Police Reform, College Reopenings, and Expanded Vote-By-Mail
Plus: Tom Shea breaks down the New York Rangers offseason.
It’s all quick-hitters today because apparently a lot is going on outside. I wouldn’t know, whenever I step outside a demon tries to overtake my soul so I’ve been staying in.
Catch up on recent editions on the home page, there’s lots of good stuff.
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Quick Hitters: Reform Legislation, A Bunch of Data, and more...
Buckle in folks, it’s time for some links, many of which you can also find here thanks to Politco’s Stephanie Murray and her Massachusetts Playbook newsletter. Just know I was tempted to lead with the new version of Microsoft Edge but I thought maybe three people would get that joke.
Buried in last week’s edition of the newsletter you’ll find the base for the police reform legislation Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker is presenting to the state’s legislature, primarily based around certification for officers—The Boston Globe knocked out a detailed breakdown you can find here. The most important highlight from the bill is that, if passed, the public would have access to records on certified officers, including complaints made against individual officers. Additionally, if officers are found to have committed a “detailed set of violations,” they can be decertified permanently by a new state accreditation committee, effectively ending their career in the state according to the Globe. Transit police, UMass police, and sheriff’s deputies would be among the parties covered in the system. The Globe said that the “idea of licensing officers has languished for years on Beacon Hill,” but since George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breona Taylor were killed by police, sparking nationwide protests that are still taking place in Massachusetts, the palatability of such a certification process appears to have increased. An interesting aspect of these developments, though, is that Massachusetts police unions—which have been criticized heavily nationally for standing in the way of reform—worked hand in hand with members of Massachusetts’ Black and Latino caucus to work on developing police reforms, according to the Globe. In fact, when Baker announced the legislation, the president of the Massachusetts Major City Chiefs of Police Association Brian Keys, who serves as Chelsea’s chief, issued a statement where he expressed his hope that the legislation, if passed, would help “restore faith and confidence in our profession,” according to the Globe. He said there was nothing in the bill that police officers should be pushing back against since officers facing punishment for using chokeholds or excessive force is already a part of many departments’ policies. Baker did say that lawmakers only had until July 31 to pass the bill, along with any other additions they deem necessary that Baker won’t veto—he went as far as to say that he’d been told leaders believed they could pass the law, but he’d “like them to prove it,” according to the Globe.
In the background of that work, the Globe released a damning report on the Boston Police Department’s payroll, leading with the fact that Boston’s highest paid officer was accused of payroll abuse in 2007—in fact the officer, Lieutenant Timothy Kervin, was brought up publicly in a press release saying he was going to be fired, where former BPD Commissioner Ed Davis said “termination was an appropriate response.” Somehow, Kervin ended up only being suspended for six months, which was cut to four, despite being publicly fired, though the reasons for why wasn’t made clear, according to the Globe. This past year, he was the city’s highest paid employee, making $355,538, $115,361 of which was overtime pay, per the Globe. In a definitely related story, the Globe reported in November that multiple BPD officers are being investigated for payroll abuse. Two more officers among the 10 highest paid in the department were accused of using excessive force in the last year, another was charged 11 years ago for “assaulting his girlfriend while working as a member of the BPD’s domestic violence unit,” according to the Globe, and though charges were dropped the officer was suspended. Boston’s second highest paid official, officer John Danilecki, “is currently the subject of an internal department investigation regarding his conduct during last year’s Straight Pride Parade in Boston,” according to a BPD spokesman who was interviewed by the Globe. He was caught on video “acting aggressively toward seemingly peaceful protesters,” per the Globe. The BPD spokesman told the Globe the investigation was ongoing—the Globe reported it had reviewed records showing the officer “received a department commendation for his actions that day for leading a team of officers who ‘put themselves in harm’s way.’”
Last week, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said he wasn’t in favor of defunding the police department, and this week he told WGBH after declaring a state of emergency due to racism and reallocating $12 million in funds intended for the BPD to community service programs that reallocation would not be the solution moving forward. He did say he was shocked by how many more Black Boston residents are being stopped as a part of the city’s continued use of “stop-and-frisk.” WGBH noted that though Boston’s Black population makes up a quarter of the city’s population, about 69 percent of stops made by the BPD are made of Black Bostonians—for comparison, white people make up around 45 percent of the state’s population and were only “a quarter of stops,” per WGBH. Baker told the station “we have work to do here.”
