Hey, there! Log in / Register
It's not 1979 and Carson Beach isn't the Bronx
By adamg on Tue, 05/31/2011 - 8:03am
Anne Allred at Channel 7 tweeted this morning:
1,000 teens show up on Carson Beach to watch rival gangs fight. I just can't get over that.
Really? Word got out on the street a major showdown was on and everybody dropped what they were doing and rushed right over to Carson Beach?
I don't buy it. There is no Cyrus of Boston gangs Pied Pipering everybody to a war council.
So why would 1,000 teens show up at Carson Beach? Because it was hot. And a holiday. And you can get there by subway.
Were there troublemakers getting into fights? Yes. Did a lot of the kids stand around and watch? You bet. Does Boston have a gang problem? Yes.
But when some moron runs onto the field at Fenway, we don't accuse all 35,000 people in the stands of being complicit, even though a lot of them are cheering him on. We shouldn't demonize every last person on that beach yesterday. Where is the outrage about the two young men who were shot to death and the four others who survived getting shot over the weekend?
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
fight! fight!
I thnk, given that everyone is on Facebook, the old cry of "Fight! Fight!" that once drew a small crowd to the playground, is amplified about a zillionfold
Ever thought this was a
Ever thought this was a diversion to keep the cops busy with dumb ghetto kiddies while gangbangers unload a truck or two of guns or crack?
I think you want bostonherald.com
You're giving our local gang members way too much credit there.
were you there?
I had driven by Carson around 3:30 and it was the usual beach going crowd. Families in the sand, youths playing volleyball and others hanging on the grass, boardwalk and cars.
In the span of 2 hours, apparently 100's of kids showed up, not with beach towels and bathing suits, but with trouble.
Then they invaded the small neighborhood beach in Savin Hill. Again, no one there to particularly enjoy the amenity of the beach; rather just to have somewhere to hang out, throw their trash, talk their trash and menace car drivers and neighbors.
I was there and I welcome beach goers who can comport themselves in a civilized manner.
No, I was not there
We were driving back from a nice afternoon in Rockport at the time.
I'm not trying to justify fighting, but just to point out that not everybody who showed up there was ready to rumble. And even if several hundred kids showed up at once - and not in swimsuits - that by itself is not proof they were all there to watch fights. I haven't spent much time on Carson Beach on a warm day (if I'm down that way, I head to Castle Island), but you certainly see lots of people along Revere Beach who don't go in the water.
sorry Adam
I did not mean you; rather I meant the "reporter" from WHDH.
She was making it sound like "a day at the park" and that people's focus should be on the rash of known on known murders that happened this weekend.
Well, had the cops not shown up en mass, there would have been more shootings at the beaches yesterday.
Invaded?
Isn't an invasion either a planned event and/or involve some place that one does not have a right to be?
I've seen plenty of suburban adults act the same way around Fenway, North Station, etc. I guess they are just becoming Massholes like too many role model adults around here.
"Invasion"
If someone shows up and "throws trash, talks trash, and menaces car drivers and neighbors" then he or she doesn't have a right to be there, and so the term "invasion" is appropriately used. (Note that I was not there and cannot comment on whether or not said criminal behavior actually occurred; I'm just commenting on the use of "invasion")
Wrong
"Invasion" implies that aliens have forcibly entered a secured space. It reeks of "OUR good people would never do that". Like there aren't teens living in the area who are ill behaved - or adults for that matter.
The problem is the shitty behavior, not the age, race, national origin, or neighborhood of residence. If kids are acting in anti-social ways, well, maybe look around at how the adults use their cars like weapons, ignore traffic laws, and fling lit ciggies at people walking or biking, and generally use the entire Boston area as a massive trash can for clues on where the attitude comes from.
Southie's pretty nice
But you can see this with the "locals" all over the sidewalk and gutters.
It's almost if they're so mad about the yuppies gentrifying the place, they're dead set to bring it back down to squalor.
That'll show em.
Mad
Sounds like another whining Yuphole who paid too much for their condo. Were the sidewalks clean when the realtor showed your parents the condo they bought you?
So
You're proud of throwing trash out your window into your front walk / parking space / driveway?
Way to prove the point brotha'h. That sure is some Southie pride. Let's trash the place!
Disclosure: non-yuppie renter, sick of picking up your trash.
