Pubdate: Wed, 14 Sep 2005
Source: Boston Herald (MA)
Copyright: 2005 The Boston Herald, Inc
Contact:  http://news.bostonherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/53
Author: O'ryan  Johnson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

COPS CLEAN UP THE YARD: CRITICS HIT CITY EFFORT

A drug treatment advocate and several vagrants who live in and around 
Boston Common and the Public Garden say a police crackdown on druggies that 
got under way in earnest yesterday is not solving the problem, instead 
simply pushing it to other neighborhoods.

"Moving  people around does not solve their addiction," said Gail Enman, 
executive  director of the Cambridge and Somerville Program for Alcohol and 
Drug Abuse  Rehabilitation. "They carry their addiction around with them." 
Police were  out in force in the Common and Garden, largely in response to 
Monday's Herald  expose of open-air drug activity in the premier Hub 
greenspaces. Undercover  officers strolled in pairs, police radios and 
handcuffs tucked under T-shirts; mounted police staged horse trailers in 
one of the Common's worst locales for  drug use, where last week brazen 
crack fiends smoked in broad daylight. "Once you  squeeze the tube of 
toothpaste, it really is a dilemma," said Enman, who  estimates 90 percent 
of the homeless her program treats have substance abuse  problems. "If you 
move the problem, it just sprouts out someplace else." Even as the  police 
push was on, junkies still congregated at St. Paul's Church across 
from  Park Street T station on Tremont Street. Asked where addicts are 
headed now, a  man said, "Who knows." Police on  horseback questioned 
anyone who seemed to be camped out in the park. But none of the addicts or 
dealers photographed by the Herald over the past two weeks was  spotted 
yesterday on the Common. One woman stood by a tree while two 
mounted  officers and three cops arriving in cruisers donned gloves to 
search her bags  for signs of drugs. Police put the woman in a cruiser and 
shuttled her to the  Pine Street Inn.

"Some  people are just so messed up there's nothing you can do," said one 
mounted  officer who helped in the search. Moments later, a few yards up 
the path, the  two mounted police stopped to question another homeless man 
partially hidden  behind trees.

Meanwhile  in the Public Garden, in nearly the identical spot where John P. 
Gagliardi Jr.  was photographed taking a fatal hit of heroin on Aug. 25, a 
photographer caught  two liberal arts students sharing marijuana while 
listening to music on an Apple  laptop computer.

When told  about the overdose death, the Herald's follow-up reports and the 
subsequent  crackdown, the inhalers were unphased.

"Yeah, but  this is a joint," said one, a literature and English major, who 
copped to  toking up in the Garden with his pal once a week. "It's 
very  refreshing. We do it to like take in nature," he said. Neither saw 
anything  wrong with smoking marijuana in an area replete with families and 
children.

"We're not  out here to bother anybody," one student said.
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman