PORTLAND, Maine — Fed up with rising arrest numbers, ongoing open drug use and a recent unprovoked assault on a well-known, longtime neighbor, Bayside residents are taking matters into their own hands.
This week, the Bayside Neighborhood Association began taking steps to form what’s known as a Safe Streets Team, based on a similar, 30-year-old organization in Washington state.
The local team would be focused on community-building activities, rather than repeated calls to the police, as a way to improve quality of life and reduce crime in the long-beleaguered section of the city, bordered by Forest Avenue to the west, Franklin Street to the east, Back Cove to the south and Congress Street to the north.
While Maine’s overall crime rate dropped in both 2022 and 2023, that’s cold comfort to Bayside residents who’ve seen a different picture on the local scale.
According to Portland Police Department data, of the 1,985 citywide arrests and summonses which occurred between January and October this year, 587, or nearly 30 percent, took place in Bayside. The neighborhood only accounts for five to six percent of the city’s population and one percent of its land area.
Arrests alone in the neighborhood are up 48 percent over the same period last year.
A recent report from Police Chief Mark Dubois indicated 59 percent of all September arrests occurred in Bayside.
“Bayside could be called crime central in Portland,” said Parris Street resident Scott Morrison, who attended a Safe Streets Team organizational meeting on Tuesday. “The numbers speak for themselves.”
Morrison said he’s been physically attacked on his own property and recently found a man passed out in his yard.
“With a needle still stuck in his arm,” Morrison said. “I’m tired of the constant trespassing and littering.”
Portland Police Department data shows 484 overdoses reported in the city through Nov. 11. Of those, 184, or 39 percent, were reported in Bayside.
Morrison placed Bayside’s crime and drug woes, as did most in attendance, on the high homeless and transient population — and the associated sex-trafficking and illegal drug sales — drawn to the cluster of services in the neighborhood.
Though the city recently moved its main homeless services center to the edge of town on Riverside Street, a teen shelter and family shelter are still located in Bayside, along with homeless services provider Preble Street and a health clinic with a needle exchange.
Currently, Avesta Housing has plans to develop specialized, low-barrier housing for chronically homeless people in the neighborhood at the site of the former city-owned homeless shelter on Oxford Street.
Tuesday’s meeting involved nearly two dozen residents and business owners, as well as Mayor Mark Dion and Dubois. Neighborhood Association Acting President Robert Sylvain indicated he’d also invited representatives from Preble Street and Avesta, though neither organization sent representatives to the meeting.
Preble Street Senior Director of Communications Danielle Smaha said her organization received an invitation but could not attend due to a scheduling conflict.
“But we’ve always had a strong relationship with the Bayside Neighborhood Association and the Portland Police Department,” Smaha said.
A call to Avesta was not returned.
Christine Arsenault, who has owned a house in Bayside for 22 years, attended the meeting and recounted being assaulted while walking home from Bayside Bowl on Oct. 29. The attack left Arsenault with cuts on her face, one eye swollen shut and fears about her safety in the neighborhood.
“I don’t have any answers. I know people on the street need help,” Arsenault said, “but I feel unsafe here. My kids and I have had to run from people chasing us — I’ve had people overdosing in my driveway.”
Bayside resident Joel Mangan was also at Tuesday’s meeting and said he has to close the curtains in his house when his 4-year-old daughter is home so she won’t see the drug use and violence on the street outside. Mangan said he’s also been threatened by people on the street who have told him they know where he lives.
“What will it take to make this place a priority for the city,” Mangan asked of the mayor and police chief. “I feel a little defeated that nobody seems accountable.”
Mayor Dion acknowledged the assembled residents’ concerns but said there were no easy answers. Dion also said he’s been stymied in his efforts to help at the Portland City Council by more liberal members. Among other proposals, his recent attempt to limit the number of needles handed out at the exchange went nowhere.
Dion’s resolution was voted down 7-1 with other councilors, medical professionals and members of the public arguing it would lead to an increase in the spread of bloodborne illnesses such as HIV and hepatitis C.
“All things are political now,” Dion said of the council, “They’ve medicalized criminal conduct. They’re not all victims. People need to be held accountable.”
Dion, a former Cumberland County Sheriff, said he’d like to work with the current sheriff, as well as the county district attorney, to create a therapeutic detention center for low-level offenders inside a currently unused wing of the Cumberland County Jail.
In Dion’s vision, it would house people the district attorney would likely now decline to prosecute because of the petty or non-violent nature of their crimes, including public intoxication and drug use.
In the meantime, Sylvain called on those assembled to join the Safe Streets Team and think of creative, non-police related, community-building activities that might help the situation by making the neighborhood less attractive to antisocial and criminal behavior. A list of suggested activities from the original Washington group included litter clean-up patrols, youth programming and regular community meetings both online and in person.
Sylvain also urged someone in the room to step forward and take a leadership role in the team. Though no one immediately volunteered, most agreed to meet again, soon.
“I’m not a crime fighter,” Sylvain said. “I’m a musician and a community guy — and I know these problems aren’t going to go away overnight.”
