CRACKING DOWN ON JUNKIES: POLICE VOW TO FIX BLIGHT ON PARKS

A day after the Herald exposed extensive crack and heroin use in the heart
of the Hub's historic park system, police are vowing to sweep pushers and
their dope-hungry customers from the Public Garden and Boston Common.

"We're going to increase our patrols and try to displace this as much as
possible," Capt. Bernard O'Rourke, head of the busy Area A-1, which
encompasses the drug-blighted downtown jewels, said yesterday.

The Common has long had a crime and drug-abuse problem. But a two-week
surveillance by the Herald showed that drug use has become rampant day and
night both in the Common and the Garden.

O'Rourke acknowledged there has been a "huge increase" in reports of drug
activity in the two parks since late spring. He attributed it partly to a
crackdown in Chinatown, where a nightly crime watch and increased patrols
have led to a 64 percent decrease in reported drug incidents.

"The problem has shifted," O'Rourke said. "It turns out the Common and the
Garden are bearing the brunt of this."

Mayor Thomas M. Menino asserted yesterday he ordered a cleanup of the parks
after walking through Boston Common himself about 10 days ago after hearing
a citizen's complaint.

"I saw some of the conditions we had and some people camped out and some
issues I wasn't happy with, so I spoke to the municipal police, the park
rangers, about additional patrols in there," he said. "We will make sure
the safety of that area is what people want it to be, it's a
quality-of-life issue with me."

But his comments mark a shift from 17 days ago, when the Herald first
reported on a heroin junkie's overdose death in the Garden. Menino and
other city officials at the time called it an anomaly and expressed
frustration over what to do.

"It's a public park. You have a person going in there sitting on a bench
and shooting up. How do you know?" the mayor said then.

Boston Parks spokeswoman Mary Hines said at the time, "This is an isolated
incident."

Menino's opponent for mayor, at-large City Councilor Maura Hennigan, blamed
the incumbent for letting police and ranger staff levels fall. The parks
should have been swept after 42-year-old John P. Gagliardi Jr. was pictured
on the Herald's front page Aug. 26 injecting a fatal dose of heroin, she said.

"When you have a void as far as a public safety presence, the drug dealers
and those with addictions, those people are only too able to fill it,"
Hennigan said.

Saying drug use has invaded neighborhood parks as well, City Council
President Michael Flaherty called yesterday for park rangers to patrol all
Boston parks and for the creation of a zero-tolerance park drug use policy.

"The proliferation of drugs is so bad and detox and recovery opportunities
are so scarce, the two of them are just creating an environment in the city
where parents are thinking about whether or not they should bring their
child to a tot lot," said Flaherty, who several years ago asked his wife
not to bring their own children to South Boston's M Street Park after a
needle was found in a sandbox there.