Janey mum on Mile enforcement
Acting Mayor Kim Janey’s administration remains mum on the talk about an enforcement effort on Methadone Mile that was planned for and then scuttled this week.
“We continue to prioritize public health — we continue to provide our care and treatment,” Janey told reporters at a press conference, responding to a question about this week’s discussed action without answering it. “Just last week 55 individuals were referred to. We also continue to work on getting folks into shelter, and to clean up the area.”
“We continue to work with businesses and residents in the area, to clean the area,” Janey said, though she said to refer to it as “Mass and Cass,” as this reporter did in the question, is “dehumanizing.” That’s the moniker advocates gave the troubled area that’s devolved into a violent open-air drug market over the past few years in order to give it a more positive name than “Methadone Mile.”
Various Mass and Cass watchers — public officials and involved residents — told the Herald last week that the city was readying an effort to be announced this week. For example, Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins reiterated Thursday that he had heard some effort was coming on Tuesday, with state officials and prosecutors involved.
“Then on Monday we heard it was canceled,” said Tompkins, who sits on the Mass and Cass Task Force and works in the heart of the area.
The ACLU told the Herald it was “made aware of a potential action.” The organization said it worried this would be “reminiscent” of the controversial “Operation Clean Sweep” from summer 2019.
“The ACLU of Massachusetts continues to have concerns about the gross violations of constitutional rights that can occur during such sweeps, and made those concerns known to City of Boston officials this week,” said Ruth Bourquin, senior and managing attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts, in a statement.
The mayor’s office has said it’s “incorrect” to say that the city was planning an action on the Mile and then didn’t do so because of the ACLU stepped in. But the city wouldn’t say anything further about any past discussions of an action — and wouldn’t say whether or not they had taken place — other than to assert that there is no “sweep” currently planned.
The Mass and Cass area continues to worsen, according to watchers. Last week, a man was stabbed to death in the fifth killing on the Mile, and this week the city shuttered a “comfort station,” citing “security concerns.” The task force that oversees the area remains in disarray, barely meeting, and advocates say the explosion of tents in the area concerns them.
The problems there — and more broadly the issues of addiction and mental-health challenges that fuel it — also continues to play a role in the mayoral race. City Councilors Andrea Campbell and Annissa Essaibi-George both headed down to neighborhoods near the epicenter on Wednesday to hold press conferences relating to the issue.