Just Thinking: about Teens & Tweens Flooding Downtown

by Mary Greendale 7/26/09

On the last day of school before the summer break, I was down at Coffee Haven with my three year-old granddaughter Riley to shop for a book. The shop was filled with Middle School aged kids. The parking lot had a dozen of them hanging around. The letters on their display sign promoting summer reading had been rearranged into language that was not really appropriate, probably done by one of the kids. There was another pack of eight or so across the street in the parking lot at Casey’s.

This phenomenon doesn’t just happen once a year though – it’s every Friday after school; waves of youngsters walk from the Middle School up to the center of town. I understand that even some of the older Miller School kids, grade 5, have been participating, too.

I used to be a merchant in this town and I know that the store owners are caught in an unenviable position. Some of these students are actual paying customers. Some of their parents are, too, so they don’t want to offend them. Also, they might be worried about recriminations if they tell the kids not to come in. But they also know that their customers might be intimidated by the throngs of kids and just decide to go elsewhere.

I know that Fiske’s used to prohibit Middle School kids from going in there after school without an adult. The store suffered constant pilferage.

There are No Loitering signs on the side of the Hollis Plaza right over the incline that some kids use as a skateboard ramp and jump. One such youngster nearly ran into my car as I approached the intersection of Fruit Street from Charles. That scared the living daylights out of me so I am really alert and cautious in that area now.

Some adults that I have talked to wonder why the police don’t just move the kids away; after all the building is posted. I have wondered that myself. So I decided to ask Chief Tom Lambert and Youth Officer Dave Gatchell to come on the show and discuss this issue.

I happen to believe that most of these kids are good kids who on their own would be harmless, but the risks increase dramatically when kids are in groups – the risks of taking physical chances, the risks of bad behavior.

On the other hand, there’s not much to do in town. We don’t have any supervised areas where youngsters can just hang around together, talk, laugh and eat pizza. That’s what they want and frankly, developmentally, that what they are driven to find – not necessarily the pizza but definitely the being together.

Is this all a problem? Whose problem is this? And how do we solve it?

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