July 26, 2025
NORTH END BEATS TAME NOW.
Clean Up's and Better Lighting
Fatal to Police Excitement.
So many years ago that the oldest member of the police department scarcely remembers it, No. 2 police station in the West Bottoms was a busy point and the number of arrests there for a single night ranged from five to forty-five. Now it is a back number and the happy patrolman walking beats in the No. 2 district has a snap equal to that of being a line man for the Marconi system. This is the result of a forgotten clean-up in the early '90s. Such a clean-up is now relegating No. 4 district to an unimportant one in the city.
Captain Thomas Flahive, lately removed to No. 5 station in Westport, used to book all the way from five to twenty-five "drunks" and "vag" at the Walnut street holdover, and Lieutenant C. DeWitt Stone on his advent there promised to increase the average so that no safe limit could be ascribed to it.
"But now there is a slump in crime there," Stone said last night. "We still make arrests but they are invariably tame ones and the time is about here when there will be practically none at all. Drag nets and the brilliant lighting of McGee street, formerly as wicked as any place in the North End, has wrought a change for the better, fatal to the excitement attendant on being an officer."
Labels: Captain Flahive, crime, McGee street, No 2 police station, No 4 station, No 5 police station, North end, police, Walnut street police station, West bottoms, Westport
