A number of city agencies aren’t releasing public records about the handling of Mass. and Cass, the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard widely considered to be the epicenter of Boston’s open-air drug use problem.

Those agencies include the mayor’s office, the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC), and the Boston Police Department (BPD), each of which have a hand in the current strategy for combatting drug use in the city.

South End resident Brian McCarter has been filing public records requests for information about Mass. and Cass for several years. But many of McCarter’s requests remain unanswered.

“They’re telling us and parading to the world that it's the safest city in America, yet they won’t hand the details to a normal guy,” McCarter said. “It’s just so frustrating. It’s not safe. And what else can you do, when you’ve told everyone, you’ve documented it, you’ve gone through the formal processes and the informal processes, and they’re all promising they’re making it better?”

Massachusetts public records law provides that each person has a right to access public government information, so long as that information isn’t classified. Public records requests must ask for existing documents and cannot be overly broad. So, while a requester can’t ask for a general summary of crime at Mass. and Cass, they could ask for all police reports in a 10-block radius of that intersection in a given period of time. The agency then has a maximum of 10 business days for an initial response.

McCarter has filed 24 requests to various city agencies this year alone, for things like shelter occupancy figures, BPHC syringe distribution data, BlueBike financial data, emails between city officials about Mass. and Cass, and individual police reports. He has received complete responses to three of them.

Most of the rest, he has had to appeal to the state supervisor of public records, who can order the agency to respond. McCarter has seven such orders.

Boston agencies are generally difficult to obtain records from. In 2023, for example, the BPD was sued for not providing records within the state mandated time frame. It agreed to eliminate its public records backlog within six months and paid a settlement of $75,000. That backlog has still not been eliminated.

Neither the mayor’s office nor the BPD responded to multiple requests for comment about why they have not provided McCarter with records. The BPHC said in a statement that it had shared timely responses with McCarter, and that it “strives to work in partnership with community to build a healthier Boston for all residents, and views transparency as a key component of its mission.”

“It comes down to the policy preference,” McCarter said.

“Do they want to be combative on these or do they want to be transparent? Boston doesn’t want to be transparent.”

McCarter says he’s most interested in how the city categorizes crime data to allow it to say that conditions in the area are improving, despite residents continuing to report open-air drug use, drug dealing, and litters of used syringes. Last month, for example, two residents guiding a pair of Boston Globe staffers through the area were attacked by a group of alleged drug dealers.

“When I’m in the middle of a war zone of Mass. and Cass, I’d like to know why you’re telling me it’s safe,” McCarter said.