Expanded vote-by-mail legislation was passed in the Massachusetts Senate this week, according to The State House News Service. Voters will have the option to vote during early voting periods, which wasn’t previously available, in addition to the usual timetable of sending in votes by mail and the option of voting at a polling station. Ballot applications would be sent out by July 15 if the measure, in this form, passes in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, which approved of an initial version of the bill earlier this month and is signed by Baker.
Massachusetts colleges began informing students of plans for reopening this fall—Harvard will reopen its campus but most of its classes will be online, according to WBUR, Boston College is forging ahead with its previously announced plans to bring students back to campus in the fall and released updates aligned with guidelines released by state officials in late May, and MIT has announced that “fewer than 60 percent” of its undergraduates will be allowed to return to campus in the fall, according to the Globe. BC has created a website dedicated to updating students, faculty, and staff on how reopening will take place and committed to sending weekly emails to students with updates on reopening plans, according to a letter penned by Provost and Dean of Faculties David Quigley. That letter did note that some students will not be able to return to campus—no reasons were given, but presumably students who live abroad and study at BC will have difficulty returning to the country to resume their studies due to the travel ban in place not only in America but also in multiple foreign countries. BC will be relying on mass testing and contact tracing, as well as physical and social distancing guidelines in order to safely reopen, according to Quigley. A notable development is that classes will be de-densified to ensure physical distancing, and students will be separated from faculty at the front of the classroom to protect faculty at greater risk of infection, per Quigley’s letter. Living arrangements and dealing with off-campus students living outside of typical enforcement of safety guidelines weren’t covered in Quigley’s initial correspondence, though they are sure to come up as the college reveals more of its plans. A move-in date, potential quarantining protocols, or how the school will handle Thanksgiving break and the travel typically required by that break also weren’t covered and are sure to be a part of future correspondence as schools march inexorably toward a drop dead commitment date in early July—no specific date has been released by any college, but consensus according to various media organizations and government officials is around the first week of July. MIT said in its announcement that classes will begin a week early (around September 1) and that classes would be conducted remotely after the Thanksgiving break. MIT’s semester is shorter than BC’s—BC typically begins its semesters in mid to late August.
Harvard also announced this week that students applying to the university this fall won’t be required to submit standardized test scores, per the Globe.
Boston College filed a motion asking the district court judge that’s overseen every aspect of the lawsuit brought against the university in 2016 over BC’s alleged mishandling of a sexual assault complaint that a male alumnus (who was a student at BC when the incident occurred) said was untrue. I’ve chronicled the details of this lawsuit endlessly, and you can find them most recently detailed here with respect to the case’s financial impact on the university’s balance sheet. The motion is asking the judge to vacate a jury trial decision that went against BC and led to the awarding of over $100,000 in damages to the alumnus, citing a multitude of instances within the trial proceedings where BC claims the plaintiff’s lawyer violated scope of trial requirements—the trial proceedings saw at least 50 objections, and perhaps more, instances where BC objected to a line of questioning on scope grounds. The issue reached the point that the judge came as close as possible to asking BC to, at the conclusion of the trial, to file a motion asking for a new trial. BC’s motion first asks for a decision in its favor, claiming no reasonable jury could have found the weight of evidence in the plaintiff’s favor and that the lines of questioning were inappropriate to the point that they influenced the jury to rule against the university for the wrong reasons, not for the charge of having allegedly interfered in the disciplinary proceedings brought against the plaintiff years ago. A reply brief from the plaintiff is due in a month, and at that point I’ll do a side by side breakdown of the arguments. Theoretically, there is no reason for the district court judge, who has ruled for BC in almost every single pretrial motion brought by BC and ruled in favor of BC on every count brought by the plaintiff when the case was initially before her in summary judgement proceedings (not a jury trial). Her original decision was overturned in part on appeal to the First Circuit court, which is why the case is still at the district court level. The only thing preventing her from doing so, conceivably, would be the threat of having her decision overturned by the First Circuit again.
Newton’s police chief is retiring, according to WGBH. Though city officials did not say this factored into the decision, WGBH noted that two weeks ago University of New Orleans’ athletic director Tim Duncan (to clarify: not that Tim Duncan, he’s a San Antonio Spurs assistant coach now) was stopped, along with his wife, at gunpoint by Newton police outside his home (in Newton) days before George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis. He received an apology from city officials, but Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller announced she was forming a police reform task force this past Monday.
