Hey, there! Log in / Register

Man stabbed in Copley Square

Near the fountains on Boylston Street around 7:25 p.m., NBC Boston reports. The homicide unit was called in because of the severity of the victim's injuries.

Neighborhoods: 
Topics: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

Incidents like this are inevitable without significant, increased, visible police presence. This area is a tourist mecca and should be a showcase for our city -- Trinity Church, Boston Public Library, Hancock Tower, BosTix booth, the tenth busiest MBTA station in the system, etc. Instead, increasingly, it's squalor, decay, and now violence.

I had hoped the skateboarder crackdown you reported on recently was a sign of things to come. Until yesterday afternoon, when I saw some kids commandeering the Copley Square sidewalk between the BosTix booth and the Copley Plaza, overturning a trash barrel for something fun to jump over. Then this incident last night. Will the mayor and new chief ignore this wake-up call too?

up
Voting closed 0

Skateboarding = stabbing.

Yep.

The Broken Windows theory has had decades to prove itself, and not a lot to show for it in reality. Check out some of the outcomes research if you are willing to have a better understanding of how this theory presents as an attractive "but it simply has to be true!" solution that does not actually work:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=broken+windows+...

up
Voting closed 0

I know you feel the need to chime in on every topic. I know you're really good with Google, which somehow, apparently, makes you an expert on everything. I know you are quite fond of straw-man arguments, like implying that I equated skateboarding with stabbing.

I understand that's just kind of baked in with SwirlyGrrl commentary. But your creeping tone of condescension is growing really tiresome. Just my $0.02, of course.

up
Voting closed 0

Or just making more comments about how skateboarders turn you on are ruining the world?

You have been provided with information. Don't be a trumptard - go read it.

up
Voting closed 0

The skateboarder comment was alluding to a conversation on this site a week or so ago. You can probably find it if you click back far enough.

up
Voting closed 0

up
Voting closed 0

"I'm obsessed with skateboarders Skate Boarders SKATEBOARDERS!!! on my LAWN and I love repeating some debunked pop culture "just so story" pablum every time there's a skateboarder ON MY LAWN, but I'll just whine about and insult the person presenting me with facts and evidence rather than deal with the fact that I have nothing to offer but whining".

There you go!

up
Voting closed 1

And it's not that much different now than it was in the late 1980s. I still remember the shooting when the library was having some function in the park in the late 1990s. The homeless have been panhandling in the area that whole time, and if you want an idea from another source of what the area was like in the 80s, read Michael MacDonald's Easter Rising. He used to cut class when he was at Latin and hang out with the regulars in the square.

up
Voting closed 0

Im there almost every day and I don’t know whether Copley is good/bad, needs broken window style enforcement/needs something else. But I can’t think of any city comparing street crime in 2018 to the 80s and early 90s with its recession, gang surges and crack epidemic. Well, other than maybe South Chicago.

up
Voting closed 0

As I note, I've been a constant in the Square for the whole time, and for that whole time, things have basically been the same. There have been homeless people, people with substance abuse issues (which is not the same as the first group,) skateboarders, people with mental health issues, and various sundry annoying people and things. Very occasionally is there violence, but as I note it has happened before and will happen again.

I remember waiting for the 39 bus on Dartmouth Street (which is where is started from at one point, and as another bit of trivia the block in front of the library was two ways) back in the day and having to move the shards of glass at the front of the library. I have skirted piss while walking the whole time. I might not like it, but let's not pretend that this is a new thing.

up
Voting closed 0

No special insight from me on whether a street-level response is appropriate in that context. I recognize that you’re responding to a post that associated some of those elements with street crime, and it’s really the street crime that did not stagnate over that period elsewhere, but may be stagnant in pockets here.

up
Voting closed 0

Agreed - the issues in Copley aren't anything new. Actually I think it's better now that it was in the 80's / 90's. We live in a city and unfortunately these things happen. The area by the 7-11 is a tad sketchy but again no one has every bothered me.

It's a great area and maybe all it needs is 2 beat cops getting to know EVERYONE (this includes are fellow homeless citizens and drug addicts). Just a small presence - nothing crazy.

I could care less about the skaties...they've always gotten out of my way. What i wish for them in this city is more skate parks...not the few and far between shitty ones we have for them now.

up
Voting closed 0

Look, if we're going to start constructing and developing like Manhattan, then we better start thinking like Manhattanites. Just ignore the dirty and scary people and step over the half-dead person who's lying down in the middle of the sidewalk. Piss and shit happens, right Mahhty?

up
Voting closed 0

...

up
Voting closed 0

Housing First initiatives have been shown to work at decreasing homelessness. If we spent more on giving people places to live instead spending more on police, a lot of the other stuff (public micturation, serious crime) would sort itself out.

And police need a better way to interface with the community. Excessive force is an abuse of power and damages trust in policing. We are not going to reduce crime if police brutality is the only thing people can expect.

up
Voting closed 0

So disappointing. It's supposed to be a nice area and it's sad to see it decline. I walked by Dartmouth/Boylston on Tue and a guy was shooting up next to the library.

up
Voting closed 0

There seems to be some sort of false equivalency that not having people litter, piss in alleys, skate board up and down steps during a busy time, etc somehow frees up cops for other more serious crime prevention. I never really understood that.

Skaters I'm mixed on - on the one hand, if they aren't being jerks and doing it when it is crowded or forcing people to go around them, it is fine. However, more than once over the years (even when I skated myself) you'd see them careening through a T stop or knocking off newspaper stands That's something they should be called out on.

If people want to live in a world where they enjoy the smell of urine, tags of graffiti because otherwise they'd feel oppressed by the cops or 'the man' maybe people need to stop being crybabies.

As for crime in that area, I can think if a half dozen shootings / bank robberies etc in the last 10 years (not including the bombing of course - though that should have been a big enough reason to have a permanent police presence there all the time)

up
Voting closed 0