National Guard to help police Boston in this very busy summer

This article is slightly edited from a Boston Guardian article by Jules Roscoe

(Robert Whitcomb, New England Diary’s editor, is chairman of The Boston Guardian.)

The city has a busy summer planned this year. Between the FIFA World Cup, the Tall Ships celebration, and the country’s 250th anniversary, Boston’s public-safety teams have their work cut out for them. To help ensure staffing coverage, the Boston Police will be relying on mandatory overtime and such external partners as the state’s National Guard.

In a city council hearing on March 26, the police assured councilors that there would be no change in regular police coverage to accommodate the swath of summer events.

“Communities will not be impacted regarding any staffing reductions or any response during these activities,” Deputy Supt. Sean Martin, of the department’s Bureau of Field Services, said at the hearing. “We will have a significant amount of resources, internal and external with our partners and outside assets. However, that will not impact the community’s response on a nightly basis.”

Those resources include local police officers from other regions and state National Guard members that are teamed up with both the police and fire departments. Martin said the major events would be staffed on an individual basis.

But the city also has big plans for its police generally this summer. Mayor Michelle Wu’s Warm Weather plan, released early this month and designed to combat open-air drug use concentrated in places like the South End and Roxbury, involves substantial police support of the healthcare-focused Critical Response Team. Despite the many big events this summer, the police’s focus is going to stay on those neighborhood initiatives and regular patrol.

“Obviously, their priority is always in the neighborhood, so they’re going to have to maintain the proper strength in the neighborhood,” said Bill Evans, who served as the city’s police commissioner from 2014 to 2018. “That’s your bread and butter. Anytime we have a special event, you don’t want it to cost the coverage of patrolling neighborhoods around the city. It’s going to cost the city overtime. It’s a busy vacation season for the policemen, too. Officers in the city do a super job, but they’re going to have their hands full trying to squeeze in a vacation as well as police all these events.”

To cover that additional staffing, Martin confirmed that officers would be required to work overtime, even with outside resources.

And, in a tight budget year with the city council budget still unfinalized, it’s not clear how much that staffing will cost. There is no money set aside specifically in the city budget to cover public safety for major events this year; the budget in fact states that, “New classes and management initiatives have begun to reduce the use of mandatory overtime.”

The Boston Police and the mayor’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Martin said at the hearing that the department was applying to various federal and state grants in order to help offset some costs.

“There are grants that will cover some training that’s going to be handed to our officers,” City Councilor Henry Santana, who chairs the council’s committee on public safety and ran the hearing, said in a phone call. “There are grants that do cover some overtime fees, and there are grants for some equipment that the city’s going to be receiving.”

Officers will also be allowed to take planned vacation blocks to help avoid burnout.