Massachusetts

BOSTON — Boston’s longtime police commissioner, whose tenure was marked by plummeting crime rates, said Monday he will leave to take a high-profile job helping British police improve their crime-fighting techniques.

He will replace Kevin Bond, a former police officer and business executive who left Police Standards Unit in April. Evans said he will officially retire from the Boston department and leave in November. [Boston Globe]

BOSTON — Former priest John Geoghan, a convicted child molester who became a central figure in the Catholic church’s sex abuse scandal, has been killed in prison, a state public safety spokesman said Saturday.

The church abuse scandal, which has had repercussions worldwide, broke in early 2002 with revelations that the church had shuttled Geoghan from parish to parish despite warnings about his behavior. [Boston Globe]

Saugus plays tonight for the US Little League Championship. If they win, they play tomorrow for the Little League World Series Championship.

I got my fingers crossed and will be watching the game…

Route 1, which makes up Saugus’s floodlit spine, has drawn streams of residents from all over town on game nights, where they pile into the warehouse-sized restaurants and cheer on the boys. They come from the old east side, where the now-famous Little League team hails from, and the tonier developments of the west side. Five hundred people gathered around televisions at Prince Pizzeria & Bar, 400 mobbed the upstairs at the Frank Guiffrida’s Hilltop Steak House, and 200 watched at Kowloon restaurant. By the improbable end of the game, when Saugus rallied with four runs to beat Richmond, Texas, by a single run in extra innings, old ladies were hoarse.

“They were happy to the point where they wanted to be with someone other than themselves,” he said. [Boston Globe]

This is damn impressive. I’ve always been happy with NYC cab drivers, but the Boston cab drives are clearly the worst that I’ve had the displeasure of riding with.

NYC did it right. Looks like we’re finally taking a different approach. Thank god.

BOSTON, Aug. 22 %u2014  Say ìpleaseî and ìthank you.î Dress nice, and try not to run any stop lights or make offensive comments.Those are the lessons that the city of Boston and Democratic organizers are hoping the cityís 5,500 cabbies learn before next summerís presidential convention. []

BOSTON (AP) The U.S. Secret Service is considering closing the busy North Station subway stops during next year’s Democratic National Convention, a possibility that’s raising concern among environmental and transportation advocates.

The plan would shut down the North Station’s Green and Orange subway line stops between July 26 to July 29, when the convention is at the FleetCenter, located above North Station. [Boston Globe]

WHEN WILLIAM BULGER became president of the University of Massachusetts in 1995, I remarked that his Beacon Hill career had been one long gorging at the public trough. ”By now,” I wrote in this space, ”the dollars he has extracted to enrich himself and his relatives must run well into seven figures.” After last week’s larceny, it may be time to update that estimate. Between the $960,000 severance deal and an annual pension of at least $240,000 (but ”there are a lot of complicating factors that could make it even higher,” the state treasurer’s office says), the total Bulger take must surely be nearing the eight-figure mark — if it hasn’t passed it already.

The right answer, then as now, was: A person of integrity, someone of incorruptible character whose appointment would reflect honor on the institution. No one should have confused Bulger with such a person — least of all the man whose endorsement essentially handed him the job: Governor Weld. [Boston Globe]

Archbishop Sean P. O’Malley, in a dramatic gesture illustrating his commitment to change, announced yesterday that he will move out of the Brighton manse occupied by his predecessors and into the brick rectory of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, next to a housing project in Boston’s South End.

The cross-town move, which O’Malley said he expects to complete within the next couple of months, is the latest in a series of rapid-fire steps the new archbishop has taken in the nine days since he was installed as archbishop July 30. On his second day as archbishop, he replaced the church’s oft-criticized lawyers, and yesterday he offered $55 million to settle 542 clergy sex abuse claims. [Boston Globe]