...ease up on the name calling, suburbanite
Not all adult urbanites 'around here,' as you put it, are Massholes. I was at Castle Island a few hours before the fight at Carson Beach and it was packed with people of all ages and everyone was getting along just fine. No one was trashing the place, no one was littering, no one was flicking cigarettes at people walking or at the few people who were riding bikes.
yeah I found this a little strange...
I was leaving Carson Beach right around 5:30 or so and there were a ton of kids but, well, it was Memorial Day and it was nice out....I didn't see any fights but of course that doesn't mean that something didn't happen but it seemed more or less business as usual.
A video that was up briefly on YouTube
Showed people walking on Day Blvd. to the T stop when a fight broke out. Two girls got into it and, yes, a crowd quickly gathered around them.
And then a single trooper broke it up and people resumed walking toward the subway.
Agreed
I had a pleasant walk along Carson Beach last night, about 30 minutes after the events took place. The police were still blocking that stretch of road.
I'm not even sure you can fit 1,000 people on that stretch of Carson Beach (from JFK/UMASS to the Old Colony Rotary) and I'd like to think that our city's gangs are smart enough to not schedule a rumble right next door to a State Police barracks.
And the point you raise about the shootings is a good one; gangs don't fist fight these days, they shoot each other. That nobody was dead on Carson Beach pretty much says it was just punk kids and not gang members.
Beside a MSP barracks may be the best place to commit a crime
@MPBx: "I'd like to think that our city's gangs are smart enough to not schedule a rumble right next door to a State Police barracks."
----
Actually, scheduling a crime next to any MA State Police barracks these days might be considered brilliant. Now in his second term, Gov. Patrick hasn't hired a single trooper, even as a 100+ retire each year. Most barracks including Southie are ususally running an unsafe "1 and 2" which means one trooper on the desk and two on the roads, which stretch from the Expressway (Boston to Braintree), to the Southie and Dorchester coastal roads and all of Quincy Shore Drive, past Wollaston Beach into Merrymount, not to mention all DCR beaches and MWRA property. Since the desk trooper can't abandon the prisoners, phones, radios etc. he can't leave the barracks. So a decent car accident or crime that requires two troopers means a delayed response at best to anything else, being beside the barracks notwithstanding. The troopers who responded yesterday came from all over eastern Mass. while Boston Police called officers from every district in the city, in addition to MBTA, UMass and Boston Housing police.
Why hire more troopers anyway?
Just give the non-fighting kids a stop/slow sign, a radio, a reflector vest, and a paycheck if they work the hours ... and there will be plenty of troopers available for actual police work.
Cutting details won't add troopers to daily patrols
Giving the kids detail / flagger work is an interesting concept (many of the civilian flaggers hired so far have been criminals, so some of these kids would fit right in) but since police may only work details on their time off from regular duty, you're wrong that hiring the kids will make more officers available for "actual" police work. If not doing detail work, police would merely stay home or work a second job on their day off. There would still only be one trooper on the desk, two on patrol. Plus, as shown time and again, it's often a detail officer first on the scene to an emergency happening near him/her so to claim that eliminating detail officers adds officers for "actual" police work is absurd. There are some valid arguments for scaling back police detail work. Yours isn't one of them.
You could hire more Boston cops
so us taxpayers in the burbs don't have to pay that bill.
:)
nice attitude
That's right... all of us tax payers in Boston are supported by suburban taxes. Think again.
You think again
Imagine if Boston had all that money from the speed traps in the tunnel?
Or the take home cars/quinn bill payments that the Boston cops don't get?
You and I could save some money.
taxpayers
the people from out of town use all our facilities parks sporting events that require manpower to clean, police overtime ect,get in car accedents raise our insurance rates. go to our hospitals, libraries, museums.schools, public transit. and then go home to some match box suburb with puluted well water and septic tanks. no hospitals no sidewalks.no nuttin. and brag about how cheap it is to live of us city dwellers dime.The biggest suburb is cowhampsire. ran an inn up in the white moutains. it is like a third world country up there my dentist flew in from new york.one day a week no good doctors just pill pushes. if you are realy sick or injured. you either go to canada. or they fly you down to boston.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't
I've seen you here complaining about tax and spend liberals and budget deficits.
Maybe "borrowing" some more money from China would please you?
Did someone advocate more spending / borrowing?
