South End residents are asking for more cameras and more help from police in efforts to curb continued public safety issues.

During an August meeting of the South End-Roxbury-Newmarket Working Group on Addiction, Recovery and Homelessness, residents and community leaders described worsening conditions in their neighborhoods.

Many urged for more help from local police and offered suggestions on how to bring a stop to these ongoing issues Scott Van de Linden, a new father, said that in the last three years he’s lived in the neighborhood, things have gone downhill.

“What I would suggest is, how do we actually empower the police to do their jobs, to go after the drug dealers? Why can’t we start there?” said de Linden, “I don’t see why that would be a controversial thing to do. And that would, I think, hopefully go a long way.”

While some residents have adopted personal cameras and package lock devices, businesses too have begun to adapt. Bob Barney of the Claremont Neighborhood Association said that some have begun to hire overnight security, and others are preemptively locking their doors or standing in front of their doorways during the day, so certain elements don’t get in.

Barney added that one neighbor in the area, since February, has independently collected 745 needles and 43 pipes. Another, just a couple of weeks ago, was pricked by a needle in Southwest Corridor Park.

Steve Fox, chair of the organization, said that in recent month South End has seen a massive increase in crimes on the fringes of drug abuse, things like slashing bags of trash, the pulling up of flowers in street-facing gardens, and package theft.

Lt. Dario Fancelli of the Boston Police Department said that since April, among the hundreds of arrests made, 40 individuals have been charged or arrested multiple times, and three firearms have been recovered. One individual has been charged seven different times, adding that as of August 11, they were still out and about.

Additionally, Fancelli said that he received a daily report every morning on 911 calls made around Mass and Cass, which includes calls in police districts outside of D4, and that 100-120 calls are documented every single day.

Fox added later that many residents in the neighborhood don’t call the police for things like package theft and trash bag slashing, creating a disconnect between what the people who live in the neighborhood are seeing, and what the police are seeing reported.

What Fox recommended is a temporary surge or resources from other Boston neighborhoods that aren’t experiencing the same volume of issues until things are under control. The working group plans to approach the issue by establishing a set of recommendations for city and state stakeholders in recovery, public safety and judicial reform to be issued in a sixth month period, in hopes to establish a coalition working to making those recommendations reality. Fox said that when they have their recommendations, they plan to go to Mayor Wu’s office to ask if she would take a leadership role in going to the State in asking for help in that combined effort.

“We can create all the brickwork that we want to as strategic groups,” he said, “but we really are going to depend on having the leadership of our electeds to really take us in the direction that actually finds a solution.”