Homeless man asleep on the front step of an abandoned building in downtown Boston, USA. By 2p2play @ Shutterstock.com
Boston’s radical progressive Mayor Michelle Wu is warning about the dangers of the homeless encampment located at the intersection of Massachusetts Ave. and Melnea Cass Boulevard in the city. Wu noted the drug trafficking, human trafficking, and violence occurring in the area. Ross Cristantiello reports in the Boston Globe:
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said Wednesday that public safety concerns regarding the area of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard have spiked in recent weeks. This is prompting outreach workers and police to potentially reevaluate how best to keep people safe in the area, which sits at the epicenter of the opioid epidemic and homelessness crisis.
Speaking with host Jimmy Hills on his program “Java with Jimmy” Wednesday morning, Wu said that the city’s nonprofit partners have raised the alarm to her administration over the past month.
“All of the non-city teams have said in the last few weeks, ‘The situation has gotten so dangerous that we are pulling our people out, we cannot be in there,’” Wu said.
City workers, nonprofit partners, and police see the challenges facing individuals at Mass and Cass as primarily medical, she said, and the need for services there is as high as ever. But large crowds make this more difficult, as getting someone the services they need is easier in a small group or a one-on-one setting, Wu added.
In particular, much of the criminal activity taking place there happens inside tents and out of sight, she said.
“That’s, frankly, where some of the trafficking, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and violence is taking place,” she said. “We are planning to take a major step, I think, in trying to make sure that we are addressing that properly and supporting our law enforcement side with the ability to better maintain public safety because it has gotten to the point where, even those who are experts and do this every single day have said, ‘It has reached a new level that is untenable.’”
Read more here.
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