The Boston Globe - 17.10.2019

B2 Metro The Boston Globe THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2019

By Alyssa Lukpat

GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

C

ity officials broke ground in East Boston on Wednesday on a

$30 million police station — the first new police facility in al-

most a decade, officials said.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh, state politicians, and Boston police

hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for the new A-7 police sta-

tion, which is set to open in 2021 at 338 East Eagle St.

“It’s the first complete new station that we’re building in Boston in a

decade. B-2 in Dudley Square opened in 2011,” Walsh said. “When I first

got elected mayor, I thought we were going to be breaking ground. I was

all excited. And here we are six years later, breaking ground.”

Boston officials also broke ground Sept. 16 on a new $23.5 million

fire station in Roxbury. The city is funding other projects, including a

new EMS station at Logan Airport and a pool in East Boston.

The new A-7 station will replace the station at 69 Paris St., officials

said. The Paris Street building was opened on Feb. 28, 1859, Boston po-

lice Sergeant Detective John Boyle said.

“There were some rooms on the second floor the police can’t even

use. The ceiling is crumbling, the building is falling apart,” state Repre-

sentative Adrian Modaro said.

The 27,000-square-foot police station will feature a public room for

the community to host events, the mayor’s office said in a statement.

The three-story building will have a LEED Silver certification.

The station was designed by Leers Weinzapfel Associates and J&J

Contractors, Inc., the mayor’s office said. The building will display a

piece of public art that it will obtain through one of the city’s art initia-

tives.

“All of you right here, from our great elected officials to the health

center, command staff, the people of East Boston, this is our station.

This is a breaking of the ground for a new family station,” Boston Police

Commissioner William Gross said. “East Boston deserves it. We’ve been

waiting a long time.”

Boston’s crime rate dropped 25 percent in the last five years, the may-

or’s office said. Major crime in District A-7 went down 15 percent this

year, officials said.

“This new building will allow our police officers to do their jobs more

effectively, and continue their incredible work and relationships with the

East Boston community,” Gross said in the statement.

A few dozen protesters outside the groundbreaking ceremony called

on Walsh to stop Eversource Energy from building a substation behind

the new police station, said Heather O’Brien, a community planner at

Harborkeepers, an environmental organization.

Alyssa Lukpat can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on

Twitter @AlyssaLukpat.

Thestartofanewpolicestation

AROUND THE REGION

BOSTON

Parentsentencedin

collegeadmissionscase

A California jeweler who paid a $15,000 bribe to

pad her son’s ACT score as part of the nationwide

college admissions cheating scandal received a

21-day prison sentence Wednesday, the office of

US Attorney Andrew E. Lelling said. Marjorie

Klapper, 51, of Menlo Park, Calif., learned her

fate during a hearing Wednesday in US District

Court in Boston, where she had pleaded guilty in

May to a sole count of conspiracy to commit mail

fraud and honest services mail fraud. A federal

judge also ordered her to complete 250 hours of

community service and pay a fine of $9,500.

When she gets out of prison, Klapper will have

one year of supervised release. She is the ninth

parent to be sentenced in connection with the

college admissions case. The three-week prison

term is far less than the four months prosecutors

sought for Klapper, who in addition to paying

$15,000, also falsely claimed her son was black

or Latino on his college applications. “Ms. Klap-

per thereby not only corrupted the standardized

testing system, but also specifically victimized

the real minority applicants already fighting for

admission to elite schools,” Lelling said in the

statement. “We respectfully disagree that a

three-week sentence is a sufficient sanction for

this misconduct.”

DURHAM, N.H.

UNHgetsgranttoaid

sexabuseinvestigators

A research center at the University of New

Hampshire is getting a federal grant from the

National Institute of Justice to support police of-

ficers and others who investigate crimes involv-

ing child sexual abuse images. Officials say a

surge of such images online and new technology

designed to intercept them means more investi-

gators are being hired to review such material,

but doing so can have toxic effects on their men-

tal health. The university’s Crimes Against Chil-

dren Research Center will use a three-year grant

to interview police and forensic examiners across

the country to identify best practices for work-

load, counseling, and debriefing. (AP)

HAMPTON, N.H.

Missingelderlycouple

found200milesaway

Police searching for a New Hampshire husband

and wife found them about 200 miles away from

their assisted living facility. Police in Hampton

said Dave and Ona Magee, both 86, were found

in Bangor, Maine, on Wednesday morning. Their

conditions weren’t immediately known. The Ma-

gees, who had a car, were last seen leaving an

appointment in Dracut, Mass., on Tuesday after-

noon. They were supposed to return to the assist-

ed living facility in Hampton. (AP)

POLICE BLOTTER

RMURDER CONVICTIONThe gunman in a 2016

Dorchester shooting that killed a man and para-

lyzed a woman was found guilty of first degree

murder in Suffolk County Superior Court

Wednesday, the district attorney’s office said in a

statement. Aaron Almeida was found guilty in

the shooting death of Ailton Goncalves. In the

shooting of the second victim, he was found

guilty of armed assault to murder and assault

and battery with a dangerous weapon causing se-

rious bodily injury, the statement said. Gon-

calves, 35, was shot in the head on Dudley Ter-

race on Aug. 20, 2016. The woman, then 30, had

stepped outside a friend’s house when she was

shot in the back and legs. She survived, but was

paralyzed. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 6.

RFENTANYL RINGThree members of a Brockton-

area gang known as Head Shot Mafia are facing

federal drug charges for allegedly operating a

fentanyl distribution operation in southeastern

Massachusetts, State Police said. Placido Arman-

do Pereira, 33, Natalio Miranda, 28, and Djoy

Defrancesco, 23, all of Brockton, were arrested

Wednesday following a month-long joint investi-

gation by multiple law enforcement agencies,

State Police said in a statement. They were held

following their arraignment Wednesday. A

fourth suspect, Jason Miranda, 24, of Taunton,

remains at large, according to the statement.

