A series of high-profile arrests and scandals involving Boston city employees have sparked calls for immediate reforms to Democrat Mayor Michelle Wu’s hiring practices, the Boston Herald reports.
The Boston City Council on Wednesday advanced an emergency order and will hold a hearing on reforming the city’s hiring practices. Recent incidents — including the hiring of a sex offender in the parks department and a violent altercation involving a city employee and a state trooper — have raised questions about the city’s background check procedures, according to the Boston Herald. .
“These failures highlight unacceptable gaps in background checks, sex offender screening and continuous monitoring,” said City Councilor Erin Murphy, who co-sponsored the measure, according to the outlet. “I’m filing this emergency hearing order today calling for immediate reforms to the City of Boston’s hiring and employee review processes.”
Among the most alarming cases is that of Robert M. Claud, a Level 3 sex offender — the highest risk category — who was hired this year as an equipment operator for the city’s parks department, according to the Boston Herald. Claud, whose employment ended on Aug. 12, has two convictions from 2013 for indecent assault and battery on a child under 14 years of age and one conviction for open and gross lewdness and lascivious behavior.
The controversy escalated on Aug. 22, when news broke that city employee Nasiru Ibrahim had been arrested weeks earlier, on July 30, according to WCVB 5. Ibrahim allegedly tased a state trooper and tried to flee during a traffic stop, the outlet reported. Police also discovered a handgun wrapped in a sweatshirt inside his vehicle despite Ibrahim having no license to carry in the state.
The city is investigating why Ibrahim, who has an extensive criminal record, was hired in the first place.
“The city employee allegedly has a seven-page criminal record, including convictions for assault to murder, charges that led to a five-year prison sentence,” said City Councilor Ed Flynn, who co-sponsored the measure, according to the Boston Herald. “This is not the first incident. We have to change the hiring process protocols here in the City of Boston. I’m not comfortable with how we’re conducting [Criminal Offender Record Information]s and background checks on new city hires (and) potential hires.”
Ibrahim and Claud are just two of several troubling cases involving city employees under Wu’s administration.
Jacqueline Cherisme, a Boston Public Health Commission employee, was allegedly behind the wheel during an April drive-by shooting that resulted in the death of a bystander. Cherisme, who has been employed by the health commission since 2019, was arrested and charged in June.
Daunasia Yancey, a deputy director in the city’s Office of LGBTQIA2S+ Advancement and self-described “Black queer femme leader,” was arrested in April on assault charges for allegedly slamming her girlfriend’s ex-wife into a wall over an altercation over a birth certificate in a safe, Boston 25 News reported.
In May, Marwa Khudaynazar, the chief of staff for the city’s Office of Police Accountability, and Chulan Huang, a business manager in the Office of Economic Opportunity, were arrested on domestic violence charges, according to WCVB 5 ABC.
“I do believe there’s a systemwide breakdown,” Flynn said, according to the Boston Herald. “We need to address it and provide the residents of Boston with an exceptional workforce, and that includes background checks on new hires. We owe that to the residents of Boston.”
Wu’s office did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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