Common Ground (129 page)

The Mayor’s intervention brought modest results. In mid-January, Kirk O’Donnell, the Mayor’s principal political lieutenant, called Richie Hall, his chief operative in the South End, and read him the letter. “What the hell’s
going on down there?” he asked. “If things are that bad, why haven’t you said something?”

“Yeh, it’s bad,” said Hall. “But what are you going to do? We haven’t got enough police to watch every block around the clock.”

“Well,” said O’Donnell, “Kevin wants something done about it.”

Not a great deal happened. John Sacco, the District 4 Community Service Officer, and Robert Mullane, the district’s Patrol Supervisor, called the Divers to express their concern, but in weeks to come, patrolmen were as scarce as ever on West Newton Street.

After his capture of the mugger, Colin became a controversial figure in the neighborhood. To some of his neighbors he was a hero, a bold and fearless defender of the community. To others, he was a reckless vigilante, a hothead who had set a dangerous example. Among his critics were the police. “Your husband is really crazy,” a patrolman told Joan one day. “He should never have gone after that guy. I’ve seen a lot of people killed or badly hurt tangling with a robber that way.”

Colin knew they were right. He couldn’t wage a personal war against South End criminals; individual acts of retribution weren’t the answer. A friend of the Divers on Rutland Square kept a loaded revolver in his night table. Colin had argued with him about it, noting all the dangers involved in private use of firearms. But, obsessed with street crime, his friend was adamant, and Colin feared that one day he would use that gun. Something had to be done to institutionalize people’s anger, to harness their indignation in a cooperative effort with real prospects of success.

Three blocks away on West Canton Street a group of homeowners had tried something which caught Colin’s attention. In November 1974, led by a community activist named Chris Hayes, they had formed a street patrol to mount guard on their block through the late afternoon and early evening, and crime had declined significantly. In mid-January, Colin invited Hayes to a meeting in Paul Garrity’s living room, where he left his audience favorably disposed.

For a few weeks they temporized. Then, on January 24, West Newton Street was alarmed by two particularly brutal crimes. Early that morning an elderly Greek was hit on the head during a holdup in the alley behind the Divers’ house; hours later he died of a heart attack, the first fatality of that winter’s crime wave. That very afternoon, on adjacent Pembroke Street, a twenty-three-year-old pharmacist named John Poirer returned to his apartment and found the front door jimmied. As he dialed the police, the burglar emerged from a bedroom and ordered him to hang up and empty his pockets. Poirer complied, then bolted from the room and began desperately ringing nearby doorbells. The burglar followed him into the hall and shot him in the back. Doctors said the young pharmacist would be paralyzed from the waist down.

Horrified by the savagery of these attacks, the Divers decided to move quickly toward a West Newton Street patrol. Joan suggested that they call in another specialist in such matters—Dain Perry, director of the Crime and Justice Foundation, a citizens’ organization which promoted reform of the criminal
justice system. Joan knew Perry through the Hyams Trust, which had supported part of his foundation’s work, and on several occasions she had consulted him about crime in the South End. Dain Perry had recently become a convert to “community crime prevention,” the idea that a community must take responsibility for its own crime rather than delegating it to the police. Perry suggested that the Divers call a meeting of area residents, which he would be happy to address.

On January 11, some twenty-five West Newton Street and Rutland Square residents assembled at the South End library. Colin Diver opened with a summary of crime statistics and efforts to improve police protection, then turned the meeting over to Perry, who lost no time in making his case. “The first thing you have to realize,” he said, “is that police resources are terribly limited. They can’t give continuous special treatment to any single neighborhood, because there are simply too many neighborhoods with these problems. The police can’t be everywhere at the same time.

“You can go out and hire guards to do the job for you, but that only shows you’re scared. Worse yet, it’s the ultimate rip-off because the criminals are making you shell out your hard-earned money to keep them away. Even if the guards succeed in driving off the criminals, as soon as the guards leave the wise guys will be right back.

