To the editor:
As the manager of the Jared Nicholson for mayor of Lynn campaign, I’m proud that our campaign team has gone out of its way to be positive and forward-looking. The Cyr campaign has printed material about our campaign’s platform that is false and misleading and the record needs to be corrected.
Jared has never said he wants to unarm police as Councilor Darren Cyr’s recent ad in The Daily Item implies. Nor has Jared said that he wants to redirect funding from the police, which Councilor Cyr printed on an attack flyer that his campaign has been distributing. Jared unequivocally does not support defunding the police.
Jared does support the idea of an unarmed crisis-response team to help address mental-health and substance-abuse issues in addition to and working in some capacity with the Lynn Police and Fire departments.
This initiative was proposed by the Lynn Racial Justice Coalition and supported by Mayor McGee. Mayor McGee proposed funding for the community engagement and implementation of an unarmed crisis-response team in this year’s budget, which was unanimously approved by the Lynn City Council, including Councilor Cyr.
Jared would have been glad to refute these bogus arguments in a debate. Unfortunately, Councilor Cyr only seems willing to share them from behind a keyboard. In fact, when the topic was raised on the debate stage, Councilor Cyr said he was open to an unarmed crisis-response team.
As a veteran returning to Lynn, the community I grew up in, after four years in the U.S. Army, I was drawn to help Jared because of the type of person he is and because of the issues he stands for. Those issues include public safety. That’s why I’m excited about the potential of an unarmed crisis-response team as a way to address some long-standing issues, including within the veteran community and for those struggling with mental health and substance abuse.
This is an issue that many communities across the country are facing and choosing to explore through unarmed crisis-response team models.
The Cyr campaign is peddling other falsehoods and distasteful attacks besides this one. But I wanted to respond to this one specifically less for my concern about its impact on voters (whom I believe will see through Cyr’s misrepresentations), and more for my interest in making sure that the city has the right information to give this promising initiative the opportunity it deserves.
Jean Fana
Campaign manager, Nicholson for Mayor
