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The best policed blocks in Boston?

Yesterday morning, I drove down to the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel on Congress Street (I was on a panel discussion).

When I came out, there was some minor thing going on in which a guest checking out felt compelled to have police summoned. A state trooper arrived, rather than a Boston Police officer, since, of course, the hotel sits on Massport land and God forbid Boston Police be able to patrol something in Boston that is owned by a state authority that isn't a highway or train line. It was a bit like Alice's Restaurant in miniature - the state trooper took notes, got out his camera and took some pictures, although not enough to print out 27 eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one.

And then he left.

And a minute later, a Massport cop pulled up, because, of course, the hotel sits on Massport land. By this point, the guest just wanted to leave and asked why he had to tell her the whole story when he'd just finished explaining the thing to a trooper, but she said, sorry, he made the call and now he'd have to answer to her as well and so he repeated the story he'd just told the trooper. But he objected when she whipped out a pink iPhone to try to take the same photos the trooper just took and she admitted that was, in fact, her personal iPhone, not MassPort police standard issue - and, amazingly, she agreed and put away the phone rather than raising issues of authoritah and such.

I was taking this all in not because of my nose for news, but because I was waiting for a valet to show up with my own car and it was the only show in town at the moment. But as I stood under the heat lamp in the driveway, I wondered: Why the hell do we have two police departments patrolling the same six or eight blocks? And why do they have to double team incredibly minor calls? Aren't there better ways they could spend their time?

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Comments

Is this not the reason they rolled the MDC police into the main state police force?
Seems like it's time for another hostile acquisition.

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U not gonna say what call was about?

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He thought he had evidence one of the valets had taken his expensive car out for a joyride, only it turned out he didn't have the evidence he thought he did, but still wanted an apology from the valets (when he got in and plugged his iPhone into the audio system, the audio system didn't work, which seemed like proof it had been tampered with, only it turned out it was his iPhone that wasn't working, not the audio system, which he discovered when he switched the system to FM).

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So they will show up for a busted iPhone-related snafu blamed on valets, but they won't keep the valets down on Seaport Ave and the Greenway from double parking cars on a routine basis.

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Shush.

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Did he apologize to the valet? Or, absent said evidence, does he still believe the Ferris Bueller-style "joyride" occurred (to the tune of John Williams' Star Wars theme, no less)?

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He kept insisting the valets apologize to him and recognize they had to treat guests' cars with more respect. After all, he was doing his part by not filing a claim.

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Maybe the ass who made the call could have been a little more cooperative and respectful to the authorities. You see, he is no better then the police nor the minor violater. They were providing this grump with a service since he called 911. Only person who made this incident difficult was the person who called 911 and refused to cooperate

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And he only objected to the photos being put on a personal iPhone.

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MassPort Cops: for those who flunked the real cop exam!!

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Almost correct. Massport Police & Fire: it's not what you know, it's WHO you know.

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Why? Because turf matters to small-minded, entrenched police organizations.

And (most likely) because public-sector unions, the next great bogeyman in this country, are heavily involved.

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One of the few areas that they have zero control over actually.

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If anything changed regarding turf, we would then hear from the unions about how those changes affect them (for the worse, natch). So one way or the other, they have a hand in this, even if indirect.

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Invite Spike Lee to move there and then the police will never show up!

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C6 can't keep the banks two block away on West Broadway from being robbed.

When are they going to have the time to patrol the seaport?

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I was driving home around 1 AM and as I drove up Washington from the D-14 station, I came upon three police vehicles completely blocking my lane. This was just past Brick House Pizza in front of one of the houses on Washington. The three cars were a BPD cruiser, a BPD party wagon, and a Statie cruiser. When do Statie cruisers answer calls on Washington st in Brighton?

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I'm not really joking.

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I don't know that actual call, but there should at least be some troopers in urban areas with a Boston scanner going assisting on serious calls (robberies, assaults, etc). Sometimes they are simply the officer closest to the call when it is called out and they are the first on scene.

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On City streets. Statie could have made original stop and Boston then showed up.

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Yeah, Dot has some patchwork areas where jurisdiction is a crap shoot. The streets on Columbia Point are, variably, state maintained (because of UMass and the state archives), federal (because of the National Archives/JFK Library), and city. Morrissey falls under the MA DCR. It's amazing anything gets plowed.

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They've become a lot more aggressive it seems about making stops on any streets, not just "state" roads or parkways.

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I've also seen Staties making traffic stops in city neighborhoods. I really don't want the troopers making traffic stops on city streets, considering they really don't have ties to the neighborhood as compared city cops. I've also seen at least a tripling in traffic stops on state roads. They must be feeling the pressure to increase revenue from the state.

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Staties have secondary jurisdiction on city roads and can pull drivers over just like BPD. Same is true for BPD on state roads in the city.

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A lot of troopers from Boston proper.

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But, man, are they grossly overstaffed and overpaid in this community.

Luckily, it seems a lot of them are up there in years. We could probably thin out the force through attrition.

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They're not all over staffed. The MBTA Police have the worst ratio of cops to riders than any other transit authority. The last of the civil service dinosaurs that was never dissolved/merged/maintained.

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Ur complaining about over staffed law enforcement? Really? Hmm.

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There's a Massport Police Department?

Nobody tells me anything. I thought all the state troopers at Logan and in the seaport district *were* the police force for Massport. Apparently they need two.

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If you don't like it, tell your State Rep. The reason there are multiple overlapping jurisdictions is that it allows the corrupt pols on Beacon Hill to dump family and friends into jobs, and to get money out of the various forces to protect their interests. What would Marty Walsh and Our Own Martha Coakley do if they couldn't make a call or write a letter?

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