“The crew ran a fentanyl delivery service that en-

compassed all of Brockton as well as neighboring

cities,” State Police said.

RGUN BUSTTroy Connally, 35, of Boston, was ar-

rested on illegal gun and ammunition charges af-

ter he allegedly fired shots outside a home in

Dorchester early Wednesday morning, Boston

police said. Officers responded around 1:05 a.m.

to a report of shots fired in the area of 12 Arion

St. Officers obtained video footage that showed

the suspect taking a gun out of his jacket pocket,

and pointing it to the sky. Several flashes fol-

lowed, the statement said. Police canvassed the

area and found Connally walking in the area of

Arion Street and Davern Avenue. Officers ap-

proached him, recovered the slide of a semi-auto-

matic weapon, and arrested him.

RFATAL STABBINGPolice are investigating after a

man was fatally stabbed in Hyannis on Wednes-

day, authorities said. Barnstable police respond-

ed to report of a fight on Yarmouth Road around

1:15 p.m. There, officers found a man who ap-

peared to have sustained a stab wound, Barnsta-

ble police Sergeant Eric Drifmeyer said. The man

was taken to a hospital, Drifmeyer said. The

Cape and Islands district attorney’s office con-

firmed that the incident was being investigated

as a homicide.

RAIR BAGS STOLENMedford police are search-

ing for thieves who broke into multiple Honda

Accord cars and stole air bags, officials said.

“These crimes seem to be occurring in the over-

night hours under the cover of darkness in vari-

ous parts of the city. We ask those of you that

own Honda Accords and neighbors of those to be

extra vigilant in watching for strange cars or peo-

ple that may be casing a car in your neighbor-

hood,” the statement said. Police are asking any-

one with information about the case to call 781-

395-1212.

GET SMART

By Maria Lovato
GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology have used nature’s biggest lens
to see the X-rays emitted by a young galaxy
9.4 billion light-years away.
An article on the discovery by lead author
Matthew Bayliss was published Monday in
the journal Nature Astronomy.
Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Ob-
servatory, home to a powerful X-ray telescope,
the astronomers studied the Phoenix galaxy
cluster 5.7 billion light-years away and were
able to see the young galaxy hidden billions of
light-years behind it, Bayliss said.
Galaxy clusters are “the big cities of the
universe,” astrophysicist Paul Sutter said.
They are groups of thousands of galaxies
bound together by gravity.
These clusters are so gravitationally power-
ful that they bend space and time and distort
any light that passes through them. This cre-
ates nature’s largest lens, said Bayliss, a re-
search scientist in MIT’s Kavli Institute for As-
trophysics and Space Research, last week.
Using “gravitational lensing,” astronomers
can see things in space too faint to be detected
with just a telescope, Bayliss said.
Scientists have used gravitational lensing
to obtain images of galaxies at optical wave-
lengths but never in the X-ray range of the
electromagnetic spectrum, according to a
statement from MIT.
Scientists previously thought it would be
impossibletoseparateanyX-rayscoming
from background sources from the enormous
amount of X-rays coming from the galaxy

cluster itself, the statement said.
But Bayliss and his team were able to sepa-
rate the X-rays coming from the Phoenix clus-
ter from those coming from the new galaxy,
allowing them to “see” it.
“We’ve been looking at lensed galaxies for
a long time in all sorts of wavelengths, but
never in X-ray,” said Sutter, a visiting scholar
at the Ohio State University Center for Cos-
mology and AstroParticle Physics.
Researchers, he said, found “a period of in-
tense star formation in that young galaxy,
something that would be impossible to see
without this lensing technique.”
The galaxy that Bayliss and his team saw
was so deep in space that the X-rays they were
deciphering were from 9.4 billion years ago.
The images were from a time when the uni-
verse was 4.4 billion years old, about one-
third of the age it is now, according to MIT.
The galaxy they saw was small, less than 1
percent of the mass of the Milky Way, Bayliss
said. But over time, galaxies consume more
stars and grow. Today, 9.4 billion years later,
the galaxy would be much larger, he said.
“The way I like to think about how we ob-
serve the universe, all we get is a snapshot,”
Bayliss said.
Bayliss likened studying the universe to
studying the entire human race just from an
overhead shot of a stadium. You don’t get to
see any of the individual people age, but you
do see many different people at different stag-
es in their lives. From that, you can figure out
what the lifespan of a person is like.
Bayliss said the snapshot adds another tool
to the toolbox for astronomers to study the
lives of galaxies and opens the door to exam-
ining more faraway space phenomena.

Maria Lovato can be reached at
[email protected]. Follow her on
Twitter @maria_lovato99.

Findingagalaxy

far,faraway

FELICE FRANKEL AND CHRISTINE DANILOFF, MIT

Oct. 17, 1994: As the Pine Street Inn
celebrates its 25th anniversary, the people
who run it are worried that the public is
becoming less willing to support programs
that help the homeless regain society, the
Globe’s Adrian Walker writes. A board
member of the shelter, Robert Walsh, said
decreased public alarm over homelessness
may be the greatest obstacle to ending it.
“We’re at a crossroads,” Walsh said.

The MetroMinute

TIME MACHINE

SUZANNE KREITER/GLOBE STAFF

JESSICA RINALDI/GLOBE STAFF

EDUCATING THE MASSES —A Charlestown primary care practice owned by Massachusetts General Hospital has set up a

mock safe injection site to show the public how it works, as the Legislature debates allowing one to operate in the state. The site

shows the steps one would go through and the equipment that would be used if a real site was established. The facilities have

been found to prevent deaths by giving people access to immediate medical care if they overdose.