Police cracking down on park loiterers in Roslindale, West Roxbury
Boston Police said they would go after miscreants in local parks after vandals cut down trees and left behind sex devices at the Hynes Field playground in West Roxbury. And this morning, police report on the arrest of a gaggle of allegedly boozy teens at Fallon Field in Roslindale around 11 p.m. yesterday:
[O]fficers observed a group of individuals huddled together near the basketball courts. As officers approached the area from Walworth St. they observed the suspects knocking over beer cans and placing plastic cups containing alcohol on the ground. Officers also observed several empty containers of alcohol on the ground. Officers approached and questioned the suspects and found them to be minors in possession of alcohol. The officers smelled a strong odor of alcohol on the breath of the suspects.
The alleged loitering louts were taken down to Area E-5 over in West Roxbury for the obligatory phone calls to mom and dad.
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Those kids and their
Those kids and their peaceful gathering in public space! The nerve...
Nope - you take your chances
When you're underage & drinking in public, as most of us did at one point, you know you may get (edit) caught & punished for it. Big deal.
Plus, their overall demeanor may have been peaceful, but one of the City's Parks rules is that no person shall:
"(g) Have in his or her possession any intoxicating liquor."
There's also stuff about leaving bottles & cans on the ground rather than in receptacles, and being there between 11:30PM & 6AM is not OK. (Although the report says "around 11", so maybe that wasn't a valid reason to approach them, yet.)
Times
Really depends on what's posted at the park. Some are supposed to be off limits at 10 p.m. and some shut at sunset (I'm looking at you, Hyper Anal Parks Department Guy with a Megaphone at Millennium Park).
Since there are lights at Fallon, I'd suspect it tends toward a later hour, like, say, 11.
Obviously their actions
Obviously their actions weren't "legal" but my point was that they are doing no harm, in criticism of the laws themselves.
People can respectfully and responsibly drink alcohol and be in public without harming others. Cigarette smokers can't even make that claim without putting a hermetically sealed plastic bubble on their head.
So you don't live near that park, I take it
I don't, either, but the basketball courts are right on the street, and I've been by enough at night to know that the kids can get pretty loud sometimes. Hey, they got caught. They'll just have to deal with it; maybe next time they'll find a more secluded area than a lit-up court right on the street to booze it up.
Trash and broken glass
The punks leave lots of trash and broken glass in the park. Little kids play there during the day. Broken glass and little kids are not a good combination.
Sure, it's possible to drink alcohol responsibly in public. That's not the case here.
Oh, yeah
And the playground (right next to the courts) is one of those woodchips-and-sand deals, which I bet makes the broken glass especially fun.
I can tell you're from VT
by this comment:
People can respectfully and responsibly drink alcohol and be in public without harming others. Cigarette smokers can't even make that claim without putting a hermetically sealed plastic bubble on their head
I live right there and we take
our toddler there several times a week. It's a great park: baseball field, basketball, tennis courts, paths, some trees and a playground. I'd like it more if I didn't have to pick up pieces of glass as often as I do.
You and I can respectfully & responsibly drink in public without harming others. I don't do so at night in a city park with a playground though. The "rowdy teens" hadn't done any harm at the point that they were busted, and maybe they wouldn't have later either.
That's not the point - the people who run the parks make rules about this stuff to try and prevent the kind of activity that might happen... that happened at the other nearby park reported on earlier (vandalism & destruction of trees and park equipment). Seems reasonable.
You and I can respectfully
You can, but you can't do that in COMPLIANCE with the law. We have an open container rule.
No loitering in parks??
Isn't the whole point of being at a park to loiter? Are people now expected to just walk through at a brisk pace, say "Nice grass," and keep moving?
A brisk pace is good for your heart
But I meant "loitering" as in "milling about aimlessly in a place where the sign says it's way pass your milling-about-aimlessly time."
Park closed, walking through is fine
A number of parks including the Rose Kennedy Greenway have signs indicating that the park is closed after some hour (11 pm?) but that people are encouraged to walk through it at any time of the day.
I suspect that the police will only care if the loiterers are drinking or skateboarding or making lots of noise.
Sex devices?
Sex devices?
The police are so vague sometimes
Yeah, I was wondering what sort of devices they'd found, too.
lighting please
If you light the area up at night they'll scatter like roaches. I live near Healy field and there are often kids in the cement bleachers at night but never on the nights when they leave the lights on.