Posted on 09/17/2005 1:57:59 PM PDT by Panerai
While police continue to sweep heroin and crack fiends from the Boston Common and Public Garden, Mayor Thomas M. Menino is preparing to launch an anti-litter campaign for all the city's parks.
Even with police trying to shut down the startling open-air drug abuse in and around the two premier greenspaces, some of it observed in broad daylight by the Herald in recent weeks, Menino said it was the right time to launch the litter crusade. Cleaner parks might discourage drug abuse, he said. ``Cleaning the parks sends a message that we're not going to tolerate it,'' he said yesterday.
But mayoral candidate Maura A. Hennigan blasted the move as ``a day late and a dollar short.''
"We're at the end of the user season, so why are we waiting until now to launch a litter campaign?'' Hennigan said. ``Why doesn't the mayor clean up the shooting galleries which our parks have become, the shooting of drugs and guns?''
Adding to the concern over public drug abuse in downtown is the potentially massive annual pot rally on tap for ``high noon'' tomorrow.
Menino said there was nothing the city could do to keep the hempheads away from the Boston Common, where a rally several years ago drew almost 100,000.
"It's a First Amendment issue. We've had issues with it in the past. If you don't give them a license they'll have you in court in a minute,'' the mayor said.
In response to the increased drug use in the city's premier parks, drug arrests in the Public Garden and Common have skyrocketed 132 percent, from 22 during July 1 to Sept. 8, 2004, to 51 during the same period this year, according to Boston police statistics.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bostonherald.com ...
It wouldn't be that hard to keep drug users out of public places. Druf users are naturally paranoid, Boston needs a stronger undercover police presence in the parks.
As for the littering, I wander if someone would throw a ciggarette out a window if a $500+ fine could be issued?
And cleaner roads will stop speeding.
Littering-- The Gateway to Heroin....
> And cleaner roads will stop speeding.
Actually when I wash my car it goes faster :)
I don't see how neat parks will encourage people not to take drugs, however.
Actually, it does sort of make sense, in the "broken windows theory" way.
Of course, the better way to send the message of not tolerating public drug use is to not tolerate it.
Druggies like their parks clean also.
But cleaning up trash also cleans up s lot of stashes. Dealers don't hold their drugs on their person. And when dealers lose thier stash, they look for places which don't have such problems.
Also, agressive prosecution for minor offenses such as littering and urinating in public, if pursued consistently, will run the dealers, vagrants, and prostitutes out. This means that the mayor had better have coordinated with the DA to pursue the "minor" cases, and the local head judge to pay attention. An area heavy in vagrants and prostitutes provides cover for a lot of dealing. It doesn't exist in isolation.
The dealers will go somewhere else, initially. But they'll move. Enough moves and they'll diminish, somewhat. Believe it or not, it's worked in a number of neighborhoods in DC.
Gentrification/renovation of the neighborhood at the same time really makes selling drugs harder than before.
Howieeeee!!!!!!!!Howieeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!
The "mumbles" stuff is funny but there was
nothing better than his Joe Kennedy uhhh, uhhh contests.
I got to be a pro at them before I moved from "The People's Republic of Cambridge"(well next town over actually). Joe was my supposed representative, I was one of the 15% who wouldn't vote for him.
Well Guiliani used that principle to clean up New York City. We just saw the inverse of that principle at work in New Orleans. When people saw other people start looting and nothing was done about it immediately, the criminal class in New Orleans quickly escalated from looting to rape, murder, and insurrection. They even started shooting at resuce helicopters.
The left is always ready to excuse even the worst violence on the grounds of depravation, injustice, or material inequailty and oppose law enforcement based on the "broken window" theory. They predictably call for the elimination of "root causes" of crime rather than punishing criminals.
Someone should tell mumbles that the parks will be cleaner if he has his worthless police force arrest the drug dealers -- rather than standing around at work sites with a cup of coffee in one hand and a Dunkin' Donut in the other. The drug dealers and other lowlife scum are unlikely to leave the city if all he does is clean up the parks.
"Someone should tell mumbles that the parks will be cleaner if he has his worthless police force arrest the drug dealers..."
If there was such any easy solution we wouldn't have drugs anywhere.
cleaner parks will fix it? Doubtful. Try jail terms and anal rapes.
You can go to downtown Boston and see the police joking with the NStar crews as the eat donuts and drink coffee while without moving from where you can see this, you can see drug dealers operating openly. The police in Boston are part of the so-called "War on Drugs", but through their inaction, they are on the drug dealers side.
I don't know anything about Boston, but I do know that people are arrested left and right for delivery and possession of drugs with intent to deliver where I live. Our jails are packed beyond capacity, and our legislature is always passing some new measure to let people out of prisons earlier and earlier to make room for the never ending supply of new convicts. We just can't afford to build jails and prisons fast enough to keep up with the growth in the number of prisoners. The dockets in our courts are incredible. Judges, prosecutors, and public defenders have more cases than they know what to do with. Sentences for those busted for delivery or possession with intent are among the longest that people get for anything in my state but they don't deter addicts from selling drugs to keep themselves in supply, or those few who are actually making good money in the drug trade. And even though more and more are sent to prison there is no shortage of drugs available on the streets, or people willing to sell drugs.
I doubt things are much different in Boston. I doubt the police aren't doing anything. The simple fact of the matter is that we will never arrest and incarcerate our way out of this problem.
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