Protecting witnesses an uphill political fight

David Pomerantz

As Boston’s 2007 homicide count continues to rise, some politicians are trying to devote resources to help murder witnesses come forward and aid law enforcement authorities.

City Councilor Rob Consalvo has called for a hearing to propose a program that would offer anyone who provides information that leads to a homicide arrest a $10,000 reward through the Boston Police Crime Stoppers Tipline.

At the same time, state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson has criticized state district attorney’s offices for failing to aggressively use the Witness Protection Fund, a $1 million statewide fund to be used by district attorneys to relocate and protect witnesses of violent crimes.

The fund was created last year, but Wilkerson argues that it faces a $500,000 cut in the state’s 2008 budget because prosecutors have underutilized it.

Politicians like Consalvo and Wilkerson face an uphill battle in combating witness intimidation. Of the 74 homicides that were committed in Boston last year, police identified or arrested suspects in only 28 of those cases, a clearance rate of 38 percent.

The numbers have been similar thus far in 2007. Of 20 homicides committed since Jan. 1, police have made arrests in only six cases as of Tuesday, a clearance rate of 30 percent.

Reasons for the “code of silence” that keeps witnesses from cooperating are varied.

Some fear retribution or intimidation. Sixty-four percent of Massachusetts teens who participated in the recent study, “Snitches Get Stitches: Youth, Gangs, and Witness Intimidation in Massachusetts,” said that people don’t report crimes because they’re afraid of being beaten up or killed.

Other witnesses may buy into a subculture that rejects cooperation with law enforcement, as embodied by the “Stop snitchin’” T-shirts that were banned from Massachusetts courthouses last year. Camera phones were also banned when they were found to be used to intimidate witnesses.

Intimidation has become such a problem that Norfolk County District Attorney William R. Keating has proposed legislation that would allow 14- to 16-year-olds charged with witness intimidation to be sentenced as adults.

“[Witness intimidation] is a big deal. We see it all the time and it makes it difficult for us to do our job,” said Emmett Folgert, executive director of the Dorchester Youth Collaborative for at-risk youth at Fields Corner.

Folgert said that witnesses aren’t the only ones who experience intimidation. Victims of crime are also pressured not to speak to authorities.

Folgert, who has worked with Boston’s youth for over 30 years, attributes the increase in intimidation to rising gang activity.

“It’s easier for a gang to intimidate than an individual,” Folgert said.

Wherever its roots lie, the code of silence can make it nearly impossible for prosecutors to take murderers off the streets.

“As far as the District Attorney’s office works in violent crimes, the process very much relies on witnesses,” said Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office. “There’s a perception — and maybe this is due in part to TV and movies — that crimes can be solved with DNA and trace evidence, but in the real world of investigations and prosecutions, the oldest and most fundamental evidence is a person who saw something telling us what they saw.”

Consalvo hopes that his proposal to increase rewards through the Crime Stoppers Tipline can entice more witnesses to come forward.

The tipline now offers $1,000 rewards to information that leads to any arrest, but Consalvo says that the sum needs to be raised in homicide cases, where witnesses face grave risks for coming forward.

“In many lower category cases, $1,000 may be an adequate award to bring someone forward, but it isn’t enough to bring people forward on homicide cases,” Consalvo said. “I recognize that you can’t put a price on safety and someone’s life, but if you’re going to have a rewards program and a tipline, you need to create realistic and positive incentives for people to come forward.”

The money would go toward what Consalvo calls “targeted opportunity” incentives, such as college tuition, a savings bond, or a mortgage or first-time homebuyers’ payment.

The tipline is funded by private donors, not taxpayer dollars.

Consalvo said he is not wedded to the $10,000 sum, and would consider more if it were suggested.

“We know that rewards work on all levels,” Consalvo said. “We know we need to do something to break the code of silence, so every option’s worth exploring.”

The reward might compromise a witness’s integrity, but lawyers say that having a witness who is somewhat discredited is better than having none at all.

“If a witness has come forward in exchange for money, the jury will hear it,” said David Frank, a former lawyer in the Suffolk Country D.A.’s office who now writes for the trade paper Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. “But if the witness is otherwise believable, in terms of balancing the positives and negatives from a prosecutor’s standpoint, they’re going to want that witness on stand.”

Boston Police Department spokesperson Elaine Driscoll said in an e-mail that the department “would welcome a conversation regarding [Consalvo’s] proposed initiatives.”

As Consalvo is trying to entice witnesses to come forward with rewards, Wilkerson is up in arms that the Witness Protection Fund she worked last year to create has been ignored by many of the state’s prosecutors.

Only $337,211 of the $1 million fund has been touched in the past 10 months. Eighty-five percent of the money used was spent by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Boston, according to Wark.

Because so much money was ignored, the Suffolk County office has made the somewhat unexpected statement that it has no problem with the budget cut, even going so far as to say that “perhaps a degree of fiscal responsibility is in order.”

“I don’t see the budget cut hampering our ability to protect witnesses,” Wark said.

But Wilkerson sees things differently, arguing that the problem isn’t a bloated witness protection fund, but prosecutors and police forces that aren’t using it to do their job.

“It’s crazy. It’s an abomination because it does not suggest to me a serious effort on the part of investigators and district attorneys to convince people who may have information [to come forward] — and then to support them, house them and relocate them,” Wilkerson said in an interview.

The senator even suggested that if law enforcement officials were as aggressive in finding witnesses in all cases as they were in the high-profile case of Chiara Levin, then more arrests would be made.

“The Suffolk County District Attorney’s own quote was, ‘We need people to come forward.’ [Witnesses] didn’t come forward for Ms. Levin. They went out and got them.” Wilkerson said.

Boston police arrested Casimiro Barros, 20, and Manuel Andrade, 33, on April 28 for the March 24 killing of Levin, a white woman visiting from New York City.

In a statement issued after the arrests of Barros and Andrade, Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis said, “It is also imperative to note that extensive cooperation from the community and witnesses played a crucial role in our efforts to build this case.”

Responding to Wilkerson’s charge that law enforcement was particularly aggressive in seeking out witnesses in the Levin case, Driscoll said that “no additional resources were allotted to the Chiara Levin case.

“It received the same amount of resources that every other homicide case does,” she said.