Northeastern student journalists are calling for increased transparency from the university. Ironically, the issue was brought to the fore when the student newspaper, which is independent from the university, had multiple requests for an interview with Northeastern’s president Joseph Aoun turned down—he hasn’t been interviewed by the paper since 2013. Aoun has given interviews to national news outlets and Northeastern’s senior vice president for external affairs Michael Armini denigrated the student paper, The Huntington News, for what he said were frequent inaccuracies in reporting. The paper’s editor-in-chief said that the paper has issued “few corrections in the past year,” according to a Globe story on the matter. In response to online pressure, Northeastern granted the paper a 30-minute joint interview with the school’s provost and its chancellor. I’d now like to link to what I’m pretty sure is the last time Boston College President William P. Leahy, S.J., last sat down with the independent student-run newspaper covering BC, The Heights, for an interview in November 2005. Here is a recap of the last interview he gave to anyone as far as I know, in 2017. Full disclosure: I worked for The Heights as a copy editor and its news editor for two years. I cannot speak to what Leahy’s relationship with the paper is now, but while I was there, I was under the impression that he generally paid attention to what the paper published so that we didn’t do anything insane, but that administrators were not huge fans of the work the newspaper had done essentially since his last interview in it in 2005. I don’t believe Leahy has given an interview to a national news outlet at any recent point in his presidential tenure.
NHL Offseason Previews: The New York Rangers Upside, If Managed Possibly, Could Result in a Playoff Berth
By Tom Shea
[Editor’s note: Check out the rest of our NHL Offseason preview series here.]
The Rangers were the spitting image of a v-shaped recession: 3 years back they fell victim in the second round to the Ottawa Senators in their (Erik Karlsson’s; liberal use of the word “their”) deep playoff run. Though the season came to an underwhelming halt, it still marked their 11th playoff berth in 12 seasons since the first lockout. That streak snapped a year later and marked the start of a rebuild that was frankly inevitable given the ages and contracts of those players relative to their respective performances.
But the Rags are now on the right path. Breadman Artemi Panarin’s tied for third in points with 95, 113 if prorated for 82 games. Mika Zibanejad’s fifth in goals with 41, 48 when prorated. Tony DeAngelo’s quickly become one of the best blue-liners in the NHL: since he entered the league, among 236 D-men with at least 1000 5v5 minutes, he ranks 17th in primary points per 60. It’s virtually an entirely different team from that last playoff season, as 8 of the top 9 in points have moved on. But offensively they’re just as potent.
Of course, the caveat is that they’re dead last in expected goals allowed per 60. Not having Ryan McDonagh certainly stings, but it doesn’t help that they shipped out top-4-d-man-on-reasonable-deal-in-his-mid-20s Brady Skjei—so much for not trading within the division. Digressing, they need to build around DeAngelo, who’s in line for a big-time raise. It’s also likely there’s a goalie change is nigh, given Henrik Lundqvist went a month between starts at one point this season. They’re more questions than answers in New York, but given their youth they could be another piece or two from being playoff mainstays once again.
[Editor’s note: We’re still assuming an $81.5 million cap for a multitude of reasons that have been previously cited in this series. I promise it’s a good idea.]
Current total allocation: $67.1M ($4.5M/player)
Spots to fill: 7 ($14.4M remaining)
Most certain: Forward
Current allocation: $30.3M ($3.8M/forward)
Spots to fill: 5
3 of those 5 empty spots are restricted free agents (RFA), and the remaining spots are being vacated by cheap role players. The only real question mark is Ryan Strome. I’m unequivocally of the opinion that he’s riding Breadman’s gravy-train and doesn’t come close to deserving the 8-year $7.4M deal he’s projected to receive by Evolving-Hockey. To evoke Sesame Street, let’s play a rousing game of One of These Things: 28, 30, 34, 35, 59. As you might’ve ascertained, those are Strome’s point totals each of the last 5 seasons. Of course, that doesn’t mean someone won’t give him that money—recency bias is a fickle mistress. But with DeAngelo needing to be signed, the Rags don’t have the luxury of being that team.
Sans Strome, the depth chart should look relatively similar to last year. Jesper Fast is due for a slight pay bump, but as the reliable third banana on the Panarin line he’s worth it even as a UFA. Filip Chytil is just 20 years old and already a solid middle-six center. Dealing Strome slots him onto the top line with Panarin, where he should be almost if not as good as Strome was for a fraction of the price.
Meanwhile, Chris Kreider-Zibanejad-Pavel Buchnevich is a hellacious second line. The obvious dark-horse in the bottom 6 is Kappo Kakko, who was pretty brutal as a rookie but likely needed a year to adjust to North American hockey. Brendan Lemieux and Phillip Di Giuseppe will be back on cheap RFA deals to fill in the cracks. There’s no reason this group can’t be as good as last year and then some.
