City Council President Ed Flynn stated he plans to spend his time as performing mayor of Boston addressing the squalid situations round Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue, amid stories of elevated violence and drug trafficking.
Flynn, who stepped into his new function when Mayor Michelle Wu left Boston for a household trip on Thursday, stated he has met with “city, state and federal officials, business leaders and nonprofit partners on issues related to public safety, public health and quality of life at Mass and Cass.”
“As acting mayor and city council president, I will continue to work closely with Mayor Wu and our colleagues in government to address this, as well as other pressing issues in our city, such as transportation, public education and services for seniors and persons with disabilities,” Flynn informed the Herald in a Friday textual content message.
He declined to elaborate additional, when requested whether or not he plans to take any motion to handle the deteriorating state of affairs at Mass and Cass, throughout his 10-day stint as performing mayor. Wu returns to Boston subsequent Saturday, Aug. 12 at 10 p.m.
Flynn did signal onto a Thursday letter with three different conservative-leaning metropolis councilors, two state lawmakers and a U.S. congressman, calling for police to conduct a warrant sweep within the space, “specifically targeting those individuals with a history of violence, drug and human trafficking.”
While Wu shouldn’t be bodily current, her spokesperson, Ricardo Patrón, insists that she’s nonetheless very a lot in control of the day-to-day operations of the town.
“The mayor checks in multiple times a day with the team and is available by phone and zoom to address any major decisions that need to be made,” Patrón informed the Herald on Friday.
Wu left city a day after alluding to a brand new strategy the town plans to take to handle what she described as an “untenable” state of affairs at Mass and Cass, an space lengthy identified for open-air drug dealing and homeless encampments.
She stated on a Wednesday “Java with Jimmy” podcast that the elevated hazard has led all non-city groups to drag their outreach employees from the world, however didn’t elaborate on what “major step” the town plans to take to handle the matter.
A Wu administration official informed the Herald on Friday that the town plans to take a extra safety-enforcement oriented strategy at Mass and Cass, with a deal with focusing on the prison exercise that happens there every day. Details concerning the new strategy have been first reported by the Boston Globe on Thursday.
The official stated roughly 200 persons are descending on the world every day to purchase or promote medicine, participate in human trafficking and commit violence. By comparability, the variety of unhoused people looking for shelter is far decrease, at between 40 to 75 on any given day.
This has brought on the town to shift its technique, the official famous. The Wu administration noticed success in connecting about “half of the people who were living in encampments in January 2022” with everlasting housing, the official stated.
Since that point, nevertheless, a whole bunch extra folks have arrived from throughout the state and area. The focus now, the official stated, is on addressing the prison side, by “eliminating the drug trafficking and violence, reducing the crowding and allowing Atkinson and Southampton to operate as regular streets.”
Law enforcement can be a part of the brand new strategy, in accordance with the administration official, who declined to get into specifics concerning the deliberate technique.
Mariellen Burns, a spokesperson for the Boston Police Department, stated BPD continues “to extend a tremendous amount of resources in the area of Mass and Cass daily.”
“We have had increased presence over the past month or two as the weather has improved and violence and other incidents of dangerous activity have increased,” Burns stated in a Friday e mail.
The Wu official pointed to issues created by tents pitched within the space, which “pose both a public health and safety risk because they facilitate those criminal behaviors.”
The mayor tried to ban the tents in May, however the order didn’t carry a lot weight with folks within the space, who continued to arrange their makeshift shelters.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”