The recent approval of anticrime cameras and renovations to a prominent plaza in Central Square could improve the quality of life in one of the highest-crime areas in Cambridge.
While several Central Square hot spots will get the cameras, the corner of Green and Magazine streets and the nearest blocks have consistently seen the highest rates of crime.
These areas drew the most reports in the city for drug-related crimes, simple and aggravated assaults, street robberies and threats in the past year – though street robberies are down 31 percent overall in the past nine months compared with 2023, according to the department’s monthly BridgeStat analysis.
The area also saw a homicide last Thanksgiving, one block south of the Green and Magazine corner.
Residents of the Holmes Building, which towers above Carl Barron Plaza and the Green and Magazine street corner, held an hour-and-a-half meeting Tuesday to discuss concerns about Central Square. It was attended by vice Mayor Marc McGovern, city councillor Cathie Zusy, police commissioner Christine Elow and a member of the city’s unarmed response team, providers of services to vulnerable populations as well as by the heads of city departments such as Public Works and Human Services.
Feeling unsafe
Theodora Francis, a resident of Franklin Street in Central Square who attended the meeting, is collecting petition signatures for a letter to the mayor, the governor and anyone else who could be helpful: “We’re even going to send it to President Biden,” Francis said.
“The sharp rise in the number of substance abusers and pushers, along with homeless people intoxicated day and night, has reached an intolerable level,” the letter reads. “It is becoming unsafe to pass through the Square.”
Central Square resident Lucia Huntington said she frequently sees open-air drug use in the area, even in broad daylight. Huntington recounted an incident a friend of hers witnessed in which one person attacked another with a chain over a drug dispute.
“I have a 3 year-old daughter,” she said. “I do not go out at night with her.”
Huntington said she’d primarily like to see the drug supply cracked down on, but also thinks open-air drug use should be policed.
“I’m after some kind of punitive stuff, but mostly, if you can discover where some of this stuff is coming from, get rid of it,” Huntington said.
Plaza renovations
Improving the corner, near the Central Square red line station, is an ongoing city project. The renovation of Carl Barron Plaza will bring more lighting and seating there and to the sidewalk along River Street, though work on the plaza is not expected to be completed until late 2025. The anticrime cameras approved in September by the City Council should go up much sooner, in about two months.
Michael Monestime, president of the Central Square Business Improvement District, said he does not want to be dismissive of “people suffering in place” in the area, but the amount of illegal activity and drug sales is troubling. “I think it’s fine that people are hanging out there, but the active use is a problem,” he said.
Monestime said an increase in social services in the region could help address some of the needs.
“A lot of people think Central Square is service rich, but I actually think the square is lacking in adequate services,” he said.
Francis, a former substance abuse counselor herself, agreed there are far too few places to get rehabilitation in the city, and no place for homeless residents to spend the day rather than the street or at the library.
“Give people another option”
McGovern, who lives just a block away, said it’s a particularly “tricky” corner, with narrow streets and increased congestion from construction in a square he recalled as a “more gritty” downtown back to the 1970s, and more so in the past 15 years. “I think that corner has become more of a hangout spot for people who would otherwise be in the plaza,” he said. “But this is a much deeper issue than where people are hanging out.”
McGovern would prefer to see, and has pushed for in the past, a daytime drop-in center for unhoused residents to have a place to go.
“You’ve got to give people another option,” McGovern said. “As uncomfortable as it is for someone walking by, it’s more uncomfortable for those folks who have to sit out in 100-degree weather or 30-degree weather because we don’t offer something else.”
A drop-in center of this kind would be more than just a large open room; it could also be a place for unhoused people to shower, do laundry and get help with critical social services, such as health care, state identification and housing assistance.
McGovern said he would continue to suggest the drop-in center at the council level: “I’m going to keep pushing and building support.”
He’d also support an overdose prevention center to move drug use off the streets and an expansion of the facility run by Cambridge and Somerville Programs for Addiction Recovery at 240 Albany St. – but he doesn’t want people to focus on Central Square to the degree they forget there are related issues affecting the whole city, and its neighbors.
