BOSTON - November 20 - Calling it unconscionable to advertise a graphically violent video game at a time of escalating concerns about youth violence in the Boston area, more than fifty elected officials, community leaders, and public health advocates sent a letter today to MTBA General Manager Daniel Grabaskaus demanding the MBTA immediately remove all advertising for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. The ads currently cover many MTBA Green Line trains, exposing countless children – both those who ride the trains and those whose neighborhoods the trains pass through – to the latest installment in the notoriously violent Grand Theft Auto series.

"It’s tragic that the MBTA is actually bringing messages that glorify violence into a community where young people are being murdered," said Ray A. Hammond, M.D., M.A., Co-Pastor, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church and Chairman and Co-Founder of the Boston Ten Point Coalition. "Displaying these ads does a terrible disservice to Boston’s children and undermines the hard work that all of us have been doing to end the tragic escalation of youth violence."

The letter was written and organized by the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. Notable local signatories include mayors Thomas M. Menino of Boston and Kenneth Reeves of Cambridge; State Senators Jarrett Barrios and Diane Wilkerson; a number of Boston-area State Representatives including Shirley Owens-Hicks, Chairwoman of the House Committee on Children and Families and Peter J. Koutoujian, Chairman, Joint Committee on Public Health; Gerald P. Koocher, President of the American Psychological Association; John Weisz, PhD, ABPP, President, Judge Baker Children's Center; William R. Beardslee, MD, Professor of Child Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School; Michael Rich, MD, Director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital; Tristram Blake, Executive Director of the South End Community Health Center; and Jonathan Scott, President and CEO of Victory Programs.

“The diversity and breadth of this coalition reflects the growing outrage at companies that actively promote violence and lawlessness to children” said CCFC co-founder, Dr. Susan Linn. “The MBTA should respect the wishes of the communities it serves by immediately removing these ads and publicly pledging not to advertise media products that the industry itself deems unsuitable for children.”

Despite being rated M (for ages seventeen and up), the Grand Theft Auto series is extremely popular with young people. In 2002, the top selling video game for teens and preteens was Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, in which players could kill a prostitute after having sex with her. In Vice City Stories, the latest installment in the series, players are rewarded for killing innocent bystanders, law enforcement officers and rival gang members, as they attempt to set up illicit businesses, such as drug dealing, and commit armed robbery.

“Research conclusively demonstrates that violent videogames can increase the likelihood of aggressive behavior,” said Alvin. F. Poussaint, MD, a psychiatrist at Judge Baker Children’s Center and Harvard Medical School. “A publicly funded state agency should not be in the business of undermining public health.”

“In all of the ways we serve, we have to put children first,” said Thomas M. Menino, Mayor of Boston. “We have to think about all of their needs—about their physical, psychological and social development.”

The complete text of the letter and its signatories are available at:

http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/pressreleases/mbtaletter.pdf

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