Copyright dailymail
Residents of a once-idyllic Boston neighborhood are in uproar over the blatant drug use and criminal activity on its street as more and more consider packing up and moving out. A recent city council meeting in the South End exploded with locals fuming over 'rampant' open-air drug use, violence and obscene activity in the tony enclave.. At a previous community meeting, South End resident Andy Brand said the neighborhood was 'in a state of crisis.' 'To the officials in this room, let me be clear: Your approach is not working,' he continued, WBUR reported. 'We warned you this would happen. We told you if you did not arrest drug dealers and get people into recovery the chaos would spread, and now it has.' At the meeting on Thursday, state elected officials and police were met with outrage from residents who said they now fear for their safety while walking the streets of the South End, where the median house price is $1.1 million. Within the previous year, the South End saw its median house prices plummet by 12.6 percent, according to Redfin. One man recalled how his sons had ran out of the house one night to cheer on firefighters as sirens blared, only to see a man bleeding from a knife wound laying on the ground, the Boston Herald reported. The bleeding man had been injured after trying to stop another man from following a woman into her home with the knife, according to the father. 'We all recognize that Boston is a compassionate city, but compassion cannot come at the expense of public safety,' he said. 'These families should not feel that the only way to stay safe is to leave.' Residents at the meeting spoke of how they walked in fear around their own neighborhood, or how their playgrounds were littered with feces and discarded needles. A man recalled how he was forced to use Narcan, a life-saving drug used for overdoses, after his dog got a hold of a discarded needle with drug remnants. He advised others to acquire the drug for themselves and carry it when walking their pets in the area. One woman at the meeting was seen breaking down in tears as she recalled an intoxicated man who had yelled a violent sexual threat at her while she walked with her seven-month old baby, the Herald reported. Another local said his wife had come across a man masturbating near a bus station in full view of the public. 'The fact that the bar has become so low is incredibly disappointing and we need to raise it. I think everybody in Boston would agree - we're better than this,' he said. A father called on Boston's public health commissioner, Bisola Ojikutu, and asked what was more important, 'the right of my children to grow up safely in their neighborhood' or the right to buy and abuse drugs.' Ojikutu did not have an answer, after saying that the city distributes more than 80,000 needles to drug users every month at a meeting in September, the Herald reported. The man, who lives near Boston Medical Center, said he had been calling emergency services 'almost daily' until September. The father said the medical center's front lawn has in essence become an open-air drug market. 'This is frankly not an acceptable environment in which to raise a family,' he added. 'The city has failed to provide consistent law and order.' A plan to clear up the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard - known as 'Mass and Cass' and notorious for open-air drug use - was implemented by Mayor Michelle Wu in November 2023, starting with the clearing of a homeless encampment. Recently, drug use and crime has spilled over into neighboring areas, with the South End appearing to have been hit the hardest. South End arrests were up by 163 percent from May 1 to August 24 from the same time period last year, the Herald reported. The South End is not the only ritzy neighborhood in Boston fuming at officials over its drug-ridden streets. Beacon Hill, known for its preserved early 19th century brownstones and cobblestone roads, is also facing an alarming uptick in drug-related incidents. Infuriated locals laid the blame squarely on Mayor Wu, who launched an initiative to hand out free crack pipes, syringes, and other drug paraphernalia to addicts on the streets in 2022. While Wu's administration has pitched this controversial policy as 'harm reduction,' critics have countered that all she's done is increase the permissiveness of open-air drug use in Boston. 'What in God’s name are they doing?' Michael Flaherty, who then served as Boston's at-large city councilor and the public safety chair, told the Boston Herald in 2022. 'This flies in the face of everything we have been trying to do to clean Mass and Cass up.' A clean-up crew supported by the Newmarket Business Improvement District recently estimated it picks up about 1,000 needles a day across Boston. Beacon Hill, where the median housing price is $2.8million, is just one of the areas feeling the burn. 'WOW: Beacon Hill, Boston’s wealthiest neighborhood, now has open-air drug use on full display,' a fed-up Bostonian recently wrote on a Facebook community page. He shared a photo sent in by 'stunned resident' of a man slumped over, apparently on drugs, in a wheelchair with an umbrella over his shoulders on a street corner. 'Even Beacon Hill liberals are fed up with Wu,' the user wrote. On social media, people expressed disbelief at the jaw-dropping photo and pointed to Wu's lackluster efforts. 'Truly unbelievable how anyone, regardless of political affiliation, allows this kind of cr*p to happen,' one man wrote on X. 'Super sad to see Boston slowly turning into SF or Portland, OR. Let’s hope the wealthy in Beacon Hill raise a stink about it and get rid of Wu.' 'Her free needle plan is working well; they dump them everywhere, as a free supply Wu's progressive ways are slowly bringing the city down,' another chimed in. Katherine Kennedy, a Beacon Hill mother-of-two, described to the Boston Herald how the area had changed for the worse last September. 'I pass discarded needles as I walk my five-year-old to her public school every day,' Kennedy said. 'Having to keep needles away from my kids as I walk them to preschool is unacceptable.' Sue Sullivan, chief executive of the Newmarket Business Improvement District, told WBUR: 'It’s not acceptable for the quality of life of everyone that someone has to come out of their house, with their children, and have someone shooting up in the neck on their front step.
