A high-ranking Boston Police official attributed the uptick in violence, open-air drug use and different deviant conduct seen downtown and on Boston Frequent over the previous yr to spillover from the longstanding however now defunct Mass and Cass encampment.
Boston Police Deputy Superintendent Dan Humphreys stated BPD is already in the midst of a “very deliberate pivot” to sort out the “pockets of overflow throughout the city” that resulted from final yr’s crackdown at Mass and Cass — which is what he noticed as the principle difficulty a Tuesday Metropolis Council listening to on downtown security was aiming to deal with.
“We are doing a very intentional redeployment of officers into these areas of community concerns,” Humphreys stated. “What we are doing is we’re endeavoring to significantly increase our visibility, and put the same effort that we put into reducing our violent crime and victimization rates into addressing quality of life issues, specifically addressed at the fear of crime that people are feeling.”
Mentioning different scorching spots — like Andrew Sq. in South Boston, Mattapan Sq., and Nubian Sq. in Roxbury — which have seen heightened drug exercise, squatting and violence for the reason that metropolis eliminated the tents at Mass and Cass final fall, Humphreys stated, “We don’t need to guess where the problem is.”
“People are telling us,” Humphreys stated. “This is where we’re going to put people and it’s an all hands on deck approach.”
He stated that the division has seen “immediate positive feedback” the place these foot patrols been deployed.
Humphreys talked about, nonetheless, {that a} main a part of the issue comes from the “power of fentanyl,” the place individuals hooked on the illicit drug must “get high like five times a day” — “It takes you over,” he stated, and there are sellers who prey on that.
Metropolis Councilor Ed Flynn, who filed an order for the listening to in October however started broaching issues about escalating violence within the space following a near-fatal stabbing that occurred in Downtown Crossing final August, stated the difficulty stems, partly, from a prison justice system the place drug sellers are arrested by the police however later launched again on the streets by the courts.
Flynn had invited a consultant from the Suffolk County District Legal professional’s workplace to testify, however the invitation was declined.
“When someone commits a crime and is found guilty, they should be sentenced to either jail or prison,” Flynn stated. “We can’t have people back out on the streets preying on people … I think we need to have a criminal justice system that respects victims and residents.”
Flynn’s feedback have been repeated by some residents who testified on the day’s listening to and joined representatives from the downtown enterprise group in talking to what they noticed as a pointy uptick in not solely violent crime and drug use over the previous yr, however security issues pushed by dashing scooters and mopeds.
Katherine Kennedy, a Beacon Hill resident and mom of two young children together with a 7-month-old, stated drug use is so rampant within the space that she’s been pressured to hold a “sharps container” in her diaper bag.
“I pass discarded needles as I walk my 5-year-old to her public school every day,” Kennedy stated. “Having to keep needles away from my kids as I walk them to preschool is unacceptable.”
Over the previous decade that she’s lived in Beacon Hill, Kennedy stated she’s by no means seen that space and the encircling downtown neighborhoods in Boston “this overrun with drug paraphernalia or folks in crisis.”
“Boston and the surrounding region is not doing enough to actually disrupt the cycle of addiction that has led to this crisis,” Kennedy stated. “We keep moving the problem instead of solving it and we need actual solutions.”
