In response to what police have called a recent surge in violent and drug-related crime in the Boston Common-which culminated in a shooting last week that injured two teenagers and shattered a State House window-Mayor Thomas Menino has unearthed a 1955 law that prohibits loitering in Boston’s public parks from 11:30 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Beacon Hill residents have lauded the mayor and his curfew for helping crack down on crime in the neighborhood. Homeless advocates and shelter officials disagree. The curfew, they say, has affected victims of crime, not criminals and put unfair pressure on more than 50 homeless people who sleep on the park’s lawns and benches.
Curfews on the Common, and the quarrels they bring with them, are nothing new to Boston. But despite their reoccurrence through Boston’s history, past curfews have been short-lived and have had little lasting effect on crime in the Common. They have, however, been effective in forcing society’s marginal and powerless out of public spaces, often under the aegis of crime reduction.
One of the first curfews came in 1675, according to the Bostonian Society. In that year, the park was closed from 9 p.m. until dawn, during which time constables were authorized to “take up loose people.”
For about a quarter century in the 1700s, British troops camped on the Common regularly and carried out an array of curfews to prevent begging, meetings, protests and other public activity from the colonists.
As Boston expanded in the 19th century, nighttime curfews remained a means for police to keep “transients” and “loose women” out of the park, in the words of Mark Anthony de Wolfe, a Boston historian.
In more recent years, little has changed.
In the past two decades, city officials have increased police presence and laid out two curfews, in addition to the one in place now.
The first came in July 1986, when Mayor Raymond Flynn closed the Common from 10 p.m. to dawn. Flynn said gambling, drug dealing, robbery and violence had turned the park into a “haven for unsavory activity” and ordered police officers to enforce the curfew indefinitely.
Shelter administrators and other advocates for the homeless cried foul on the restriction, citing overcrowding at local shelters among their reasons.
But four days later, the mayor lifted the curfew without public announcement.
The second curfew came less than nine years later, from Menino’s early days as mayor.
In that case, Menino reacted to two rapes that had occurred on the Common in June 1995. On June 21, invoking the 1955 law, he ordered police to ban anyone from the park from 11:30 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Again, the curfew drew sharp criticism from homeless groups, who in that instance brought their grievances to the American Civil Liberties Union.
It only took one day for Menino to recoil. On June 22, he retreated from an outright ban on overnight activity in the Common, and said the city would only continue to prevent people from sleeping there during curfew hours.
Homeless groups continued to threaten lawsuit. Police and city officials, unintimidated, said the ban on sleeping would remain.
It did, but not for long. An overview of articles from that summer shows that within months police presence on the Common had returned to normal levels and the city had abandoned the curfew.
Today, we’re a little more than two weeks into the city’s third Boston Common curfew in about 20 years. We should be surprised that it’s lasted this long, but it appears the Menino administration has learned nothing from history-not even its own.
To be sure, crime in Boston Common has risen to frightening levels. The Boston Globe reported that police have made 319 drug arrests on the Common in the past nine months, and received reports of 45 robberies, 45 aggravated assaults and one sexual assault.
But the way to address those problems is through increased police presence, not a curfew that disproportionately affects the homeless, many of whom say they sleep in the Common because they feel safer there than in shelters.
Peter Manning, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern and an expert on crime mapping and policing, called the gunshot through the State House window a “sad excuse for the mayor to carry out what he considers city beautification.”
“This is a classic example of the crackpot theory of social disorder that says you want to constrain freedom of individuals so that a middle class order can be maintained,” he said. “Any time you have something policy-driven like this, you look for trouble. The officers can show discretion for problems on the ground. They don’t need a curfew or a sweep.”
This curfew, like those before it, will do more to afflict the disadvantaged than the criminals if Menino continues to enforce it. Let’s hope it will follow its predecessors.
– Derek Hawkins can be reached at [email protected]