@anon 3:47 pm: If you're referring to me advocating more spending, borrowing, taxes or liberals, you're mistaken. If folks are OK with one trooper on the desk and two on the road, so be it. I merely pointed out the inherent danger of the staffing levels, as I believe the Colonel (a Patrick appointee) has. When seconds count, the nearest trooper may be a half hour away, 'tis all.
undermaned
Maybe if they didnt have to guard man hole covers. turn off the blinding lites causing them to be run over or hanging around the registry. their would be more available.For thier own sake I think they should wear white reflective stripes. thoes uniforms blend in with the bright sun or a dark nite. on a dark cloudy day sometimes thier invisible.
A thousand is a lot of
A thousand is a lot of people. I also had a hard time buying that a thousand people with gang ties showed up at Carson beach specifically to fight or watch fights.
Everybody Sing Along!
Why not - The Media seems to be singing a long with this one, too! (mildly NSFW)
Thank you, Adam, for pointing out that Being A Teenager Is Not A F'n Crime!!!!! Nor is Being a Teenager on the T, or Being a Male Teenager, or Being a Teenager out with Friends, or Being a Teenager at the Beach, or any combination of the above.
Oh you with your earth logic
All right, this explanation makes much more sense than the news reports I've read. But I guess "teenagers are bored and stupid" is a less sexy lede than "21st century reenactment of West Side Story."
If this is a reference to West Side Story....
... there's a little problem -- WSS story was set on the West side (mid to upper) of Manhattan. ;~}
yes
They used buildings people had been displaced from in order to build Lincoln Center and ugly apartment buildings that ignored the grid..with parking lots. I hate that era of urban renewal, though it did for a brief time make a cool movie set.
Because Hell's Kitchen (as that area was called) was a
really rough neighborhood back then, the cast and crew members of West Side Story had rocks and bottles or whatever thrown at them while they were filming WSS, and they ended up hiring out an actual street gang for security purposes. Oh, the irony!
Very true, mediaseth!
This:
is absolutely spot-on!
Thanks Miki!
But how is it that you're resisting commenting on the posts right below about West Side Story?
Ha ha ha!
:)
West Side Story is perfect. "Everything Free in America"
The West Side story reference is perfect, "Everything Free in America". Isn't Auntie Zeituni living in free housing near Carson Beach too? Priceless, literally.
Why am I not surprised...
That you can't even decipher the tone of meaning of a song lyric ( the next line is "for a small fee in America") or quote anything sensibly or in context (it's Puerto Ricans singing the song and as they point out, "nobody knows in America, Puerto Rico's in America!") But please go and tell us how we should deport all those dang Puerto Ricans...
"Warriors . . . .
. . . . come out to play!"
@ Anne Allred, I live a block
@ Anne Allred, I live a block away from Carson beach and watch the teens and families enjoy that particular section of the beach year in and year out without any issues.. However, I watched as 3 days ago a group of (approx 25) young men and teens, all proudly wearing their "red" gang attire, waltz from JFK onto the beach... Within 20 mins, BPD and State Police were called to break up the chaos this group began to cause.. The following day/night, Larger groups gathered, puffing their chests and flying their "Colors".. Last nights "major showdown" as you called it with sarcasm, was indeed just that!! I will admit, the 1000 ppl the media reported was a far stretch from the actual 300 - 500 that were actually there yet, the "gang" label was a justifiable label. They were gangs, gang related and/or gang associated, all displaying the "right" to claim Carson beach as their own.. I find it disturbing myself that the media neglected to cover the 2 homicides and other shootings but maybe it's because it's more common than not?? The issue which occurred yesterday not only placed the several hundreds teens lives in danger but also the hundreds of families with young children and many police officers whom the crowd turned against upon their arrival.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion but I find it a little disturbing you, whom according to the credit, work for Channel 7, not only dismiss the issue but have the audacity to compare this to a "Moron whom runs onto the field in Fenway".
Anne Allred is not the moron you seek
I am.
She wrote how appalled she was that 1,000 people showed up to watch a gang fight. I'm the one who compared that to Fenway, so if you want to be appalled at anybody, yell at me.
If what you report is true, maybe it is more like the Bronx in 1979 than I thought, but I'm still not ready to concede the point. We've already seen the number of people shrinking and acknowledgements that not everybody caught up in the sweep had anything at all to do with the the fights.
