BOSTON — Linda Champion is running for Suffolk County District Attorney on a single line: bring back consequences for crime. In a detailed written exchange with Mass Daily News, the longtime prosecutor laid out a platform — no bail for the most dangerous, mandatory minimums for repeat gun offenders, shoplifters prosecuted again, victims at the center of every case — and the Boston Police union has thrown its endorsement behind her.
The race is a three-way fight: incumbent Kevin Hayden, backed for reelection by Mayor Michelle Wu, whose office has prosecuted Boston cops both too quickly and too leniently in the past year; former DA Rachael Rollins, returning to seek her old job despite a 2023 federal ethics-driven resignation; and Champion, running on a law-and-order platform that explicitly repudiates both.
"Nothing stays"
Champion's two-word answer to MDN's question about Rollins' blanket "do not prosecute" list is the headline: "Nothing stays."
"I do not support blanket 'do not prosecute' lists, and under my administration they will end," Champion wrote. "Blanket policies amount to laziness in decision-making and fail to recognize that every case, every victim, and every set of circumstances is different."
The Rollins list, formalized in 2019, identified more than a dozen low-level offenses — from shoplifting to trespassing — that the Suffolk DA's office would presumptively decline to prosecute. Hayden inherited it. Champion would scrap it on day one in favor of "thoughtful, case-by-case decision-making."
"We cannot use statistics as a shield"
Mayor Wu and her allies have for years defended Boston's public safety record by calling it the "safest major city in America" — a phrase Wu has used in congressional testimony, in year-end public-safety briefings, and across her social media. Suffolk County residents who have lost loved ones to gun violence say the slogan does not match what they see in their neighborhoods.
Champion put it directly when MDN asked her about the framing: "Try saying that to Giovanni Anthony Bala's mother. Giovanni was a 22-year-old newly certified union carpenter… he was taken from his family this year because of senseless gun violence."
"We cannot use statistics as a shield from difficult realities," she wrote. "When leadership relies on numbers to dismiss the lived experiences of residents, it loses credibility and trust."
First 90 days: shoplifting and Mass and Cass
Champion's first-90-day platform centers on prosecuting retail theft — a message she says Suffolk County has not been sending.
"It is deeply concerning that a message was sent to residents suggesting shoplifting is okay. Shoplifting is not okay," she wrote. "Policies that signaled shoplifting would not be prosecuted invited organized crime, strained our resources, sent a mixed message to children, and undermined public confidence." She added: "The impact of those policies has contributed to the loss of pharmacies in communities of color, where many seniors rely on convenient neighborhood access to medication."
MDN has been documenting that pattern of retail-theft activity for over a year: a serial shoplifting suspect with seven active warrants who kept reappearing near the Prudential Center, three shoplifters busted in one hour at the same complex, and a BPD public-help request to identify suspects after a shoplifting spree at Alo on Boylston Street.
Surveillance images released by Boston Police of suspects wanted in connection with a shoplifting spree at Alo on Boylston Street. Photo: Boston Police Department.
On Mass and Cass — the open-air drug and homelessness camp at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard — Champion proposed a two-track approach: aggressive prosecution of dealers and traffickers, treatment-focused diversion for individuals driven by substance use disorder. "This corner of the city will not be surrendered and will not be overtaken."
"Public safety must come first"
On the most dangerous defendants, Champion will not negotiate. "Because I have seen firsthand what happens when dangerous people cycle in and out of the system with no meaningful intervention, I will seek pretrial detention. Public safety must come first."
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The position is personal. Champion's campaign chair Ana Timas Fidalgo's husband Jorge — a Cape Verdean American businessman and community leader — was shot and killed in 2001 at his Roxbury grocery store, by a man Jorge had personally connected with a job.
"I have seen the impact murder has on a family and on a community," Champion wrote.
On bail, she rejects both the catch-and-release default and the cash-bail-for-everyone default. "Bail decisions must be tied to dangerousness." She supports mandatory minimums "in clearly defined gun and violent offenses involving repeat violent offenders" — and her line is verbatim: "If you repeatedly choose violence or illegal firearms, the system will respond with certainty and strength."
For nonviolent low-level cases, she favors specialty courts and treatment "instead of defaulting to incarceration."
Linda Champion greets a line of Boston EMS personnel on the campaign trail.
Hayden's two ways of charging cops
The cleanest daylight between Champion and the incumbent is how Hayden has handled police prosecutions — he has gone both directions.
In March, Hayden's office charged Boston Police Officer Nicholas O'Malley with manslaughter just eight days after a fatal traffic-stop shooting — without taking the case to a grand jury. It was the first time a Suffolk DA had charged a Boston cop in a line-of-duty shooting in more than thirty years.
A year earlier, Hayden's office did the opposite: it abruptly dropped charges against a Transit Police sergeant on the eve of trial after three years of building the case. Federal prosecutors picked it up and a federal jury convicted him.
Champion does not name either case in her written responses. She did not need to.
"My default approach in any officer-involved shooting resulting in death would be a thorough inquest and grand jury review," she wrote. "Process is what protects the integrity of a case. It gives the public confidence that evidence, not headlines or a self-serving political agenda, drove the decision."
Champion during a television interview.
Rollins and the woke prosecution era
Rollins represents the second half of Champion's pitch. In 2018, Rollins ran and won as the architect of the original Suffolk County non-prosecution list. She left for the U.S. Attorney's office in 2022, only to resign the following year after the Justice Department Inspector General's 155-page report found that Rollins had used her U.S. Attorney position to leak non-public, sensitive DOJ information to a reporter about a federal investigation of her own DA-race rival, Kevin Hayden. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel called her Hatch Act violations among "the most egregious transgressions" the agency had ever investigated.
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Rollins has filed to run for her old DA job. Champion's framing is direct: the woke-prosecution experiment failed, both on its policy and on the conduct of the prosecutor who launched it.
Law-and-order roots
Champion's tough-on-crime posture is grounded in family.
Linda Champion (center) with her South Korean immigrant mother and older sister. Photo: lindachampion.com.
Her father served as a military police officer in Vietnam. Her sisters are married to soldiers. Her mother, a South Korean immigrant who came to the United States in 1973, raised three Black daughters in the racially divided Deep South.
"I believe in law and order," Champion wrote. "I am a single mother who is working to create a safe community for all."
Day-one moves
Champion laid out three day-one actions: an "All Hands on Deck" meeting bringing law enforcement, first responders, community leaders, and prosecutors into one room; expanded Victim Witness Advocate staffing with stronger trauma-informed training and victim-notification standards; and a full public audit of case-processing times and discovery delays.
"Survivors should never learn about major developments from the news or by accident," she wrote.
Linda Champion in a campaign portrait.
MDN has published Champion's full written responses to its eight questions as a companion Q&A here, reproduced verbatim and unedited.
What voters get to decide
The Suffolk County primary is set for September 1. Hayden, Rollins, and Champion all certified for the ballot in May. Three candidates. Three theories of the office: continue the Hayden status quo, return to the Rollins-era progressive framework, or take the Boston Police-backed reset.
The cops have already made their pick.
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