Safety with compassion: Malden Station circle bench removal and the path forward

By Lorna Garey

The moment Mayor Gary Christenson decided the status quo was no longer tenable, he wasn’t behind his desk at City Hall. He was trying to break up a fight at the park adjacent to the Malden Station MBTA stop and saw a glass bottle fly past his head.

“That was it,” said Christenson. “I came back and I said, Maria, we need to call the chief and Paul and do something here.”

Within hours of that final straw, in early August, the black metal benches that had long defined the tree-lined circle were gone. While some criticized the removal as showing a lack of compassion for unhoused, elderly and disabled citizens, Malden Police Chief Marc Gatcomb framed it as a necessary step to remove a “magnet” for criminal activity that had defied previous attempts at mitigation.

“We are compassionate public servants,” Christenson said. “We tried everything else first. It reached a point where it was better to be safe than sorry to prevent a serious injury.”

The MBTA responded to the city’s request quickly, sending a crew to pull the benches the next day.

“Usually it takes weeks, but credit to them,” said Christenson. “They did it within 24 hours.”

Public space, public problem

Addiction Recovery Resource Specialist Paul Hammersley says Malden has plenty of compassion. But patience was running out.

“I would hear, ‘How come I can’t push my child in a stroller to get to the T without walking the plank?’” Hammersley said. “Yeah, we took a lot of calls.”

Data confirms the scope of the problem. Over the past 12 months, the Malden Police Department tracked calls for service at two primary locations, the MBTA stop complex overall and 25 Commercial St., the specific station address. While raw data showed 424 total calls — 178 at the station and 246 at Commercial — Gatcomb provided a conservative estimate of 250 verified incidents at the T stop circle, some involving drug dealing. 

“Individuals would know, ‘If I needed to buy something, I could go to the circle and probably find it,'” he said. “We had to do something to make the area uncomfortable for the criminal element.”

Documented incidents MPD and public health staff responded to include assaults, numerous fights and a mid-afternoon stabbing as well as public health hazards like open needle use, crack cocaine consumption and frequent biohazard removals. Emergency responders dealt with people experiencing psychiatric disorders, overdoses and chronic intoxication. Hammersley recalled a stabbing victim who walked through the front doors of City Hall seeking help and said many nights by 9:30 p.m. there might be more than 30 people congregated in the circle, with escalating problems.

“If we had not taken the action we did, someone was going to be seriously injured,” Christenson said.

For residents, the area had become unwelcoming and intimidating, as parents and students maneuvered through crowds to reach the train. Commuters on night shifts reported feeling unsafe when returning home. Special Assistant to the Mayor Maria Luise said parents were calling City Hall, upset that their children were witnessing people using drugs as they walked home from school.

“It was turning into a chronic thing,” said Luise.

The upshot is that many members of the public felt excluded from a public space.

Why now? Why Malden?

Neighborhood View had a candid conversation with several people who said they usually gathered at the circle but were now at the benches fronting the senior center. They indicated that “outsiders” weren’t cleaning up after themselves and were making trouble. Hammersley confirmed that the city has seen a wave of people coming to Malden over the past few years via the Orange Line. That influx didn’t subside with colder weather last year, and an escalation in criminal activity marked a departure from the local dynamic the city’s outreach teams usually manage. 

“There were a lot of faces that we did not know,” Hammersley said. “We recognize everybody in the area. We know our people.”

Hammersley said he engages with those “regulars” and pointed out that there’s still seating in the circle and throughout the Square as well as on both sides of the station for anyone waiting for a bus.

“We’re out there with them every day,” he said. “We’re still seeing our people on a daily basis.”

Tight budgets aren’t helping. The loss of the dedicated Malden Square officer and an inability to hire a crime analyst to parse data were direct results of municipal belt tightening, said Gatcomb, and relying on the MBTA Police was not an option, as the agency frequently has only one officer to cover the entire North Shore from Oak Grove to North Station.

Ward 4 Councilor Ryan O’Malley acknowledged the area was a hot spot for calls and cited one root cause.

“A lot of these challenges are being driven by the fact that we don’t have enough housing, particularly affordable housing, middle-income housing,” said O’Malley. “We need to figure out how to deal with this with dignity so that people don’t feel like they’re being discarded or pushed farther to the margins.”

