Hub cops hitting teens with trespass charges

Yawu Miller

Like dozens of other teenagers milling in the halls of Roxbury District Court, the young man from Orchard Gardens wore an expression that registered anger over his arrest the day before.

“I was talking to a cousin of mine,” the Orchard Gardens resident said. “I was getting some cigarettes from her. I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong.”

As a group of officers arrested the teenager for trespassing, he objected.

“I told the officers I lived there all my life,” said the teen, who did not give his name. “My mother told them the same thing. How can you be arrested for trespassing in front of your own house?”

The arrest made no sense to the teen, who says he is on his mother’s lease.

But teen advocates and residents of the Bromley Heath housing development who were interviewed by the Banner said that Boston Police and Boston Housing Authority Police routinely arrest young men who legally reside there for trespassing.

“It’s common,” said Mack Hudson, a legal assistant with the Judge Richard Banks Community Justice Program. “Kids who reside here are being arrested for trespassing.”

Hudson says he has worked with several such cases.

Residents of Bromley Heath interviewed by the Banner said they knew of cases of people who are on leases in units in Bromley Heath being arrested for trespassing. All six of the residents interviewed by the Banner refused to give their names, most citing fear of reprisals from police.

Boston Housing Authority spokeswoman Lydia Agro said residents who are on leases of BHA developments should not be charged with trespassing.

“If there are people who say this is really happening, they should come to us and let us know,” she said.

Trespassing charges have been used in recent years to keep people who live outside the developments from loitering or committing crimes on the grounds of the developments.

“There are people who have committed crimes in our developments,” Agro said. “We believe that the ‘no trespass’ notices are a way of ensuring that the overwhelming majority of our law-abiding public housing residents are kept safe.”

But the Bromley Heath residents interviewed by the Banner said many in the development are intimidated by the police presence. Teens are regularly stopped and frisked by police in Bromley Heath, which is considered one of the city’s high crime areas.

“Not so long ago, a little kid got beat up by the police,” said one resident, who declined to give his name, citing fear of police retaliation. “He had bruises and everything. But his mother was afraid to talk.”

Youth advocates and teenagers interviewed by the Banner in recent weeks say police are aggressively targeting public housing developments and high-crime areas throughout the city using illegal stop-and-frisk tactics.

In the Bromley Heath development, police have been conducting searches without probable cause, according to Hudson. Parents are afraid to confront officers because they themselves fear that they will be arrested, Hudson says.

“If they get arrested, they could be evicted by the BHA,” he commented. “They also know their children can get hit with a trespassing order. It forces the parent to have to move. Their children can’t leave the house without running the risk of being arrested.”

Tenants in public housing developments can be evicted for violations of their lease, including criminal activity. If the eviction is successful, according to Agro, the BHA can issue a no trespassing order against members of the family.

An arrest for a violation as minor as trespassing can give a youth a stigma he will carry for the rest of his life. The state’s Criminal Offender Record Information Law makes it legal for employers, schools and other agencies to access criminal records of job applicants or prospective students. Many employers automatically rule out applicants with criminal records.

While the trespassing arrests may keep out troublemakers, many former residents of housing development say the trespassing charges police issue them effectively cut them off from the only family they have.

Mike, a former resident of Orchard Gardens who would not give his last name, was not evicted. His mother moved out of the development in the mid ’80s. But his grandparents, aunts and uncles still live in the development.

Mike, an ex-con who says he is frequently stopped and searched by police, said he has been arrested three times for trespassing.

“Nothing happens,” he said. “They either throw it out in court the next day, or they put you on probation.”

The last time, which Mike says occurred last fall, he was attending the birthday party of his ten-year-old cousin.

“I’m real close to all my cousins,” he said. “During the party, I went into the backyard to smoke a cigarette. The police jumped over the fence and checked me.”

Since then, Mike says, he has not returned. But without access to his family members, he has few options.

“It sucks,” he says. “I have no place to go if I’m not around here. Nowadays, with all this gang-banging going on, would you like to hang out on someone else’s block?”