A tearful Jay'dha Rackard explains why she's transferring from the Orchard Gardens School: Too many addicts right outside school doors.
After successfully moving homeless people and drug users away from Atkinson Street, where a South Bay correction officer was attacked last week, city officials acknowledge one result has been to simply push them into surrounding neighborhoods.
At a forum at the South End BPL branch tonight, city Methadone Mile czar William Christopher said the goal now is to get people back to Atkinson Street, so that city outreach workers can get them the treatment and services they might need.
Christopher said two sweeps last week in particular were aimed at removing drug dealers and violent people who were preying on the addicts who had been gathering on Atkinson Street and other part of the Methadone Mile area, and that going forward police would concentrate on keeping those criminals out so that other substance abusers can feel safe enough to return and seek services.
"We don't believe we can arrest our way out of this," Christopher said:
The meeting, sponsored by the South End Forum, had to be moved from a conference room that could hold maybe 50 people to the park next to the library. The session occasionally grew heated. Advocates for the homeless squared off with city and police officials over ongoing sweeps - and sometimes with South End residents. Roxbury residents and parents, meanwhile, expressed anger that it took the attack on a corrections officer to get the sort of city action they had been asking for for several years.
Jay'dha Rackard, an 11-year-old from Roxbury who had been going to the Orchard Gardens School, near what City Councilor Kim Janey called "Ground Zero," had to wipe away tears before talking about how she's transferring this fall to the Davis Leadership Academy, because she could no longer take going to a school where addicts would congregate regularly to shoot up, leaving behind endless numbers of needles, and worse. Her mother, Janina, recalled a special clean-up day the school sponsored - when students went to toss bags of trash in a school dumpster, they found a man overdosing right in the dumpster, and had to be quickly ushered away as community activist Domingos DaRosa started CPR to try to keep him alive until EMTs could get there.
Christopher said that following the Thursday attack and Friday raids, both police and city substance-abuse street workers had stepped up their patrols in areas not just immediately surrounding Methadone Mile but in neighborhoods such as Dorchester, Roxbury and South Boston, where the people pushed out of Atkinson Street have been going. Alleys in particular are being patrolled, to find displaced people and "to get homeless folks to go back to Atkinson Street," he said.
Christopher and Marty Martinez, the city's chief of health and human services added that they are caught in a tough spot, balancing the needs of the homeless and the addicted with the needs of residents to be safe on their streets and in their homes.
"There is no simple answer," Martinez said. "Anyone who tells you there is a simple answer is lying."
Christopher addressed the widely circulated photos from last night showing wheelchairs being put into and crushed by city trash trucks, or, at least, one particular wheelchair, one found outside Boston Medical Center, which he said was a public-health issue all by itself because it was full of feces, urine and blood. If people were ordered out of wheelchairs, which were then crushed, "that should not have happened," Martinez said.
One homeless advocate screamed he was a murderer; South End residents booed.
At one point, one resident yelled "We appreciate what you do!" at D-4 Capt. Steven Sweeney. "No we don't!" somebody else yelled.
A doctor, nurse and residents who work with the homeless and substance abusers said others need to stop vilifying them and that the city should be fighting more aggressively for treatment, for safe-injections sites and for the construction of the proposed Long Island treatment complex - and the bridge to get to it. City officials agreed. Martinez said the city cannot legally proceed with a safe-injection site. He added Gov. Baker strongly opposes the idea; the local US Attorney has vowed to prosecute anybody who sets one up.
"People are sick and they need help," City Councilor Kim Janey said, adding that at the same time, the city can't simply push the problem out from Methadone Mile, that kids have a right to go to schools and parks free of needles. "It's important we do not pit neighborhoods against each other," she added.
One East Concord Street resident said she is sympathetic to problems of homeless people, but at the same time, she shouldn't have to be calling 911 just to get out of her own home. She recounted a recent incident in which two men were sitting on her stoop and "one decided, let me be naked." She called 911, an officer came and shooed the two men away - and then not long after the cop left, the two men, one still naked, returned, she said.
