Watch: Rachael Rollins on the death threats she’s received since her appointment to U.S. attorney

Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins said she has received racist death threats since her confirmation by the U.S. Senate last week to serve as the first Black, female U.S. attorney for Massachusetts.

Rollins was confirmed following a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris amid partisan gridlock over her nomination.

Several Republicans, including senators Ted Cruz, of Texas, and Tom Cotton, of Arkansas, actively sought to block Rollins from ascending to the post, the top federal law enforcement official in the commonwealth.

“Ms. Rollins is part of a web of left-wing district attorneys across the country who see it as their job not to prosecute crime, [but] rather, to protect criminals,” Cruz said on the Senate floor last week.

On GBH’s “Greater Boston” on Monday night, host Jim Braude asked Rollins for her reaction to Cruz’s and Cotton’s remarks and the fact that not a single Republican of the 50 serving in the Senate backed her nomination.

“We’ll prove them wrong,” Rollins said.

“It’s not worth a reaction,” she added, when pressed by Braude to elaborate. “Our numbers speak for themselves.”

Rollins, who is often criticized, including by Cruz, for refusing to prosecute a slew of lower level offenses in most cases, pointed to statistics that show a 20-year-low in homicides during her first year in office in 2019.

The following year, the county saw two more homicides than the five-year average of 51, she said, and homicides in Boston again this year are down, with 38 in total recorded as of last week, bucking national trends for other major cities.

“I promise you if those numbers were skyrocketing, I would have been blamed,” Rollins said. “So look at our numbers. Boston should be a gold standard for places like Arkansas and other places where the murder rate is skyrocketing right now. So I’m proud of our track record.”

Later in the segment — during which Rollins also outlined her priorities for her new position — Braude asked Rollins whether she thinks there is a “trickle down impact” of the words of Cruz and Cotton and their fellow lawmakers.

Of course there is, Rollins said.

“A lot of people don’t recognize as women and as women of color and particularly as a Black woman, the level of racist, hateful death threats that we receive,” Rollins said. “My security team is fielding calls with people using the N-word and saying they want to put a bullet in my head and, you know, they know I have children.

“Nobody signs up for that, Jim,” Rollins continued. “Nobody deserves to be treated that way.”

Rollins said she wants to do the work she’s been selected to do, but being a mother and a legal guardian to her nieces “is far more important.”

“So the trickle down effect of hate is, you know, potentially violence and we have to be better than that,” Rollins said. “And I sincerely hope that, you know, the people in Washington are a little bit better. And I myself, I want to work on the language we use when we disagree with each other because it really matters.”

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