Medium certainty: Goaltender
Current allocation: $9.4M ($4.7M/goalie)
Spots to fill: 0
Though not reflected in the aforementioned figures, I’m assuming the Blueshirts trade or buyout Lundqvist—it’d actually be more uncertain if he stayed. RFA Alexander Georgiev should command a reasonable bridge deal that will at least make him the 1A moving forward. Over the last 2 seasons he ranks ninth in goals saved above expected despite being the backup until recently. Perhaps there’ll be growing pains with playing 50+ games in a season, but it should be a fairly seamless passing of the torch.
The catch is that Igor Shesterkin, though less proven, may be just as good. He’s not going to steal the job from Georgiev right away, but it’d be a waste to not give him a third of the games, if not more. It’s possible this develops into a goalie controversy at some point. For now, Shesterkin’s just there to ease the transition for Georgiev into number one status. Neither will imitate peak Lundqvist anytime soon, but whoever the hot hand is should be good enough to carry the D through some rough stretches.
Least certain: Defense
Current allocation: $19.9M ($4M/d-man)
Spots to fill: 2
The problem here is that the best two defenders aren’t exactly great at defending. DeAngelo, as great as he is offensively, is the primary offender in that respect. Not that Trouba’s a vice-grip in his own end, either. Not only is he meh defensively, he didn’t even really make up for it on the other end. The Rags bought stock in an outlier 50-point season and now they have to pay the price…for the next six years. It’s essentially the same mistake another team will make with Strome. He’s untradeable; they just have to hope he bounces back to the level of his last couple years in Winnipeg, where, for what, it’s worth his health was a greater issue than his play.
The first order of business is to can Brendan Smith. He’s ineffective, he’s an expiring UFA and he’s third on the RHD depth chart—the perfect storm for a buyout candidate. While it’s a step in the right direction, it doesn’t help the left side, meanwhile, which might be the worst in the league. Marc Staal’s best years are a solid decade in the rearview, but with just one year left on his deal and no one to really take his spot it’s doubtful they kick an alternate captain to the curb.
This is where it gets tricky: In-house replacements are sparse. Ryan Lindgren’s serviceable but he can’t possibly play top pairing minutes. Libor Hajek’s a promising prospect but needs work. Even if they wanted to compromise the rebuild and hunt for a big fish, they don’t have the cap space.
Enter John Merrill. He’s a sorely needed defensive defensemen who pretty much breaks even on possession and will come relatively cheap. Vegas has inexplicably backed themselves into a cap corner, so there’s a good chance he hits the market. DeAngelo could buoy him reasonably on the top pair. While far from ideal, it beats the alternatives of moving Trouba to the left, which he’s voiced his displeasure for, or Adam Fox, who had an awesome rookie year on the right; or, even worse, Staal playing top pair. The Smith-Merrill swap alone helps, but make no mistake, these guys will still struggle.
CapFriendly Projection: $80,166,832 … $1,333,168 … https://www.capfriendly.com/armchair-gm/team/1766807
Compliance Buyout: Henrik Lundqvist
Goldman: Smith can be bought out the old fashioned way for cheap, and although getting rid of Staal would be nice, dumping Lundqvist’s massive contract for no cap hit would be way better for the Rangers. It’s too bad they won’t get the chance to flex some of their financial muscle (thanks Jim Dolan!) because the NHL is leaning toward scrapping compliance buyouts. Too bad, it’s sort of a perfect situation because Lundqvist would be able to pick where he wants to go completely under his own power, but he doesn’t want to leave anyway and might be insulted by the prospect of such a move anyway. Such is the life of the end of his career, starting goaltender legend, I guess.
Big picture:
I’m seeing a playoff team here. They were just two points out last year, and the youth will continue to develop. Unfortunately, Trouba’s contract being somewhat of a boat anchor really limits the ceiling; not many contenders fork over $8M a year to a substantial underachiever. The closest panacea to this would be a breakout season for Kakko. Even with just 2 scoring lines the offense is already clicking; a 3rd would make them lethal. It’s likely they get bounced in the first by one of the Metro big boys, but they’ll at least make it fun to watch; think hockey’s version of a Big 12 team.
Tom Shea, known to his friends as Thomas!, is, admittedly, a bit of a charlatan. He is brilliantly able to conceal his spoiled Steelers and Penguins fandom under the guise that his Pirates anguish makes him relatable to the masses. You can find him on Twitter @TomShea5ft11. No description can prepare you for that experience.
Jack Goldman is the publisher and editor of the newsletter you just finished reading. He’s also an independent reporter who goes to Boston College in his spare time, apparently. You shouldn’t follow him on Twitter @the_manofgold.