• First, this article that ran earlier this week in the New York Times, about a “green beret” approach to combating crime in the North End.
The article describes how two state troopers decided to apply strategies they learned while fighting in the Iraq War to the North End. “Gang members and drug dealers operate very similarly to insurgents,” Trooper Michael Cutone told Times reporter Erica Goode. “I don’t mean they’re looking to overthrow the state. But the way that they blend into the passive support of the community and use that to their advantage is very similar.” The joint State Police and Springfield Police Department effort includes regular community meetings—described by the Times as “part networking session, part pep rally and part social event”—where police fill residents in on crime in the area and urge them to get involved with helping to stop it.
The jury’s still out on how successful the program has been; a Harvard study, the Times reports, looked at its effect on “arrest rates, calls to the police, ambulances summoned for gunshot wounds, the amount of graffiti on buildings—an indicator of gang activity—and litter on the streets, among other things” and found declines in littering and graffiti only. Others question whether some of the strategies are over the top; I learned of the article via a group email sent by Lois Ahrens, executive director of the Real Cost of Prisons Project, who included this pithy comment: “Militarizing Springfield.”
State Rep. Cheryl Coakley-Rivera, however, is a fan, telling the Times: “You can tangibly feel a difference. The neighborhood wants this initiative. We had never actually sat down with law enforcement before and committed to improving the quality of life for an entire neighborhood.”
• Meanwhile, over at the Springfield Intruder, Bill Dusty lets loose on Mayor Domenic Sarno, with a list of criticisms reaching back into his last term and ending with the mayor’s recent call for a 1 a.m. curfew on bars in the city. Dusty raises the possibility that the move for an early curfew might, in fact, be an attempt to make the city more appealing to prospective casino operators, who, presumably, would not be subject to the early closing time. “[W]as the Mayor upping the ante for Springfield’s case in the casino market by letting any prospective investors know that they’d be the only show in town after 1:00am?” Dusty asks.
And at the Reminder, Mike Dobbs weighs in on the proposed early curfew, which he predicts would hurt city businesses and help those in neighboring communities with later closing times. “Mayor Michael Bissonnette has long expressed the opinion that downtown Chicopee, if there several more establishments open, could develop its own entertainment district. This change in the Springfield closing would be music to his ears,” Dobbs writes.
“If you want a safer area, you need a greater police presence,” he continues. “Make sure young people aren’t in parked cars and drinking before they go to the bars. Establish a sub-station downtown so there is a flow of cops in and out of the area. Develop a greater monitoring of how bars are serving alcohol and if they are pushing drinks to drunks, then haul them in to the Board of License Commissioners. Punish the owners who don’t follow the laws and reward the ones that do.”
• Finally, my favorite photo of the week is this moment of playfulness in a rather serious context: activist Holly Richardson, of OutNow and Arise for Social Justice, passing the time by juggling oranges as she and a group of allies cooled their heels outside Sarno’s office on Monday waiting, in vain, for the opportunity to meet with the mayor. The group is concerned that the recently released Rebuild Springfield plan does not replace affordable housing that was lost in last year’s tornado and is calling for a task force focused on the issue.
