BOSTON, Mass. — Governor Maura Healey built a parole board that has lost sight of public safety. Five of the six members now sitting on the Massachusetts Parole Board were nominated by Healey, and the board’s record is her record.
In 2025, Healey’s parole board granted early release to Tyler Brown, a career criminal convicted in 2020 of shooting at Boston Police officers. The board pointed to his completion of violence reduction training and said he was remorseful for the attacks. One year later, Brown was accused of erratically shooting a rifle at motorists in Cambridge and critically injuring two drivers. The governor’s board took a man who had fired on police officers, accepted his word, and sent him back to the street.
Brown is not an isolated case. As of December 2025, the parole board had released 39 murder convicts who were originally sentenced to life without parole. From 2021 to 2025, the board voted to release parole applicants in two-thirds of its hearings. Under Healey, release is not the exception at the Parole Board. It is the norm.
Healey chose these board members, and she is accountable for every decision they make. She has had years to see where this board’s judgment leads, and she has done nothing to course-correct. Families in Cambridge are living with the consequences, and the governor has yet to answer for them. A leader who truly puts public safety first would have demanded accountability from her appointees long before two drivers were critically injured.
Massachusetts needs a different approach. Massachusetts families must be kept safe. Families deserve a governor who treats public safety as a promise, not a probability. Yet, in March of 2024, after a 15-year-old disabled girl was allegedly raped at a state-run emergency shelter in Rockland, Governor Healey said, “From time to time things will happen.”
The governor should:
- Appoint a strong parole board that prioritizes and protects the safety of our people.
- Eliminate cashless bail.
- Create mandatory jail time for any conviction of violence against law enforcement agents.
The men and women in law enforcement who put their lives on the line, and the families who rely on them, deserve better than a governor who stacked the board and looked away.
From the press office of Mike Minogue.