Harrison Avenue landlord Mario Nicosia, though, was having none of the sympathy. Nicosia, handed out lists of Level 3 sex offenders at the Pine Street Inn before the meeting, pointed to the woman attacked on Harrison Avenue on Sunday and said he is tired of picking up human waste outside his buildings. "Some of these people are absolutely nuts," he said, recalling watching one guy "beating the shit out of a metal sign with his fists."
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Comments
"not physically connected"?
By Rob
Fri, 08/09/2019 - 4:18pm
"not physically connected"? Ummm....
Not connected to a Boston neighborhood, sure. Not directly. Not conveniently.
The island is, however, physically directly connected to Squantum - a Quincy neighborhood. So nice of you to slough the problem off on them. Or will the associated problems somehow not afflict that neighborhood like they would Orchard Gardens or the South End?
Long Island, if/when the
By anon
Sat, 08/10/2019 - 6:52pm
Long Island, if/when the bridge is rebuilt, connects to Moon Island (home to a BPD firing range and not much else), which in turn connects to Squantum by a thin road on a causeway with no sidewalks. Long Island is not directly connected to Squantum.
So yes, "somehow" the problems would at least be easier to manage. The specific "how" would be Sculpin Ledge Channel.
define "successful"
By anon
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 8:18am
i was down that way on Tuesday night and it was just as big of mess as it was last week or any recent night. people passed out on the sidewalks on Southampton, people injecting on the side streets. The only thing i noticed that the police had blocked off one of the side streets that connects into Theodore Glynn Way, which i figured was a detail paid for by the food plant so their drivers wouldn't have to deal with people.
Sincere Question
By Anon
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 9:04am
Why is rebuilding the bridge and re-opening the facilities on Long Island viewed as such a great solution? By housing folks out there are we creating distance between the people living there and the social services that will help them re-establish their lives and connect with long-term services--let alone employment. To what extent do we view the island as a way to warehouse people out of sight?
Two things
By adamg
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 3:44pm
First, the plans do NOT call for recreating the old shelter of the past. The new plan calls for Long Island to be a long-term treatment facility, where people can recover and gain the strength and tools to go back into society without constantly being prey for drug dealers and the violent. That's the reason to isolate it on an island.
I'm not a trained social
By Hopefull
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 9:10am
I'm not a trained social worker. I know they are here for treatment, but I can't do it. I can't provide them with what they need. I would fix this problem if I could, but just because I live here doesn't mean I'm qualified.
We need to help this population in a real way. This is cruel to everyone. Nobody should be sitting naked outside or sleeping on Melna Cass, in the street in the way of traffic.
The homeless need real help. Honest to goodness real help. I can't help at the level they need it.
This should be addressed at a state level. Doesn't Quincy have an abandoned hospital? Wouldn't that be a better solution? We can bus the ill to BMC from there. It's pretty close.
Law enforcement bullying solves no problems
By anon
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 10:50am
So tired of this sort of martial law stupidity for dealing with any and all social, mental health, and medical ills.
The data are out there. The solutions are well-vetted at this poing. The city should be acting on FACTS not emotions of bullies. This was all about Marty being THE BIG MAN and not at all about solving any problems.
If you’re living under a rock
By anon
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 11:16am
Look at the Yelp reviews of the two hotels on Mahty’s Mile. Poor traveling people who stay there.
Funny you should mention that
By Waquiot
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 4:01pm
Last summer, I met up with a friend of the missus who was visiting Boston. I asked where they were staying, and it ends up that it was at the Hampton Inn by Melnea Cass. I decided not to tell them about the reputation of the area as to not scare them. This year, we met up out there and I told them what the area is known for. She said she had no problem.
I guess when you know what to look for you see it. Otherwise, you don't see it.
Cleaning up Methadone Mile just moves the problem elsewhere
By Russ
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 11:43am
Homeless addicts are not just going to disappear. The city has to decide whether it prefers how its been lately, with huge concentrations along Methadone Mile, the back yard of the city, or would it prefer to be like San Francisco, with dense concentrations of homeless addicts in quite visible parts of the city, downtown, Back Bay, and the Common/Public Garden. Building that new bridge to Long Island is the one thing that might lower concentrations of homeless people in the city. How many years has it been down now, with little progress on a replacement?
