Officials urge detectors to fight ‘riffraff’Furious Revere pols are calling for the MBTA to install metal detectors at the Blue Line’s Revere Beach station to stop the onslaught of armed and dangerous teens at the nation’s oldest public beach.
“There are seniors afraid to take the T,” said Revere city Councilor at-Large John R. Correggio, who was inundated with constituent complaints after thousands of Boston public school students held a skip day at the beach Tuesday.
“They’re outraged and they’re scared to death. Every other teenager who got off the train had a knife or a weapon.”
City Council President Daniel Rizzo and Correggio called for an emergency City Council hearing to be held this afternoon to discuss the unprecedented scrum.
“It was almost riot proportions,” said Correggio, a retired fire lieutenant. “They raised hell and they had weapons.”
The Herald reported last week that mass “texting” enabled thousands of students - mostly from the Hub - to skip school, ride the T to Revere and invade the beach.
Authorities made at least six arrests as teens shoplifted and fanned out into the neighborhood, causing a shutdown of Revere Beach Boulevard that turned 10-minute afternoon commutes into hourlong ordeals.
But MBTA Transit Police Chief Paul MacMillan said the MBTA doesn’t have the staff to man metal detectors and pointed out that riders with licenses to carry a weapon can legally do so on the T.
“Installing metal detectors would not be a practical solution to the problem,” MacMillan said.
City councilors say the beach has become a magnet for drug users and criminals and also want state police to increase patrols. Joseph Cuoco, who has lived along the beach for 25 years, said the city needs new strategies to ward off the riffraff.
“I walk the beach every morning and afternoon, and I see a lot of the garbage that’s left behind late at night - the whiskey bottles and hypodermic needles in the sand,” Cuoco said.
Yesterday the beach was strewn with broken bottles and refuse.
“No matter where I go in the city, people are concerned and talking about it,” Rizzo said. “When I was growing up ... in the ’70s it was unheard of to have kids down there with weapons.”
Rizzo said the massive convergence of teens showed how fast those problems can mushroom.
Bob Upton, a Revere Beach real estate broker and member of the Revere Beach Partnership, said he believes the beach is well-maintained by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation. Said Upton, “there’s a lot of people working to improve the image of Revere Beach, not just in words but in deeds.”
Boston Herald
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