CAMBRIDGE — A Massachusetts socialist lawmaker is defending the slap-on-the-wrist sentence handed to the lunatic who sprayed 60 rounds at innocent drivers on Cambridge's Memorial Drive this week — saying critics should blame the gun, not the judge who cut him loose.
State Rep. Mike Connolly's solution? More gun laws and freeing criminals like Brown.
The Cambridge-Somerville Democrat, aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, used a Friday newsletter to ask voters to back Chapter 135 — Massachusetts's 2024 gun law — when it heads to the November ballot.
In the same newsletter, Connolly called the 5-to-6-year sentence that freed Tyler Brown — convicted in 2020 of opening fire on Boston police officers — "fair and just," even as Brown's victims fight for their lives in the ICU.
Prosecutors had begged for 10 to 12 years after Brown's broad-daylight South End shootout with police. Retired Superior Court Judge Janet Sanders gave him five.
Five years later, the freed felon stalked Memorial Drive with a rifle and squeezed off roughly 60 rounds at civilian traffic before a state trooper and a civilian Marine took him out. A 35-year-old delivery driver on his way to the car wash and an MBTA Ride driver — who somehow drove himself to the hospital after a bullet to the head — are still clinging to life.
Even Gov. Maura Healey and former Suffolk DA Rachael Rollins — yes, that Rachael Rollins, whose infamous "decline to prosecute" memo let shoplifters, trespassers and drug users walk — say the sentence was too short.
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When the godmother of "progressive prosecution" is to your right on crime, you've got a problem.
Not Connolly.
The socialist rep doubled down, citing retired Judge Jack Lu, who he said called the sentence "a fair decision, a just decision."
'Don't go backward'
Connolly's prescription? More of the same.
"I remain proud of what we've accomplished with criminal justice reform in Massachusetts, as we've cut the prison population nearly in half over the past ten years," he wrote, pleading with constituents not to use "this one incident" as an excuse to "go backward."
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That "one incident," per Connolly's own retelling: Brown was sprung from McLean Hospital three days before the rampage. He went on a weekend drug bender. Staring down a Monday drug test that would have shipped him back to prison, he hopped on a video call with his parole officer, brandished the rifle and snarled, "I am not going back to prison." Hours later he was lighting up Memorial Drive.
Cozying up to the socialists
Wednesday night, Connolly hit a vigil thrown by Cambridge DSA — one of the loudest voices in the state for gutting the prison system — and told mourners the real "failure" wasn't Brown's cushy sentence. It was the mental health system.
What he never mentions, in his Chapter 135 pitch or anywhere else: Brown, a convicted violent felon, was already barred under federal and state law from touching any gun — let alone the rifle he used to terrorize Cambridge.
A Community Debrief on the shooting is set for Tuesday, 6 to 8 p.m., at the Cambridge Community Center on Callender Street.
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