Boston Herald27%
Boston Common murder renews calls for more police, potentially National Guard downtown 73%
By Lance Reynolds89%
7/23/2026, 4:08:26 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 22 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Unattributed Quote, and Availability Heuristic, with Recency Bias as the most egregious example at 21.9% saturation with 135 hits. Analysis detected 1,103 faulty-reasoning hits from 617 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 64.9% and a BS Rank of 73% (6,047 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 72.40% of the article peer group.
Downtown residents and a city councilor are renewing their demands for more police and action to curb an outburst of violence, as they don’t feel safe in Boston anymore.
Concerns in Chinatown and surrounding downtown neighborhoods are growing after a man allegedly killed someone on Boston Common on Wednesday and then, just hours later, brutally attacked another person.
City Councilor Ed Flynn, who represents the area, is calling for more police in Chinatown, the Leather District and Downtown Boston.
He posted on social media that he met on Thursday with residents and business owners concerned about “significant public safety issues.”
“Residents in Chinatown don’t feel safe.
Residents in Downtown Boston don’t feel safe,” Flynn said in a video he posted on X.
“We need more police, we need more accountability.
Those who are committing violence must be arrested, prosecuted, and, if convicted, state-sentenced.”
“But we need to provide residents with safe and healthy neighborhoods,” the councilor added.
“We are not doing that now.”
Flynn has said the Boston Police Department is 600 officers short of its ideal staffing level, resulting in forced overtime.
The councilor furthered his request Thursday evening, calling for the “establishment of a city, state and federal task force to address violent crime, drug dealing and human trafficking in Boston.”
“I believe,” he added in an X post just after 5:30 p.m., “we should also have a serious discussion with MA officials about requesting public safety support from the National Guard!”
Flynn’s cry for help comes after the Downtown Boston Neighborhood Association sent a letter to residents and stakeholders in the community on Wednesday, outlining how the ongoing violence “underscores the urgency of the formal requests we submitted to the City of Boston and the Boston Police Department” last week.
Five people were shot in three separate shootings over 16 days between June 29 and July 15, “all within roughly a half-mile radius that spans the Tremont Street corridor and adjacent Boston Common.”
The spate of shootings prompted the downtown neighborhood group to formally request additional police staffing, a sustained visible presence and an immediate public safety briefing.
Wednesday’s alleged killing and assault are renewing the group’s call, and co-founder Rishi Shukla added that it is time to “reconvene the One Downtown Task Force.”
That group is a public safety coalition which launched in March 2025 to target drug use, homelessness and crime.
Shukla and Flynn co-chair the group with Mayor Michelle Wu, Suffolk County DA Kevin Hayden and state Rep.
Aaron Michlewitz.
“This fatal act of violence comes amid a deeply troubling series of violent incidents in and around Downtown Boston and Boston Common,” Shukla stated in the letter.
“As we have said repeatedly, residents, workers, students, and visitors deserve to be safe and to feel safe.
What we have seen and experienced over the past few weeks is unacceptable.”
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a Herald request for comment Thursday afternoon.
The suspect in Wednesday’s alleged killing and assault, Ashlie Jeremie, 27, appeared in court Thursday, as he faces a murder charge and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and larceny under $1,200 charges.
Jeremie had been in federal custody about two weeks before the killing and assault on a pending gun charge, the U.S.
Marshals confirmed.
The defendant allegedly brought a gun into the O’Neill Building on May 18.
“We are grateful for the extraordinary efforts of the officers, detectives, first responders, and others whose work led to an arrest,” Shukla stated.
“At the same time, the work does not end with an arrest, nor can an arrest be the limit of our collective response.”
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80%flagged-word coverageEd Flynn
166 attributed words56% of attributed speech83% writer coverage
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