamed because he was a slave owner who made much of his fortune in the trade.
Waldo was a Massachusetts land speculator, merchant and politician in the 18th century. He served as brigadier general during the 1745 British expedition against the French settlement of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia during King George’s War.
He also was a slave trader. “A lot of his wealth was inherited - but a lot was built on slavery,” said Mary Drymon DeRose, a Maine historian and author, told the Bangor Daily News.
The recent scrutiny of Waldo’s legacy comes amid a national reckoning on race. Black Lives Matter protesters are calling for racial justice all across the country. Statues that honor Confederate heroes are toppling.
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RHODE ISLAND
Black Lives Matter Rhode Island planned a rally called Black Women Matter on Saturday in Providence.
There were other Black Lives Matter rallies planned elsewhere in New England, including one in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Activists have called for police reform all over the country after the deaths of George Floyd in Minnesota and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky.
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NEW HAMPSHIRE
About 200 people attended a rally in support of law enforcement outside the New Hampshire State House on Saturday.
Organizers, who included Republican state representatives Katherine Prudhomme-O’Brien and David Love, said law enforcement agencies have been painted with too broad a brush in the wake of nationwide protests of police brutality.
“It was to show appreciation for law enforcement in New Hampshire,” said organizer Chris Ager of Amherst, who represents New Hampshire on the Republican National Committee. “There has been a lot of negative portrayal of individual acts that occurred that many people across the board would say are bad. But the institutions of law enforcement are under assault.”
Some participants in the predominantly white crowd carried “thin blue line” flags, which are widely flown across the U.S. to show support for law enforcement, but have also been criticized as an implicitly racist way of repudiating the Black Lives Matter movement.
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