“The most important ingredient in protecting your neighborhood is to show that the community takes care of its own. You must demonstrate that you will not tolerate crime in your midst. You’ve got to organize. You’ve got to communicate. Ultimately, you’ve got to get your own eyes and ears out there on the block. You’ve got to form some kind of citizens’ patrol to show those who would do you harm that you don’t intend to sit idly by and let them push you around.”

Perry’s advice alarmed some in the audience. To the Rutland Square contingent in particular, it smacked of vigilantism, lynch parties, frontier justice. But to most in the room, it seemed the only way out, the last resort for a community with its back to the wall. The group agreed to recruit their neighbors and reconvene the following week.

On February 7, Perry returned with more detailed information about citizens’ patrols. He also brought a Freon horn, a gas-powered unit about the size of a small aerosol can which emitted a shrill blast that could be heard for blocks around. “This little thing should frighten off any attacker,” Perry said. “It’ll also bring your neighbors to their windows and any passing policeman to your assistance. When you hear one of these on the block, the first thing you should do is call 911, the police emergency number. If four or five people make the same call at the same time, don’t worry—better too many than no one at all. The next thing is to grab your own horn, run out on the street, and sound it. That kind of ruckus is guaranteed to scare off even the most hardened criminal.”

The second meeting ended with agreement that West Newton Street should form such a patrol as soon as possible. Not surprisingly, Colin was designated
its captain and principal organizer. But he had one serious misgiving. Unless they were very careful, he feared, the patrol could take on racist overtones. The twenty-five homeowners gathered at the library that morning were overwhelmingly white, while their antagonists on the street were largely black and Hispanic. The dark-on-light nature of most South End crime was a reality which even the most committed South End liberal could not gainsay.

Such polarization was bringing out a latent racism in Colin—something he’d never felt before. Whenever he saw a couple of black kids bopping along West Newton Street, the muscles in his neck and shoulders would tense up. He knew it was grossly unfair to assume that such young people were up to no good; of 5,000 black kids roaming the South End and Roxbury on any given day, only a tiny fraction were committing crimes. He realized that many of the “criminals” were only children, striking back at the sorry hand life had dealt them. Nevertheless, he responded as if it were “us vs. them.” It frightened him.

The Divers’ dream of an urban neighborhood integrated by both race and class was receding before the relentless advance of gentrification. Rising rents and condominium conversions had forced many blacks out of the community, while those who managed to hang on had little contact with their white neighbors. Crime only aggravated this social isolation, herding the white middle class into a fearful ghetto of its own.

Colin knew that this was counterproductive. Not only were blacks more often victims of violent crime, but those with a stake in society were frequently more sensitive to the issue than their white counterparts, precisely because their struggle for property and position had been more arduous. At community meetings, Colin had met several black South Enders determined to resist the rising tide of lawlessness, notably Adrian du Cille, chairman of the Methunion Manor Tenants’ Council. Determined to protect the block patrol from charges of racism, Colin asked one of his black neighbors, a former Army sergeant named Willie Mandrell, to serve as the patrol’s co-captain. Once Willie agreed, he and Colin together recruited half a dozen more blacks. The patrol was still overwhelmingly white, but there were just enough blacks in the ranks to defuse the racial issue somewhat.

Eventually, Colin enlisted nearly fifty neighbors—both men and women—for regular turns on patrol, devising a three-week rotation so that nobody served more than ninety minutes every twenty-one days. Two patrol members were assigned to walk the block weekdays from late afternoon through early evening. Women generally got the early shift (5:30–7:00), while men took the later hours (7:00–8:30). Colin bought a case of seventy-five Freon horns wholesale, selling them to other members at $1.70 apiece.

Once the patrol began operation in mid-February, Colin would rush home from Boston University every evening to make sure his troops were properly deployed. In the gathering dusk he surveyed the block from the top of his stoop or strolled the sidewalks until it was time for dinner. If one of his people failed to show up, he arranged for a substitute or filled the empty slot himself.
Every third Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. he walked his own shift with Horace Graham, while every third Friday Joan took the early turn with a black woman named Mary McFarling.

