Ukrainian family settles in western Mass. and the future of auxiliary police forces

47:44

May 03, 2022

This is the rundown for Radio Boston for May 3. Tiziana Dearing is our host.

This week, Dr. Anthony Fauci announced the nation is out of the "full-blown pandemic phase" with sufficient immunity to avoid surges of hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID. Meanwhile, the FDA announced it will review COVID-19 vaccines for children in June. In Massachusetts, hospitalizations are up by more than 100% since the start of April. We take listener questions for Dr. Benjamin Linas, infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center and professor at Boston University School of Medicine.
We speak with Lidiia Martynyuk, mother of six children, about the family's harrowing journey from their home in Zhytomyr, Ukraine to Westfield, Mass. We also hear from Worcester's Ascentria Care Alliance on how the resettlement agency has been helping Ukrainian families find new homes in western Massachusetts.
Many towns in Massachusetts depend on reserve and volunteer auxiliary officers for their day-to-day operations, but the recent police reform law requires hundreds of hours of training that are not feasible for many of them. We speak with the heads of the Framingham Auxiliary Police and the Wellfleet Police Department on the new training standards that may lead to the suspension or decertification of their part-time and volunteer officers.

This program aired on May 3, 2022.