it seems like it's closed literally every time I'm in central. I'd like to give them some money for coffee.

That's great to hear - is there a way i can have my tax dollars go directly to the social work group?

They just extended their hours: M-F 7-3, weekends 8-4

yeah I have literally never seen a safe injection site on the street.

cops aren't really the solution to this problem, unless you want them to shoot someone.

when is 1369 even open anymore?

what? if anything central seems blander and safer than it was a few years ago.

The passing out has been happening for 5+ years, right in front of CSB.

I called 911 at least twice because I was worried I was watching an OD in real time.

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And my SO wouldn't walk through that area by herself at all. Constant, nonstop harassment by the junkies.

A ski jumping slope goes down, down, down, and then kicks back up at the end. Yes, it's been going down for a while, but by the time you're coming off the end, things are moving upward. Absolutely nothing near where you were at the top, but you can't deny things are rising.

CPD would rather ticket people going straight while in the right hand turn only lane at that intersection

You can get the picture probably from looking at this. It doesn't include the most recent data, but you can see that things are really dramatically improved.

https://www.cambridgema.gov/-/media/Images/policedepartment/2016CrimeStats.png?h=295&mh=500&mw=500&w=500

I didn't mean to stand in the way of your pitchfork. In general, crime remains near all time lows. We are in the middle of a significant economic upheaval, which always causes social upheavals in tandem. This isn't really something specific to policy in any one city, state, country, or intersection.

Central square is so much worse now than it was 10 years ago. Idk wtf the cambridge govt needs to do but whatever is going on right now isn't doing a damned thing. Walked through there Saturday at like 4:30pm to a guy leaning against the public bathroom exterior to whop his dick out and pee right on the sidewalk, and not a cop in sight

If Starbucks corporation really cared about their workers they would provide them with a living wage that would provide for adequate housing and the cost of living in Cambridge.

I am remembering now that the light on Mass Ave is green for a while and red for a long time. Is it about this intersection where drivers on Brookline decide if they want to try to make the green light or not. If they decide they want to try to avoid the long red, they will speed up considerably here.

So? Should we not want things to improve? This isn’t the 70s or 80s, and sure, it’s better than then, but will no action be taken until it’s on par with 70s / 80s?

Is it? What were the numbers like back then?

Well some strategies are, for example, getting people into long-term housing (instead of into temporary and restrictive homeless shelters), providing basic needs like food and clothing, and otherwise addressing the problems that cause people to be on the street and chronically homeless. Those are all the purview of social workers, though. The other approach would be to just lock people up, at expense to the state and with basically no chance of long-term behavioral change. Is that what you'd suggest? (Also safe injection sites are not on the street they are indoors???)

No drug unit? that’s insane jfc. people in this city need to grow up

Relative. It's absolutely nothing like how it was in the 70's and 80's.

City govt does not want the optics of cracking down hard on drug related offenses, there’s not even a drug unit in CPD anymore. The police here almost always show up and handle situations when they occur, unlike other cities (read the LA sub). Everyone in this sub knows damn well that if it was 2+ years ago and police were aggressively cracking down on the very transgressors we’re talking about in this thread, there’d be fucking rallies at City Hall and at CPD about the police oppressing socioeconomically disenfranchised people.

The mixed messaging about the scope of what this country wants police to do has become remarkably convoluted. If you want directives on how to handle the illegal behavior that’s going on here you need to first look at city government and city management because they delegate to the police. Do you think Portland’s well documented ongoing crisis is because of police inaction..

what about strategies to keep people who aren’t doing drugs and endangering the public with their antisocial behavior safe? make safe injection sites if you want— don’t put them on the street though. these social work strategies are always half baked

The idea of harm reduction strategies like needle exchanges and safe injection sites isn't to get people to go to to rehab, it's to keep them from getting HIV and hepatitis and dying from overdose.

This is Cambridge PD's most recent crime report:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23132614-bridgestat_september2022_final

Central really has gotten bad. And crime across Cambridge is way up over the last 5 years:

| 2017 | 2022 -- | -- | -- rape | 13 | 29 agg assault | 137 | 180 robbery | 36 | 67 auto theft | 69 | 127

Central square has always been grimy (at least since I started spending time there around 1996 or so) but it also hosted a lot of very unique and useful retail. Dance complex, record stores, cafes, great restaurants, Pearl/Blick, Cantab and so forth.

I am not surprised that the situation with the ne'er-do-wells has deteriorated to the point where shops are moving out. To those who are saying 'good riddance to Starbucks', I share the sentiment, but what is stopping 1369 of succumbing to the same fate? Or artists and craftsman supply, or the falafel place, or Life Alive?

I personally have zero confidence that either the police or social workers can transform Central into a place free from open drug use and constant harassment. All I know is that addiction is incredibly powerful and nobody should have to live around that shit.