The patrol proved an effective deterrent. Those who preyed on West Newton Street evidently learned to recognize the patrols and stayed off the block so long as they were visible. That first month, only three incidents were reported during patrol hours. But later at night or on weekends the crimes continued unabated. By then, the block’s residents had developed a certain street sense. They learned that most crimes occurred in the dark and isolated middle of the block, in the alleys behind their houses, or on footbridges over the railroad tracks. They learned to look both ways when leaving the house or getting out of a car; to use the door at the top of the stoop rather than the entrance beneath the stairs; to have their key ready when they approached home; and, whenever possible, to avoid carrying a purse or wallet. Joan devised a ruse of her own. Leaving home each morning, she waved to a vacant window, hoping to persuade anyone who might be watching that the house was occupied.

Meanwhile, Colin kept pushing the police for more protection, and under his prodding, District 4 zeroed in on the gang operating out of Methunion Manor. The police grew especially suspicious of the Soul Center, the record store and “bar-b-que” where the gang was known to hang out. Night detectives Frank Sheehan and Tom Connolly watched the place closely, using undercover men to seek evidence of drug dealing and fencing stolen goods. But the investigation failed to turn up conclusive evidence.

Colin refused to give up. Over and over he called Al Flattery, Walter Rachalski, and any other police official who would listen, demanding more attention for West Newton Street. The breakthrough came in early February when Colin learned that his next-door neighbor, Mike Trum, had a daughter in school with a child of Gary Hayes, an assistant to the Police Commissioner. Trum talked to Hayes, who called Colin at the university. “I know exactly what you’re going through,” Hayes began. “I’ve already checked the data. The crime rate in your area is out of hand. I’m going to get some people from the Tactical Patrol Force on it right away.”

The very next morning the TPF’s commander, Captain Fred Conley, and Patrolman Billy Dwyer were in the Divers’ kitchen drinking coffee and explaining what they might do to help. That winter of 1975–76, the TPF still had heavy responsibilities for enforcing busing in South Boston, Charlestown, and Hyde Park. But, under explicit orders from Hayes to clean up the South End, Conley said, “We’ll just have to get people on overtime. We’ll come down here for three or four hours in the evenings and see what we can do.”

The principal vehicle would be the TPF’s Anti-Crime Squad, a thirty-man unit trained for use in high-crime areas. The unit specialized in “decoy” operations, in which several members posed as helpless drunks or frail young women while their colleagues lurked nearby, ready to grab anyone who molested them. Such operations had worked well in honky-tonk districts down-town,
which the TPF preferred because they offered opportunities for quick and easy arrests. But Gary Hayes, among others, had long been urging the squad to get away from downtown and address the grievances of high-crime neighborhoods. Colin’s complaint had provided a convenient opportunity for such an experiment.

Billy Dwyer, an ingenious young anti-crime officer, was placed in charge of the South End operation. Dwyer devised an elaborate scheme built around two decoys, policewomen Kathy Fitzpatrick and Marie Ann Donohue. Establishing a command post at radio station WEEI, on the forty-fourth floor of the Prudential Center, he installed a high-powered telescope to track the two “sitting ducks,” as he called them, along their route. A transmitter would beam signals to receivers concealed under the policewomen’s wigs, and each woman had a tiny microphone hidden in the index finger of her right glove, so that by scratching her nose, she could communicate with the command post. Finally, three plainclothesmen equipped with walkie-talkies cordoned the women in a moving wedge: one twenty paces ahead, one twenty paces behind, the third across the street.

Beginning in mid-February, Kathy and Marie took turns simulating a South End career woman returning from work. Emerging at about 6:00 p.m. from the Huntington Avenue subway stop, the decoy of the evening would turn right on West Newton, cross the railroad tracks and Columbus Avenue, then stroll toward the Divers’ house. There she would sit at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and swapping stories with Colin and Joan, until it was time to go out and try it all over again. For nearly two weeks the women trolled that route many times. On every passage, they saw young blacks clustered in the doorways of the Soul Center and Braddock Drugs. The boys whistled and made suggestive remarks, but not once did anyone make a hostile move in their direction.