POLICE CRACK DOWN ON THEATER DISTRICT

Rock Bottom Brewery manager Tim Cleland said the drug dealers who
congregate at Tremont and Stuart streets near his restaurant have used
crack in the business's bathroom, stored drugs in the decorative planters
that line the patio seating area, and even conducted drug transactions in
front of stunned patrons in recent months.

"They'd use wheel wells of cars for [drug] drops," said Cleland, nodding at
luxury cars parked along the sidewalk in front of his restaurant.

Josiah Spaulding Jr., whose production of "The Little Prince" recently
opened at the Shubert Theater on Tremont Street, said the hundreds of
children who have streamed into the Theater District in recent days to see
the show have passed within yards of what police and business owners
describe as one of the city's most notorious open-air drug markets.

Both men yesterday praised Boston and MBTA police for launching a joint
crackdown in the area last weekend that has led to the arrest of 22
individuals on charges that include drug possession and distribution,
assault and battery, and disorderly conduct. The initiative, which police
have dubbed Operation Hydra, targets the Theater District and Chinatown and
will continue for several weeks, officials said.

"In wintertime, as early as 7 p.m. it gets scary out there," Cleland said.
"Last week, the police put a command center out there, and every one of my
staff commented on how nice it was to feel safe."

Police officials said the operation is designed not only to exile drug
dealers from their posts, but also to discourage outsiders from coming into
the city to buy drugs. Officials said the area's drug trade fuels crime
throughout downtown, as junkies support their habits through robbery, and
rival dealers fight over customers.

Among those arrested by police in the past week were men from several
Boston suburbs, New Hampshire, and Burlington, Vt.

Police named Operation Hydra after a nine-headed monster in Greek mythology
that grew two new heads to replace any one that was cut off. Hercules
killed the mythological Hydra by himself; police are using the term to
evoke a persistent problem that can be reduced when people work together.

It has become clear in recent months, local business owners said, that such
an intensive effort is needed to stem drugs and prostitution, which plague
the area as soon as night falls.

"It is an initiative that has been brought about as a result of input from
the Chinatown residents and the business residents of the Theater
District," said Sergeant Thomas Sexton of Boston police. "It's an attempt
to address the quality-of-life issues that they've brought forward."

Last night, Captain Bernard O'Rourke of Boston police dined with Chinatown
business leaders at a restaurant to discuss the operation's progress and
plans for the neighborhood's security, a person familiar with the meeting said.

Violence in the area has always been a problem, locals said, but it has
escalated recently with a series of late-night stabbings.

On an early Saturday morning in January, two men were stabbed in unrelated
incidents at Stuart and Tremont streets. Last month, a 24-year-old man from
Roxbury was stabbed multiple times on Warrenton Street near the
intersection with Stuart Street.

Last May, at least two people were beaten with a pipe and one was stabbed
in a melee outside of the Roxy nightclub. In December 2003, a Braintree man
changing a flat tire at Tremont and Stuart was stabbed in the heart by a
stranger.

Sexton said that officers will vary the days and times of the operation as
well as their visibility in an attempt to make it harder for criminals to
predict police presence.

On recent weekend nights, business owners said, the police presence was
hard to miss.

Four officers on horseback, plainclothes officers, and officers on
motorcycles have saturated the area around Tremont and Stuart streets and
Boylston and Washington streets, making arrests and rousting loiterers,
police officials said. MBTA and Boston police incident command vehicles,
featuring high-tech gadgetry and bought with homeland security money, were
used as tactical operations centers, officials said.

Business owners are also trying other tactics to clean up the neighborhood.
Twelve owners banded together last month to hire five police officers to
control crowds spilling out of bars dotting the alley at Boylston Place and
at Tremont and Stuart.

"We pay the overtime ourselves," said Kelly Butts, who owns Dominic's
Restaurant across from the Wang Center. "I don't mind paying, because I
know they [police] are short-staffed, and I want to keep the Theater
District safe so people keep coming."

Butts's brother Dominic Paulo, who along with his sister inherited the
business from their father, said that he is happy the police have launched
Operation Hydra despite the fact that in recent days police have had to
arrest a drug dealer hiding inside his restaurant. He has also had to close
his outside pizza window early to help police clear the sidewalks of loiterers.

Paulo said it was a relief to see security in the area improve. Things had
gone downhill, he said, after his 66-year-old father died four years ago.
Even the toughest street criminals kept their distance from the restaurant
because they were afraid of Dominic Sr., he said.