Boston Scandal Underscores Folly of Biden Campaign to Expand Monopolistic Unionism

Late last month, union-label President Joe Biden put his handpicked labor secretary, Marty Walsh, along with Vice President Kamala Harris, in charge of a new special task force commissioned with finding more ways for the federal government to promote monopolistic unionism in state and local employment and the private sector as well as within its own workforce.

At the same time, a burgeoning scandal in Boston –where Walsh reigned as mayor until a few weeks ago – was highlighting how monopoly-bargaining privileges for Big Labor bosses corrupt the public service and hurt taxpayers and other people who rely on vital government services to protect their safety and well-being.

In its April 11 edition, the Boston Globe reported for the first time that the Boston Police Department (BPD) had been aware of and concealed from the public child-sex-abuse allegations against former Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association (BPPA) President Patrick Rose for a quarter-century prior to Rose’s arrest last August on an array of charges, including child rape and indecent assault and battery on a child.

In 1995, the BPD filed a criminal complaint against Rose, then a rank-and-file patrolman, “for sexual assault against a 12-year-old” boy. The complaint was dropped after Rose reportedly pressured the alleged victim into recanting his accusations. Nevertheless, the BPD “proceeded with an internal investigation” that concluded that Rose had “likely committed a crime.”

“Despite this finding,” continued the April 11 Globe report, “Rose kept his badge, remained on patrol for another 21 years, and rose to power” in the BPPA union.

Ten days later, a follow-up story in the Globe revealed the apparent reason why, after being relegated to desk duty and barred from carrying a gun due to findings by a police internal affairs probe and a social services investigation that “sufficient” evidence indicated he had sexually abuse a child, Rose was ultimately allowed to “keep his badge and return to patrol.”

On October 20, 1997, a BPPA union lawyer sent a letter to then-BPD Commissioner Paul Evans “threatening to file a grievance on behalf of Rose” if he was not returned “to full active duty,” allowed to carry a gun, and granted opportunities to collect court overtime! In short order, Rose was returned to patrol, and remained there for another 21 years, until his retirement in 2018. From 2014 until 2017, he was BPPA president.

The documentary evidence showing that the BPPA brass, to quote Boston City Councilor and mayoral candidate Andrea Campbell, “enabled and elevated an accused child molester” was hidden from public view until recently.

From the time of Rose’s arrest last August until Marty Walsh left town this March to become labor secretary, then-Mayor Walsh rebuffed media requests to see the BPD internal investigations file on the accused child molester.

The Walsh Administration’s excuse for refusing to release even a page of Rose’s internal affairs file is that it was impossible to do so without revealing the identity of the alleged victim. Now that Acting Boston Mayor Kim Janey has released a substantial portion of the file while continuing to protect the victim’s identity, that excuse has been exposed as a lie.

Is the real reason Marty Walsh and his appointees didn’t want the public to see Patrick Rose’s internal affairs file is that Walsh didn’t want anyone else to know how his government union cronies had “enabled and elevated an alleged child molester”?

This is a question Walsh should have to answer before he and other members of the President’s “Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment” get to work trying to ensure, in part, that government union bosses in every corner of the country have monopoly-bargaining privileges just as extensive as those enjoyed by the BPPA brass.

A second pressing question for Walsh and the President is: Given the disastrous impact of coercive public-sector unionism in the Labor Secretary’s former stomping ground, as witnessed by the Patrick Rose fiasco, why is the Biden Administration determined to federalize it?