Police and services
While McGovern said the cameras and increased police presence may help reduce the sale of drugs and rates of violence, it could simply move the problem elsewhere. Already he has seen people move a short distance away to the little McElroy and James P. Cronin parks on the outskirts of Central Square in the Riverside neighborhood.
“These are all much bigger, much more complex, much deeper issues that every city across the country is dealing with,” he said. “I have no desire to arrest people for being homeless and mentally ill. That’s not what a caring community does. But you can’t be selling drugs in the open in front of kids.”
Last year, the city hosted a roundtable on Central Square’s challenges at which Elow said the department connects with 50 to 100 unhoused residents in the region a week, all of whom are offered social services.
At Green and Magazine streets in particular, the department has doubled its “park and walk” patrols from 2023, police spokesperson Robert Goulston said. Arrests at the corner have nearly doubled during the same period, to 22 from 13, notably for drugs and warrant arrests.
The department has two officers embedded in Central Square for walking patrols. Goulston said officers are focused on connecting people with resources and temporary shelter rather than simply arresting people.
The business factor
The frequent open-air drug use and litter left behind can harm local businesses nearby as well, though Monestime said business owners are often more empathetic than might be expected. For instance, 1369 Coffee House owner Josh Gerber trained his staff on how to use Narcan, the life-saving overdose drug.
Monestime also believes the finished plaza will help address some of the nuisance behavior.
“It’s more of a matter of time,” he said.
Monestime said police have done a good job of not under- or overpolicing the area, but he hopes the new cameras will make it more uncomfortable for drug dealers to sell in the area.
Green Street is also missing the commercial and social establishments that keep Massachusetts Avenue busy a block away. The Green Street Grill, a longtime Central Square haunt, shuttered its fourth iteration during the pandemic and has yet to return. The Greek American Political Club next door has intermittent events, such as Havana Club on some weeknights, one of the few nightlife options for 18- to 21-year-olds in the city.
“If that street was hopping with restaurants and bars, that changes the feel,” McGovern said. “That block feels like all it is, is kids going to the [taekwondo] school and people hanging out at the bus stop.”
A stronger
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It’s nice to hear a bit of honesty about this area which often gets stuck in limbo from everyone trying to pretend that all behavior is okay in public. The stark reality is that the few blocks of Central dominated by unhoused / homeless individuals lying on the ground or benches, drinking from paper bags and the like, are the most depressing and unpleasant parts of the entire city. But if you go just two blocks down the street, you’re in the best part of Cambridge, and one of the most fun parts of the greater Boston area in general.
The fact of the matter is that Central can be both the best and the worst square in Cambridge depending on which block you’re on. Doing more to hold people accountable for the behavior which makes it the “worst” square will dramatically help the entire neighborhood, the quality of life for residents, and the experience and success of businesses in the area.
I hope this honesty and momentum keeps up to improve Central, help those who need space to be during the day, and hold accountable those who are feeding the crisis.
What a joke. A day after property taxes go up and the city finally decided its going to pretend to do something about a decades old problem?
Bike lanes and injection stations – thats the future.
It’s a shame that the Central Square Plaza has been destroyed and has been an ugly open sore for so long making it a difficult and dangerous area to navigate. It made a pleasant area for people to sit, now those people are forced to sit at the Green St bus stop so bus riders have no where to sit while waiting for the bus. What rotten city planning? It seems like city planners were just ruthlessly routing out the homeless from sitting at the Plaza. Saying “unhoused” doesn’t solve the problem; it seems just a cynical diversion – as if it dignifies the status. What B.S.!
The police are told to go easy on the unhoused, because the city doesn’t want any bad publicity.
Now that I think of it getting rid of the drug den (the toilet in Central Sq.) might help.
Has anyone notice how far away the toilet is from the center of Harvard Sq.
One more thing. Can’t we get rid of the boom boxes?