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August 4, 2005

With Dudley Square benefiting from a surge of new commercial construction and building renovations, neighborhood business owners and residents say they are fed up with the persistent drug dealing, public drinking, urination and loitering that tarnish the image of the square.

Last week, activists, business owners and nearby residents rallied near the corner of Ruggles and Washington streets to demand more social services for homeless people and more police intervention to stop drug and alcohol abuse and other crimes.

Rally participants also expressed a common sentiment — the petty and not-so-petty crimes that go on in the square will no longer be tolerated.

“We’re trying to rebuild the neighborhood,” said Brandy Cruthrid, owner of Body by Brandy Fitness Center on Washington Street. “I can’t have kids and families coming here and people are loitering and not getting the support they need.”

Joyce Stanley, the director of Dudley Square Main Streets, a coalition of business owners and residents who work on improving the square, said police need to step up their efforts to fight non-violent crime in the square.

“It isn’t that police won’t work with us, it’s just right now it is not enough,” she said. “While substance abuse and loitering are a low priority for police with the murder rate rising, they are a high priority for the businesses, employees and customers that come to the district daily.”

Boston Police Captain Jim Hasson said the department assigns two beat cops to patrol Dudley Square, and defended his department’s efforts to work with the community to fight non-violent crime.

He questioned whether activists were mad at the police for missing the last monthly meeting of the group Dudley Pride, which brings cops, business owners and activists together to work on improvements to the square.

“I hope our relationship isn’t that fragile where I miss one meeting and we have a rally,” said Hasson. “We are in the community. It’s a true partnership. [But] we need the information so we can act on that information. When we walk down the street, all of a sudden people are doing things right.”

Dudley community members also complained about the paucity of social services to help the homeless in the neighborhood.

“We’ve been working with the mayor and the police department, and I know it’s a funding issue,” said Fred Fairfield, owner of the Roxbury Boys and Girls Club. “But it isn’t right that they take people from Deer Island and dump them in our area. There are no agencies that can come down here and work with them.”

Buses from homeless day shelters drop off their passengers at the Boston Medical Center each morning and homeless individuals, many with deep roots in Roxbury, flock to Dudley Square.

The business district’s liquor stores provide many with their first beverages of the day after they open in the morning

In recent years, Dudley Pride members called for more outreach to connect homeless individuals with social services. However, state and federal funding cuts have reduced budgets for a slew of social service programs, including detoxification services.

The number of available detoxification beds in the state has dropped from around 900 five years ago to around 500 today, according to Bill Carrick, program director at CAB Boston Treatment Center.

Two years ago, the detoxification center A Safe Place on Marvin Street closed after it lost funding.

Practically the only outreach being done currently is volunteer outreach by Kathy Kim, whose father owns the shoe store Alpha & Omega on Washington Street. Together with the state Department of Mental Health, Kim has helped reduce vagrancy, according to Stanley.

“People who have service needs, they help them get caseworkers,” said Stanley. “Some people who abuse substances don’t have the initiative to get through some of these bureaucracies. It takes street outreach to connect them with services.”

The city has allocated $15,000 to run a three or four month pilot street outreach program in Dudley Square, in the hopes that the pilot can attract state funding to make the program full time. The program, to be implemented later this year, will assess the needs of the homeless population in the square, according to Jim Greene, the acting director of the city’s Emergency Shelter Commission.

“It is a way of getting some folks on the ground to realize the need and hopefully leverage some type of longer-term solution from the state,” he said. “Most of the street outreach in Boston is through the state or federal funding, and we haven’t had any new resources from the state to do street outreach.”

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