There were rumors about insurance fraud when Joe lost his jeep and it mysteriously reappeared in somebody's driveway. Then the tidal houses here in Ward 5 where registered voters mysteriously increase during alderman (and mayoral) election years and shrink during alternate years, thus "stealing the election from Denise Provost" in 1993 according to a Macaluso campaign defector. None of this is of any great interest to DA Tom Reilly, of course, judging from his response to Somervillians' letters. When progressives applied pressure at the AG Harshbarger level, Reilly did assign two junior people to investigate voter irregularities in Somerville but after a year, they were pulled off the case with nary a report to show for their efforts.
This just out on Joe -
11/24/98 Bromley-Heath officers cite lack of support - Ex-chief of force seen as responsible for culture where arrests discouraged, by Anne Kornblut, Boston Globe, p. B1.
...For years, [officers Troy Chappelle and Arthur Prince of the Bromley housing development private police] had felt stymied in the eight-member police force, unsupported by their chief, Joseph Macaluso, in their efforts to aggressively fight crime on the grounds.... In the aftermath of the Oct. 30 raid on Bromley-Heath - which netted more than two dozen arrests and forced an embarrassing takeover of the renowned Tenant Management Corp. - several current and former members of the development's private police force have expressed similar frustration with their superiors, including tenant leader Mildred Hailey, accusing them of undermining basic police work on the Jamaica Plain grounds.... They were routinely discouraged from [acting as real police officers], particularly when their arrests involved people closely connected to Hailey.... Rubin Williams...a member of the Bromley-Heath police department for six years, said the message delivered by tenant management officials was, "basically, keep them (the residents) from getting arrested."
At the center of their allegations is Macaluso...a Somerville native who oversaw the private police unit from its inception in the late 1970s until 1996, when he overcame a controversial nominating process to become director of the Somerville Housing Authority.... Macaluso denies ever thwarting his former subordinates' efforts.... also said he had a "good" relationship with Hailey, and described her as the "best, hardest-working employer he ever served.... Since the October drug raid, questions have surfaced about how much Hailey knew of drug dealing on the premises and Hailey, as a national icon of tenant management, has taken her share of the blame. But Macaluso, who now heads one of the largest housing authorities in Massachusetts, has emerged from the incident virtually unscathed despite allegations that some of the drug dealers arrested Oct. 30 operated with relative impunity before Macaluso's departure in 1996. And Macaluso, who served 17 years as chief, has not been contacted by officials investigating Bromley-Heath....
[Guess if you know the right people....]