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Police: Man repeatedly punches elderly clerk in the face after being caught shoplifting at Porter Square CVS

Cambridge Police report a man who objected to being told to put back items he was trying to shoplift from the Porter Square CVS early Saturday responded by punching "an elderly employee in the face and head multiple times with a closed fist."

Police say Justin Clark, 27 and homeless, fled into the nearby Red Line station, where Cambridge and Transit officers found and arrested him. He was charged with assault and battery on a person over 60 and shoplifting by asportation. Police did not specify what he took, but said he was able to leave the store with several items "in his jacket pocket."

Clark was already wanted on a warrant out of Boston Municipal court for possession of Class C drugs and inhaling a toxic substance, police say.

Innocent, etc.

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Comments

Out of all places and people to do that to. *shakes head* Heroin is one hellva drug apparently... enough to hit an old lady.

I am curious to know why she approached him at all, at the drug store I worked at eons ago, we were instructed to never approach a shoplifter. Let the LPO or **store** manager deal with it. We were told, let'em take whatever, your life is not worth it. This story is why.

Regardless.. Porter and Davis lately have become overrun with daytimers** .

The Davis Sq T station lobby (College Ave) is full of people all day, smoking, hanging out, maskless.. not really there to wait for a bus or train. Just to hangout. And by the conversations I hear, they are clearly daytimers and not Somerville residents.

On nice days Davis Sq itself (the park) is full of daytimers. By 4-5pm, they are all gone and the square (and T station) are empty.

It just seems like in the past year or two, this has increased. I've worked in Davis for 3 now and its become more and more noticable.

I asked on Twitter a while back and a few people replied and said it was because of the clean up at Methadone Mile. Now that the folks down there can't hang out, they get on the Red Line and head this way.

Kinda ironic... Boston gets populations dumped on them to deal with, Boston boots them out, and pushes them onto Cambridge and Somerville. Maybe the solution is not to shuffle people around...

** daytimer is a term I've coined to folks who would be called "homeless" or "junkies". I figure its better way to address those folks, without knowing what their exact situation is. And it just sounds nicer and more accurate. (meaning daytime is when they appear, and they are gone by night)

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Indigent are asked to leave the shelters at 6:30 am and they spend the day in the streets until they can go back at @4:30 for lottery for beds. They are from all over state and all over the country.

Addiction is part of the story, but most people in the street are survivors of childhood neglect and abuse.
Most have mental health disorder, low maturation, and or are survivors of childhood.
They cost the taxpayer a fortune and fuel budgets drive profit create funding oops for big non profits...oh yes.

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I'm just curious - where did you find the detail that the CVS employee was a woman? I didn't see any reference anywhere to the person's gender, and had somehow pictured them in my own mind as male.

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They also head south into Quincy. Quincy is not a privileged, snob zoning suburban town like many on Uhub claim.

They head to Cambridge (especially) and Somerville because there's a welcome mat. People and politicians who call themselves progressive are usually from comfortable middle and upper middleclass socioeconomic backgrounds. Àn authentic so-called working class person, regardless of skin color, ethnic background are the people who really have to deal with consequences of middle and upper middle class so-called progressive policies like dumping homeless, most mentally ill, drug alcohol addicted onto the streets, subway, shelters, etc. Quincy is also a dumping ground. Transit and other law enforcement tread very lightly, as do the courts. Ironically, I see self described progressives on the red line (many young progressive women and men have buttons, etc in their bag, shirt, etc.) and most appear scared and/or scornful when these druggie mentally ill homeless get on a train.

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They go to Cambridge because there are shelters and treatment options there. Same reason they go to Boston Medical Center.

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Have worked their way south to Braintree station where the parking garage is the new motel 6.

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Isn't the Braintree parking garage closed?

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Nope. Quincy center has been closed for awhile, and torn down

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CVS should not leave it up to low paid employees to stop junkies who will do anything to get off of E. If the owners would get out front hiding and hire security trained to stop this shit then maybe CVS would'nt have to use shoplifting as an excuse to overinflated their prices!!

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i remember a young guy getting stabbed (to death) chasing a shoplifter out of the longwood CVS many years ago. as i recall CVS announced that its policy was that employees were not to engage shoplifters but report to a manager who would call police.

it sounds like an employee saw him stealing, told him to put the items back and he went nuts.

isn't shoplifting on rachel's list of charges to be declined?

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isn't shoplifting on rachel's list of charges to be declined?

Isn't it kind of cold out to be showing your ass at every opportunity?

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some elderly person got their head beaten in for something the suspect wont even be prosecuted for? i know they will be prosecuted for the assault.

are we not allowed to show our ass around here?

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What Rachel Rollins would or wouldn't do doesn't apply here. Also, the shoplifting charges would likely stick as they were companion to more serious charges.

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not suffolk county, my bad.

i was thinking about the guy in the store on longwood ave.

i still think rachel rollins sucks.

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i still think rachel rollins sucks.

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that's not a valid question?

Despite the punctuation, it wasn't a question, and you know it.

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The young man who was stabbed was the store manager at the time. He wasn’t stabbed to death, but he was very seriously injured and didn’t work for a long time. He eventually returned to work after his health improved.

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It’s amazing to me how these drug stores don’t have cameras or security to stop this behavior. For the prices they charge it’s sickening. I once witnessed two people filling up their bag with tons of Tylenol and other pain relievers in a big bag. The clerk said “there’s nothing we can do”. What kind of example does this set for everyone else?! I am traumatized by what I saw and find it hard to go to the store.

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new word: "asportation", as in "charged with Shoplifting by Asportation", which I guess is a very old word from English common law most often replaced nowadays by "larceny": it's not even in a lot of modern dictionaries. (No, I don't often read police crime reports.)

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Right up there with "burglarious tools" and "uttering." I only ever see Cambridge PD using the term, more power to them.

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"...to wit, a shod foot""

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I love a laugh these days. The first few times I ever heard that term, I seriously asked myself, how many guys are around here assaulting people with their prosthetic foot?! I didn't know what it really meant until I asked a jailbird friend and they explained it to me.

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Really upsetting story, I hope the clerk is as okay as they can be. And entirely predictable that UHub commenters would use this as a jumping-off point to rage-sweat about "junkies" and "indigents". There's always going to be a commenting gap there, I guess; sad, scared reactionaries have all the time in the world to post online while the rest of us are busy having a life.

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