Too late.
By CopleyScott17
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 2:51pm
Methadone Mile may have the highest concentration of addicted people, but the problem is dispersed well beyond that area. Downtown Crossing adjacent to the Park Street Station and the Boston Common and Copley Square around the Boston Public Library are, as you'd suspect, prime areas for scoring, using, and nodding. It's amazing to me that the City has let this go on in prime tourism areas. The long-term ramifications for one of the city's most important industries are going to be profoundly negative.
The park is impassable now.
By Heather
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 5:00pm
The park is impassable now. So sad.
It's a disease
By anon
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 11:52am
Nobody wants to be an addict just as nobody wants to have cancer!! Please have some respect and stop calling these people junkies!! These people are mothers fathers sons and daughters thank you
They may not want to be
By anon
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 5:19pm
They may not want to be addicted, but many of them don't really want to stop using drugs, either.
If only somebody would invent a non-addictive opioid... oh wait
"substance-abuse users" ? Was
By anon
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 12:15pm
"substance-abuse users" ? Was that an editing mistake or are you tripping over your own tongue trying to be ultra P.C. ?
Thank you for your high regard, kind sir!
By adamg
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 1:16pm
Nice to know somebody thinks I'm perfect and would never make simple writing mistakes while trying to compose a story at a small table at the back of, oh, let's say New York Pizza at Mass. and Columbus after a long and contentious meeting while trying hard not to knock over a bottle of diet Pepsi because the table's really small and their slices, while not up there on the overall taste scale, are very large.
hey, their slices are
By anon
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 5:01pm
hey, their slices are excellent
Let's start with safety for the kids
By Nowy Liberté
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 12:22pm
There is no panacea
That said there is a hierarchy of critical tasks that government at all levels needs to take up:
But let's start with the first one concentrating on the kids -- those innocents among us who should NEVER encounter gun fire, physical abuse, or exposure to needles, etc. -- and certainly not on a public street, or in a public park, library, train station, etc.
Remember -- Shooting-up, shooting, knifing, setting fires, having sex, urinating, defalcating and living on a public street are all illegal acts -- letting them happen without control is a symptom of a sick city.
Boston's level of un-civil affliction so far is minor compared to many other major cities [e.g. S.F., LA, Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, New Orleans, etc.] -- to date Boston's minor level of this affliction is a selling point for the city*1 -- but this state is fragile and could easily be lost without the will to take necessary actions.
*1 -- no foreign government has warned its citizens of travel to Boston as several have for several US cities
Oh, how short our memories are
By adamg
Thu, 08/08/2019 - 1:13pm
In fact, some foreign governments, within living memory, HAVE warned their citizens away from Boston, or at least parts of it (true, it had nothing directly to do with the current Methadone Mile crisis).
This is so sad
By MissDee0201
Fri, 08/09/2019 - 8:24pm
Our children can't simply receive the education they are entitled to without worries of the harm that may befall them, or their family members, peers, educators, staff, etc. There's an elementary school with a park near my home where needles have been seen and confiscated (a day or 2 later, and YES I reported it). My kids are older & know well enough to stay away but what about the younger kids? I've seen 3 (I suspect) high drug users roaming in my neighborhood within about 2 hours today. Staggering in the street, carrying big backpacks and looking kind of just out of it and lost. I understand everyone needs help sometimes but they are basically roaming into other residential areas. No more Long Island, no more Meth Mile...soooo... Now we have to EXTRA protect ourselves & kids even if just going out for a gallon of milk. I mean we always do anyway but the added threat to our community doesn't help. So thanks a lot Commissioner Gross for sending a bunch of police cars around when I'm pretty sure most of the people you rounded up got little to no bail and are back on the streets...just not on "Methadone Mile." That is, until probably next week when your police presence is decreased. Smh.
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