Safety, recovery and intervention

To that end, city officials described a strategy that distinguishes between the criminal activity being targeted and the unhoused population being served. 

Intervention involves efforts to move people into recovery and operates on the principle that enforcement and outreach must happen simultaneously. The city’s support ecosystem includes Malden Cares, a Health Department program that conducts daily street outreach, providing everything from Social Security card assistance to medical transport, and The Bridge Recovery Center, a facility providing food, clothing and support for those entering recovery.

Christenson and Luise also gave a shout out to the Office of Housing Stability and Housing Families.

“I don’t think people realize how much Housing Families does in the communities they work in,” said Luise. “It’s incredible.”

In one instance, the Office of Housing Stability cleared a fine for a family facing eviction, allowing them to secure a new unit rather than ending up on the street.

Gatcomb has also begun collaborating with local retailers like Malden Center Fine Wines to phase out the sale of nips and single cans of beer, primary contributors to the open container violations that plagued the circle. A similar effort is underway with the local Stop & Shop.

Hammersley and the Malden Cares team are on the front lines daily, replacing documents and providing food, clothing, and even arranging haircuts. The data reflects their efforts: So far this year, 60 Malden residents have been placed into treatment, many of them engaged at the T circle. This pace is significantly higher than last year’s total of 73 placements in treatment programs.

“A lot of people refuse help, but we’re out there every day,” Hammersley said. 

However, the scale of the need is staggering. A waitlist of nearly 600 people for housing in Malden highlights the reality that even when individuals choose recovery, the path to a stable home is blocked by a massive regional shortage, as O’Malley pointed out. The city is pushing forward with affordable projects at the former Salvation Army building on Main Street, veterans housing on Salem Street and the large-scale Overlook project, despite a lack of federal and state funding for homeownership programs and the recent derailing by the Malden Planning Board of a 36-unit complex proposed to be affordable in perpetuity.

Gatcomb and Hammersley shared a recent success story involving a man who frequented the Malden T stop area and was a prolific property crime offender — a “worst of the worst” case. Facing jail time, the individual chose the 18-month Recovery Court program instead. He recently graduated, transitioning from a drain on city resources to a success story of the dual-track system.

“You take that win,” Hammersley said. “When that happens, it’s amazing.”

What’s next for the circle?

The Malden Station circle currently sits benchless, and Christenson expects it to stay that way through the winter. Gatcomb added that while calls still come in related to the circle, there has been no uptick in crime there, nor has the activity moved elsewhere in the city.

O’Malley, who has experience as a park ranger, said the solution to unwanted activity is to activate a space, bring in more eyes. He pointed to Fitzgerald Park on Exchange Street as a prime example of the sort of “third space” the city needs more of.

“There really wasn’t a place for kids to play downtown, and we wanted to address that,” he said. “There was also some antisocial behavior going on in that space, ranging from public urination and defecation to heroin use.”

Malden Arts worked with the Malden Redevelopment Authority to create a pocket park with Ed Emberley murals, a play structure, painted surface games like hopscotch as well as benches and tables for use by adults who want to enjoy the artwork and landscaping.

“It’s a beautiful park now,” said O’Malley. “That is, I think, an example of a success story. How we activated a space in a way that adds to the community.”

Christenson said his team is looking toward a future where the circle likewise serves the community, with internal discussions focusing on concepts ranging from a splash pad for local daycares to a food truck area. A Reddit post by OSPCD Director Alex Pratt opened a spirited discussion with more than 100 comments and suggestions ranging from community-building activities, like salsa dancing, chess tables or permit-based busking, to a Dairy Delight outpost and a public drinking fountain with a dog-watering attachment.

Christenson said his team is “kicking the tires” on ideas, any of which would need to be approved by the MBTA, which owns the space. And while the benches are gone, he maintains that compassion has not been removed. The work of Malden Cares continues daily, even as the city grapples with the tension between not criminalizing being unhoused during a housing crisis, the regional opioid epidemic and Boston’s crackdown on loitering at areas like Mass and Cass driving people to other locations.

“The work doesn’t stop,” said Christenson. “We see hope in individual stories. Just because the benches are gone doesn’t mean we’ve stopped caring; it means we’ve committed to a version of Malden where safety and compassion can finally coexist.”