Boston Police say strategy of trust-building with Occupy Boston led to peaceful end

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

The strategy by the Boston Police Department from the beginning of the Occupy Boston encampment was to get to know a core group of the protestors and forge a bond of trust, which paved the way for today’s pre-dawn raid that peacefully ended the 10-week rally in Dewey Square with no injuries, police and city leaders said at a morning press conference.

“There’s a great group of kids down there at Occupy Boston,” said Boston Police Superintendent William Evans. “When we needed help, I called them, they called me, and together we were able to get situations that could have gotten out of control back to normal.”

Evans gave his personal cell phone number to some of the group’s core members to use the past two months, and even as police moved in this morning, arresting about 46 protestors who refused to leave, their aim was to keep the bond alive.

“A lot of them we became very friendly with and a few we pleaded with them to not go in the wagon, but unfortunately some of them wanted to get arrested down there,” Evans said.

Police Commissioner Edward Davis said they spent weeks planning and refining their strategy for how they would move in to end the protest, and said that they learned a lot from speaking with police chiefs across the country, especially Philadelphia’s police chief Charles Ramsey.

“They stressed community relations, they stressed transparencey, and so it was really going back to our roots as a community policing department and applying the lessons we learned in the neighborhoods in developing relationships with the protestors,” Davis said.

Soon after police moved in at 5 a.m., and the protestors were cleared from the area, crews rolled in to restore the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

“It feels very good this morning for this chapter of Occupy Boston to come to a peaceful end and for the [park] to be able to open before the end of this week to the public again,” said Nancy Brennan, executive director of the Greenway Conservancy, a nonprofit that takes care of the land at Dewey Square for the city.

Brennan said crews today are aerating the soil, adding compost to the soil and intend to resod the area on Monday or Tuesday. They also will repair the irrigation system which had broken during the encampment.

Davis said that the cost of police overtime during Occupy Boston is “nearing $1 million.” The figure does not include the costs to other city departments, for inspections, health and other services, during the encampment.

Kay Lazar can be reached at klazar@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @GlobeKayLazar.