No clue
You guys are way off base. If you can believe it this was actually under-reported by the media. The numbers might have been high but close to 500 showed up to fight and some did. Cops separated them by sending one group across the street to Moakley park where I was watching my sons little league game. They told us, about 4 games at the time, we all had to stop the games and leave the park. Also a few from the group that was still on the beach threw punches at the cops. This was a way bigger deal than theyre letting on.
Of course Drudge picks it up...
Current headline on the Drudge Report right now:
TEEN GANGS UNLEASHED ON BOSTON BEACH
Links to the Globe piece on the incident. I went by the Columbia Rd traffic circle around 6pm yesterday coming back from out of town; I thought it was a response to a bomb at the T or something equal in scale.
Also, I feel like black metal music should be playing every time I look at Drudge, as it kind of has that "world is ending" feel to it.
Drudge gets the tingles ...
... when he thinks of all those sweaty bodies in jams grappling and punching each other in a manly heap ... durn teenagers!
I thought Drudge was cool . . .
. . . for about two months in the late 90's. That was how long it took for me to figure out the guy was full of it and his "headlines" were a fraud.
Note to future gang-fight
Note to future gang-fight event planners:
Don't do it on at a State beach on Memorial Day, and especially not at one with a trooper barracks within view.
You guys probably could have beaten each other silly in a city park.
what's a city park
carson beach is in the city. what city park are you referring to? every park in the city is adjacent to city residents. these fights hurt everyone in the community, including the kids that are stupid enough to get involved. there is no easy solution to this mess... disrespect is way too abound among all the groups involved. kids don't respect cops and cops don't respect kids. everyone has their perspective, but bigotry should have no place in the discussion!!!
a fist fight is a big deal??
So my sister and I were at the beach until 5 yesterday and experienced no problems were did not notice a specifically teen crowd that was large although teenagers were there something i will say is that even if that were the case we should probably be relieved that they were just fist fighting as a matter a fact i promote fist fighting at least people wont die in a shoot out. But yeah a bunch of kids at the beach so what? Are fist fights now the end of the world?
Fists can kill people too, however.
People don't get killed as easily in fistfights, but it can and sometimes does happen. A person can die or become permanently incapacitated to some degree from a blow with a fist, because the person (s) inflicting the blow(s) can rupture something.
What part of the beach? I
What part of the beach? I guarantee it wasn't Carson near the bathhouse cause it's notorious for trouble. Seriously, all these people who read the article and chose to write about how people are overreacting should take their family down this end of Carson Beach.
I agree, if fistfights were our biggest problems we'd be all set, but it's rare nowadays that even a one on one fight doesn't escalate beyond fists. Hundreds of dopes all geeked up to fight and it easy money that some meathead will produce a weapon.
I agree fist fights aren't
I agree fist fights aren't the end of the world and it looks like this has been over played by the media and the police. Every anti-social activity doesn't need police attention; most will resolve themselves. For example, there was a "fist fight" on our street Saturday night. sounds bad... but what actually happened, as far as I could tell, was a few college kids got drunk, went outside to settle an argument and after a little scuffle and much yelling cooler heads prevailed and in less than a minute all was quiet.
1979
I heard about this and I was like.. really? A shake down on a holiday? But then again.. Adam how many stabbings/shootings/etc have you posted in the past month? Several from what I can recall. It could just be coming to a 'head' (so to speak). And yes in this day in age, one quick txt to a 'mailing list' of folks, or a FB posting can set off a fire of events. (Just look at the guy who saw the Seals who took out Osama, the world new withing 20 or so minutes. It just takes one tweet/txt/msg/email)
Of course your posting title congers up imagines of The Smashing Pumpkin's "1979" Video. Just teens being annoying teens and causing trouble as usual, which is what I think what happened. It could have been a stare shake down (like a mexican standoff (sorry, lack of a better term!)), I'd like to think these gang bangers have one active brain cell left NOT to open fire on a crowded beach on Memorial Day. But stranger things have happened lately.. sigh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs-VnGNNPSs
1000 to bunch to few
"1,000 teens show up on Carson Beach to watch rival gangs fight." Really?
How about: 1000 teens show up on a beach on a hot day, a bunch of whom stand by watching a few of them fight.
That the staties were rounding up families in their crowd control / beach sweep over the weekend tells you that they were over-estimating the number of trouble-makers.