Rollins Not Best U.S. Attorney Pick for the SouthCoast [OPINION]

The folks sent scrambling for cover as someone opened fire at a basketball tournament at New Bedford's Monte Park on Saturday might not think Joe Biden's choice of Rachael Rollins for U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts is such a good idea. You see, Rollins, the District Attorney for Suffolk County (Boston), has a reputation for being soft on crime.

Rollins is notorious for infusing race, ethnicity, and economic status into the debate over prosecuting crime. The taxpayers simply want the criminals, white, black, or brown off the street and away from them and their families. Just ask the people who ran from a gunman at Monte Park if they care about the color of the gunman's skin, his ethnic background, or how much money he had in his pocket. They want his ass in jail!

Boston Globe via Getty Images

Left-wing loons Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Ed Markey are elated by Biden's selection of Rollins. In a joint statement, Warren and Markey hailed Rollins as a "great choice" for the job.

“District Attorney Rollins is a national leader on transforming the criminal justice system and shifting away from an approach based on punishment and penalization to one that combats the root causes of injustice, whether it be poverty, substance use, or racial disparity,” they said.

Get our free mobile app

Does the absurdity of the above statement register with you? Perhaps if you were among the participants and spectators who had to flee for their lives at Monte Park, it might.

Why do these progressives always feel the need to "transform" the system? Warren, Markey, and Rollins want to move from a system that punishes and penalizes people who shoot up basketball tournaments in favor of a more understanding system that sympathizes with and coddles criminals. After all, society has dealt them a terrible hand. It's your fault, not theirs.

District Attorney Rollins refuses to prosecute various low-level criminals. Ask the folks in San Fransisco how that insanity is working out for them.

The previous U.S. Attorney, Andrew Lelling, was tough on crime. Remember when Mayor Jon Mitchell, another liberal, said New Bedford doesn't have a gang problem? Just "gang wannabes," said Mitchell. That was before Lelling moved in and conducted one of the Northeast's largest raids on the Latin Kings street gang, right here in New Bedford. Would a U.S. Attorney Rollins be so bold?

The people who fled from Monte Park are probably uninterested in the sad life tale of the gunman that opened fire on them and their families. I bet they are interested in catching the offender and putting him away for a good long time.

Barry Richard is the host of The Barry Richard Show on 1420 WBSM New Bedford. He can be heard weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. Contact him at barry@wbsm.com and follow him on Twitter @BarryJRichard58. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

LOOK: Milestones in women's history from the year you were born

Women have left marks on everything from entertainment and music to space exploration, athletics, and technology. Each passing year and new milestone makes it clear both how recent this history-making is in relation to the rest of the country, as well as how far we still need to go. The resulting timeline shows that women are constantly making history worthy of best-selling biographies and classroom textbooks; someone just needs to write about them.

Scroll through to find out when women in the U.S. and around the world won rights, the names of women who shattered the glass ceiling, and which country's women banded together to end a civil war.