Downtown residents and visitors are feeling unsafe in key areas of the neighborhood as drug sales, usage and downstream crimes disrupt daily ongoings and businesses.

Rishi Shukla, co-founder of the Downtown Boston Neighborhood Association, presented results of a survey quantifying such feelings during a November 26 City Council hearing on public safety and quality of life issues in Downtown Boston and the Boston Common.

Of those over 300 survey responses, overwhelmingly by residents but also including parents, workers, students and business owners of Downtown, 71% felt less now than they did at the beginning of the year, 27% responded “no change” and only 2% felt safer.

On a scale of 1 to 10, over 90% of respondents ranked public safety an urgent issue facing Downtown and Boston Common as a seven or higher.

“It’s about far more than homicide and violent crime,” said Shukla. “It entails basic law and order, that includes enforcement. Preventing and deterring criminal activity.

Assisting the homeless.”

Other representatives on the panel from downtown organizations Friends of the Public Garden (FOPG), Downtown Boston Alliance and Beacon Hill Civic Association echoed Shukla with what they’re hearing from residents and seeing in the streets themselves.

Elizabeth Vizza, president of FOPG, said that while there has been an element of drug use in the Common for as long as she has been involved with FOPG, but things have deteriorated in the last year.

Over the summer the organization had several summertime performances held interrupted due to disturbances and some refusing to perform over safety concerns.

The intersection of Arch and Summer, Tremont, parts of Winter Streets and the Brewer Fountain were identified as problem areas during the meeting.

Sights of drug usage, violence, public indecency, muggings and widespread refuse, including excrement and needles, were described by over a dozen residents and concerned individuals during public testimony.

Several recalled times where they or a loved one had been mugged or assaulted in the downtown area. Business owners described struggles with large congregations forming at their storefronts, and the destructions that those groups can cause.

Others, include Shukla, voiced concern about rampant disregard of traffic laws by moped and motorize scooter users running red lights and misusing bike lanes as an issue only compounding that feeling of unsafety in the downtown.

Panel members, residents and city officials agreed that more than discussion needs to be done, as similar hearings have been had in the past with only worsening conditions. Many suggested better cooperations among city and state officials, and a better coordinated response by police and the District Attorney’s office.

City Councilor Ed Flynn, a sponsor of the hearing, asked Boston Police Deputy Superintendent Dan Humphreys how the decampment at Mass and Cass had possibly contributed to the open-air drug dealing and crime in the Boston Common.

Flynn also suggested that park rangers could be more affective in the Common if they were given back the ability to make arrests, which was taken away after changes to the law in 2021.

Humphreys said that one of the issues that the department is currently seeing is that of double victimization, where dealers are leveraging the addiction of their costumers to have them go into these hotspots to sell the drugs for them.

The encampment was a barrier to outreach, said Humphreys, and was torn down out of necessity. With a more dispersed population suffering from opioid and fentanyl addiction, targeted outreach is a possibility. He added that other areas of the city like Nubian Square and Andrew Square, have also seen increase of congregates following the encampment.

“We are doing a very intentional redeployment of officers into areas of community concerns,” said Humphreys.” What we are doing is endeavoring to significantly increase our visibility and put the same effort we put into reducing our violent crime and victimizations rates into addressing quality of life issues. Specifically address that fear of crime that people are having.”